On Tuesday, August 5, 2003, at 09:26  AM, Jason Rogers wrote:

> I'll add my $.02 here.  I don't believe it's enough to test that 
> certain
> aspects appear somewhere within the GUI.  It's important that they
> appear in the proper context.  In web pages you can assert that the
> proper text/image/etc. appears in the correct cell of a table or that 
> an
> input field is in the right form, etc.

Yes, there are situations where those things could be important, but I 
was surprised at how often they turn out not to be. Perhaps you're 
presenting time-series data and you want to be sure that all the values 
for the same series end up in the same row of the table. Ok, sure.

But most of the time, tables are just used for layout, and there are 
many ways to arrange the cells for the same visual effect, and many 
possible page designs that present the information intelligibly. If you 
test for some specific layout, your tests are fragile.

The same applies to forms, although it's not quite as obvious. I'd 
argue that the need to test details about how your forms will be 
submitted is a sign that the UI is too tightly coupled to HTTP. Better 
to separate out the networking stuff and test it in isolation.

Colin