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eValid -- Web Quality News (WQN): Updates & Activities -- 2007/Q1
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19 March 2007 New Study on Travel & Tourism
A new study has begun that aims to compare 100 Travel & Tourism websites in South Africa as part of a South African Tourism Online Marketing enhancement effort. The study, being handled by our eValid partner BlueRiverStone, under direction of Mr. Ian Kruger, will provide key insights about both technical and human aspects of the websites surveyed.

Complete details about the Online Travel & Turism Industry (OTTI) study can be seen in the OTTI Survey Press Release.

15 March 2007 Running in Monitoring Mode
If you are using eValid in "monitoring mode" -- basically, running hundreds and hundreds of repetitions of functional tests on a regular basis to confirm a content or performance property -- you may be want to be aware of these practical usage Monitoring Mode Usage Recommendations.

In most cases, using these recommended guidelines, you can expect to run 100's or 1000's of tests per hour from a single monitoring machine.

12 March 2007 Expanded AJAX Support
If you are working on building AJAX-based web applications -- as it seems so many people are -- you may want to be aware of two special eValid commands that allow advanced forms of AJAX page analysis and test synchronization:
  • You can synchronize test playback when there are "variable arrival time" elements, by basing the synchronization on a selected DOM object property value. Here is the SyncOnSelectedObjProperty Command Description.

  • There is a corresponding playback command -- ValidateSelectedObjProperty -- which be used to confirm DOM object contents. eValid's Adaptive Playback processes apply here, so tests are less brittle because they are less likely to fail due to inconsequential page changes.

The advantage to users is that, with these commands, it is possible to apply automated test methods to full-scale AJAX-type implementations.

23 February 2007 Microsoft Frees Ajax
(The following item was included with the above title in a recent emailed update by Franco Martinig, publisher of Methods & Tools, as part of the February 2007 edition.)
Microsoft has released ASP.NET AJAX 1.0. This product (formerly known as "Atlas") integrates cross-browser client script libraries with the ASP.NET 2.0 development framework. ASP.NET AJAX is not just for ASP.NET developers. Developers targeting other server frameworks can take advantage of the Microsoft AJAX Library. This library is a standalone collection of the JavaScript classes included in ASP.NET AJAX. It's supported by most popular browsers and can be used to build Web applications that integrate with any backend data provider. This free software can be downloaded here: http://ajax.asp.net/.

With this release, Microsoft joins, albeit late, a crowded market for Ajax frameworks provided by open source projects, small or large (Google) companies. Market is perhaps not the right word as a vast majority of solutions are available for free. Microsoft product will certainly get some following in the .NET community and this will hurt current providers of paid frameworks. With its free client-side library, Microsoft can also appeal to people looking for developers outside the ASP world.

More information about AJAX on the Web:

21 February 2007 AJAX Framework Comparison
The AJAX revolution continues to change the way web applications and websites are built. As our readers know, eValid is tracking these developments and already has very good support for every kind of AJAX application, including those which are characterized as "heavy-AJAX applications" -- the ones that require a lot of external playback synchronization steps.

If you are building an AJAX application you may want to be aware of Daniel Zeiss' comprehensive comparison of a selection of available AJAX frameworks. Most importantly, Zeiss' ASP.NET AJAX Framework Comprison includes a lengthy comparison page that developers will surely find valuable.

20 February 2007 Simplified License Installation Procedure
One of the changes we made in eValid V7 was in response to users who had difficulty in getting the eValid license file -- a set of eValid feature activation lines -- into the right place.

Now that's a lot simpler process, because eValid now has a Manage License feature that make is easy to copy/past your license key into the right place.

15 February 2007 SJSU Adopts eValid for Course Use
Prof. Jerry Gao, San Jose State University JarryGao@email.sjsu.edu has announced adoption of eValid V7 for use in his SJSU Spring Semester CMPE 187 and CMPE 287 courses on Software Quality Engineering. eValid is pleased to provide access to eValid in a special Academic License to ~150 students in these three sections of Prof. Gao's courses.
9 February 2007 eValid Monitoring Agent End User Survey Response
As many of our users know, eValid can be a powerful and effective transaction monitoring engine because each eValid playback can simulate actual user behavior with 100% realism -- from the "last mile" perspective.

A while ago Peter Goldin, a regular contributor to the well-respected Business Service Management newsletter bsmDigest (Katherine Chalmers, Editor), asked us a set of questions about how end-user monitoring ought to be. We think our users may be interested in the answers we prepared in the eValid End User Monitoring Survey. Let us hear from you if we can fill you in on any details that these questions don't address.

8 February 2007 eValid at CeBIT
You can see live demos and get technical details about eValid at the upcoming CeBit show -- the leading business event for the digital world:
Hannover, Germany
15-21 March 2007
Hall 4, Booth A58

eValid will be represented at CeBit by BCS's Dr. Jurgen Pitschke, whose organization provides technology support for eValid in a variety of application areas.

02 February 2007 eValid V7 Availability Announced
The newly announced eValid Version (V7) adds many powerful new capabilities to the eValid web application test engine, among them:
  • Enhanced support for AJAX applications, which require use of rich-client JavaScript, and which often impose tricky synchronization problems. V7 adds several new playback synchronization modes to an already rich complement of available synchronization methods.

    These features assure eValid can test AJAX applications with ease and reliability.

  • Enhanced Adaptive Playback capability to assure that recorded test scripts have extended life when pages that are being testing change in non-consequential ways.

    This means that regression tests and test suites will never give you "test failed" messages in error.

  • Improved support for Application Monitoring focusing on reliability in multi-threaded batch operation.

    If you are running a stand-alone application monitoring application, or if you are plugging eValid into a network monitoring application, these enhancements will make your life easier!

Here is the complete V7 Press Release

18 January 2007 Financial Mail Study Released
The detailed analysis done last year on the "top 100 websites" has been released by FinancialMail as Top Corporate Websites (Special Report). This is a four-part report, based on analyses done by BlueRiverStone under direction of M.D. Ian Kruger.

The main points in the report include the following:

  • BHP Billiton Comes Out On Top.
    The final scoring shows BHP Billiton rakes #1 overall, among 100 website analyzed.
  • Workability is Key
    The scoring was done using eValid data to generate a "technical quality" score, combined with a "quality of online experience", a partly mechanized analysis of each candidate website from the triple perspective of investor, candidate employee, or someone seeking to identify business opportunities.
  • Great Potential
    The study suggested that websites are a powerful recruiting tool, based on the observation that the candidate employee is often less effective than service provided to a user in the other categories that were measured.
  • Is There Anyone At Home?
    Email responsiveness scored low, with up to two thirds of the companies failing to respond within one day to manually sent email.
The botom line appears to be that, even with the high-scoring results found in this study, there is a great deal of room for improvement in overall corporate website quality.
02 January 2007 eValid: Monitoring Volume Milestone Reached
As many eValid users know, our browser based testing engine powers some pretty sophisticated test playbacks that monitor performance, content quality, and various other factors that affect website quality metrics.

We did a little "back of the envelope" calculation the other day to estimate just how often eValid playbacks actually run. Taking into account all of the sites and services that use eValid as their main test engine, we are pleased to announce that eValid playbacks now total in the range of 1,000,000 per month.

A million playbacks a month!

That clearly places eValid where we want it to be: the de facto industry standard for reliable, powerful, accurate and realistic "last mile" monitoring of all manner of web applications.

Earlier Activity Summary