Blogging Pubbitch

For whatever reason, I'm having a hunt through the TestNG source code. It's got ".classpath" and ".project" files, which is generally an indicator that the project can be imported into eclipse. Sure enough, it can, but there's a missing variable that needs to be set up: TOOLS15_LIB should point to your JDK's "tools.jar" file.

I wonder how that works on OS X, where certainly the older JDK installations didn't have a "tools.jar" to point at.

"Once you're in the venue, it's all on one level. If you need help lifting in your budgie, there will be staff to help."

Excuse me? Help lifting my budgie?

I've promised not to say where I heard this. But I heard it. Honest.

There's something nice about finally returning home after a long time away. I'm not quite sure when I started looking forward to spending a night in my own bed, but after a week in Atlanta, the better part of a month in Sydney and a long weekend in Norfolk with only the most fleeting of temporary visits back, I can assure you that I'm looking forward to curling up somewhere familiar and comfortable. And just to make it clear, by "somewhere familiar and comfortable" I mean home.

Don't get me wrong, I've loved the traveling --- it's a wonderful opportunity to catch up with friends in foreign lands, and a chance to make new friends and acquaintances as I do challenging and rewarding work, but it's nice to be back.

Now, I wonder if the milk in the fridge is suitable for a nice, hot cup of tea....

Traditionally the correct way to do this sort of thing is to announce the event before it happens, but I'm just not that organised. Oh well.

Last Monday, I did a presentation about WebDriver at SyXPAC. Rather than my normal style of doing something reasonably well-rehearsed, I went for a more "off the cuff" approach, using the slides I had as a scaffold for a discussion about WebDriver and where it's going, as well as techniques for solving some common automated testing problems, the golden hammer syndrome and some of the crazy corners of browsers that you only find out when a seemingly simple bug takes you on a journey of discovery.

I hope that the SyXPACers enjoyed it; I know that I did! The participation from the group was fantastic, and it was a pleasure to deal with some of the more esoteric questions, particularly about the interaction of the OS and the browser.

How cool is this?

I must be late to the party, but Gears finally works on Firefox 3, which is a Good Thing considering that RC3 has just been released. Yay! On the downside, Google Reader isn't showing up properly when I access it offline. Oh well, I'm sure that it'll be fixed soon.

On a related note, I've had the opportunity to delve into the Gears codebase. There's some pretty cool stuff in there, and if it wasn't Open Source it wouldn't have been so easy to use it as a learning tool. It's a pretty hefty amount of code, which makes getting to grips with it a slightly intimidating experience, but it's organised well and once you've started it starts to make more sense.

I find myself wondering how easy it is to attract new developers to the project: I know that the number of languages used in WebDriver puts some potential contributers off, and we've got far less "mass" to deal with. I'm working on the theory that the modularisation of both projects helps make getting started easier, and once people are involved it becomes less daunting to tackle the areas that seemed too hard to even look at.

I'd like to announce that we've made some new binaries of WebDriver available. What does this cornucopia of goodness bring you?

• "Zero install". Just drop the JARs into your project to get going. No installing DLLs or setting up Firefox profiles is needed.
• DOM navigation: use a WebElement as the start of another search for elements
• Better IE support
• Faster XPath in IE
• Easy custom profile support in Firefox

That last feature may need a little explanation, so perhaps an example of how to create a new Firefox profile on the fly would help:

FirefoxProfile profile = new FirefoxProfile();
profile.addExtension(new File("/path/to/an.xpi"));
WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(profile);

I use this to install Firebug because it's sometimes useful to have it around when debugging. You can probably imagine a host of different extensions you'd like to use too.

The binaries are available from the Google Code site. If you'd like help getting to grips with them, the wiki may help and there's also a mailing list and group available: we're a friendly bunch, and new users are welcomed!

Who'd have thought it? Bananas kill warts.

Sometimes, I wonder if I should just devote this blog to something other than "mainly tech" :)

This is the reason why you want a code review of anything that goes into an Open Source project. Leif's comment towards the end seems well balanced and polite.

To whom it may concern,

I note with consternation that there appears to be widespread abuse of java.util.List and java.util.Set, and I believe it best to set the record straight forthwith.

The most important issue to bear in mind when choosing between the two aggrieved parties is whether duplicates are important. If they are, then I humbly concur that "List" is the correct choice. If, however, it is deemed that duplicates are not desirable, then "Set" would be a more apt choice.

Consider also whether the ordering of elements within the collection matters to you, and in particular whether insertion order is maintained. Lists typically maintain their elements in insertion order. Sets tend toward ordering the elements by their natural ordering, though as with the case of that red-headed step-child, the LinkedHashSet, this need not be the case.

Bearing these points in mind, it is with the greatest hope that I await the improvement of java.util.Set and java.util.List's situation.

Your humble servant,

Simon