Dear Testdroiders,

Appium has quickly become one of the most prominent test automation framework for mobile app, game and web testing. To celebrate this great framework going forward, people developing it further (yes, we highly appreciate the great work this ecosystem of talented and dedicated engineers are doing!) and people adopting it with a growing pace, we’d like to share our knowledge, some best practices as well as bunch of tips and tricks how you can really take all out of it. So…

We’re glad to announce a blog series that will run the next 8 months including 37 unique blogs, sharing a lots of great and relevant information for all expertise levels of Appium users – from newbies/beginners to tech-savvy test automation folks that already use it. Stick with us – it’ll be surely an awesome ride!

What is Appium – and Why Should You Care?

As defined at Appium.io, Appium is an open-source tool/framework for automating native, mobile web, and hybrid applications on Android and iOS platforms. It works well on native apps – the ones that are written using the iOS or Android SDKs, mobile web apps that are accessed using a mobile browser as well as hybrid apps that are utilizing webview and are wrapped inside your app. For example, Appium is also very popular among mobile game developers who typically use some advanced techniques for testing input-driven mobile games even running on two different platforms at the same time and by the same script. Sounds good? More to come…

What Will Be Included?

We’ll try to offer the fresh look at this framework. There are many different blogs out there that focus on Appium and provide tips and tricks for variety of topics. In this blog series, we’ve divided topics – and tips and tricks for those – based on some clear and related topics, such as how to setup and configure Appium, what things you should consider for different platforms, how to use real devices and browsers efficiently in the process, what complementary tools to consider, and many other topics. We also define what different concepts are, what those include and what will (most likely) work your app the best.

Meanwhile, we’ve provided some insight to Appium, different flavour of it and how to efficiently run tests on real devices and browsers – take a look! Also, here is one great webinar to get yourself tuned for Appium goodness:

The Schedule and Content

Ok, here is the preliminary schedule and list of content for each blog:

30 September – How to Get Started, Setup and Run Your First Tests
2 October – Using Python to Configure and Upload Your Apps and Tests in Cloud
5 October – Java Integration with Real Devices on Cloud Service
7 October – Mastering C# for Your Tests, Setup and Some Basics
12 October – Ready to Rumble with Ruby
19 October – Tips and Tricks Using JavaScript (and some other languages)
26 October – How to Master Appium from Command Line
2 November – How to Take Screenshot on Failure
9 November – How to Automatically Dismiss Dialogs and Autoaccept Alerts
16 November – Catch Errors with Try-Catch Block to Avoid
23 November – BONUS!
30 November – AppiumBroker: New Capability for Specifying Test Timeouts
7 December – Appium Inspector and Additional Tools
14 December – Tips and Tricks to Generate Appium Scripts
21 December – The Best Kept Secrets – Commands/Calls
28 December – Appium Calls – findelement #1
4 January – Appium Calls – findelement #2
11 January – xpath for Elements
18 January – Element Commands #1
25 January – Element Commands #2
1 February – Desired Capabilities
8 February – BONUS!
15 February – Get Rid of Desired Capabilities
22 February – Client vs. Server-Side Appium
29 February – How to Automatically Retry Failed Tests
7 March – How to Test Websites on Safari
14 March – Appium Makes These Components Obsolete
21 March – Appium and API to Real Devices
28 March – Web: Real iOS Devices and Safari
4 April – Web: Chrome and Android Devices
11 April – Web: Other Browsers
18 April – Best Practices for Non-Native Apps
25 April – Image Recognition with Appium – How To Setup
2 May – Image Recognition with Appium – Assets, Tests, Scripts
9 May – Image Recognition and Best Practices for Appium
16 May – Network Infrastructure and How to Improve It
23 May – BONUS!

Interested in Specific Topic or Want Answers to Some Appium Problem?

We’re happy to hear your thoughts on our blogs, how they could serve you even better and what sort of information you’re specifically looking for. Naturally the above highlighted topics are preliminary and if you are interested in some other – but important – topic, please let us know and weigh in a comment below.

Let’s get this blog series started!