Video: Twenty Years of Web Testing: From Selenium's Dawn to Vitest's Promise

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Tired of keeping up with the latest JavaScript test runners? You're not alone. Let's take a journey from the days of Selenium (//div[@class='nightmare']) to the refreshing simplicity of Vitest. Through conversations with framework creators and battle-scarred developers, we'll explore why we keep reinventing testing tools—and why that's not always a bad thing. You'll learn when to jump on new testing trends, when to stick with what works, and why sometimes the best choice is just clicking through your app like it's 1999. Perfect for anyone who's ever wondered 'Do we really need another test runner?' (Spoiler: Sometimes we do.)

This talk has been presented at JSNation US 2024, check out the latest edition of this JavaScript Conference.

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Video summary
My goal with this talk was to answer the question of why we have another test runner. The talk breaks down the history of web testing into three chunks: the click-through era, browser war one, and browser war two. It discusses the motivations behind browser test runners and node test runners, highlighting Karma as the first node-based runner that gained popularity. The rise of node-based test runners like Ava, Tape, Mocha, and Jest is attributed to their stability and ease of use compared to Karma. Jest faced challenges with module loading and transpiling, but its non-opinionated abstraction made it a suitable choice. The shift towards environment-aware runners like VTest allows for safer testing and aligns with the need for transpilation across different environments. Lastly, the talk touches on the future of test tooling and the implications of AI on testing.

FAQ

Our needs have changed over time, requiring more advanced test runners to address evolving web testing challenges and technologies.

The three main eras are the click-through era (beginning to 2007), Browser War One, and Browser War Two.

Jest overtook Karma primarily due to the stability issues of PhantomJS that Karma relied on, as well as Jest's better handling of module loading and transforms.

Environment-aware test runners, like VTest, can reuse build configurations for tests, providing a closer-to-production environment and reducing false positives or negatives.

JS Test Driver was one of the first to provide a workflow where JavaScript code could be run in a browser upon file changes, influencing the creation of tools like Karma, Jasmine, and Mocha.

Jest struggled for years to support ESM, which affected the import statement functionality and top-level await in codebases.

Prior to 2011, manual testing was predominant due to the lack of effective automated testing tools, but the rise of tools like Karma and Jest has shifted focus towards automated testing.

Test tooling is expected to evolve to address new challenges such as validating AI-generated code and improving the accuracy of testing models and prompts.

The Angular team promoted Karma as the go-to JavaScript unit testing tool, helping to establish it as a standard practice among web developers.

The shift is due to the need for test environments to closely mimic production environments, reducing drift and improving reliability in tests.

Jessica Sachs
Jessica Sachs
22 min
21 Nov, 2024

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