After my previous article, some people I talked to asked. why I would like to keep the browser open. I will try to answer this question. Which means we will talk about debugging.

Why leave window open?

The argument goes:

If you want you can use logs to find where the issue is. And then But breakpoint there.

This is a very valid tactic. And I am doing it quite often. But there is one thing I learned from my father.

Logs and sensor data is great but quite often they are one under an appreciated method that in most cases works as great: Just take a look what going on!

And that was great advice! It helps to get a general context, refresh our knowledge, see what’s the problem and where it is. In my experience, it is enough to fix most of the UI test issues I have seen.

I found out that in most cases Using TestDevelopment mode and running test in Debug (not the configuration, the mode in IDE ) without any breakpoint gives me enough information to fix them.
If that won’t work then logs are next step on my way.

It won’t always work.

Of course, it is another tool for the toolbox, and if for some reason test is really long or you can’t reproduce the issue locally, then this approach won’t be a good way to go.

There is a great book called „Debugging„, describing As the name says, explains the debugging process: they have even this neat poster

What I explained here goes under „Quit thinking and look”. Basically, don’t get lost in details and don’t read about it just go and take a look.

To sum it up.

Go and take a look!

That all for today – next week we will take another look at the configs and what we can do with them.