What do you use to test your browser extension / BHO?

Question

What are the best approaches / tools to test browser extensions?

In my case I work on an IE Browser Helper Object (C#) which has a small UI of its own and a good deal of database interaction. Up till now we've used automated unit tests for testing our model/business objects but manual testing for the UI/scenario testing. I'm thinking of starting to use Selenium for control of the browser, and then will need to add to it some other scripting to control and assert behaviour of my UI elements and check the database for correct results.

Any recommendations? What does anyone else in a similar situation do (whether developing BHOs or Firefox Extensions or whatever)?

Answer 1

We used to use Selenium, but then we switched over to Webius SWExplorerAutomation (SWEA).

A benefit of using Webius is that we can generate c#, wrap them in nunit tests, and compile the tests into .NET assemblies to integrate into our build scripts.

The downside is that they are specific to Internet Explorer, but it give us a good smoke test for our User Interface.

We are shifting to ASP.NET MVC which will enable us to test the controllers separately, but we will still need some tool to test the Views (although they will hopefully be very thin and dumb).

Answer 2

We decided to use WatiN as it was more lightweight than Selenium. We use this for IE and Firefox.