Awesome Online Resources for Software Testing
I spend my working time testing web applications (web sites). If you do the same, you may find useful the online resources for software testing in this article. You can also check out my article for great browser extensions.
Virtual Machines
I sometimes need a virtual machine for reproducing a specific bug. Microsoft offers ready to download virtual machines. Your internet should be fast enough, because the biggest file I have downloaded from this URL was around 5 GB. I use VirtualBox for running the virtual machine image, after I have downloaded it. For Unix/Linux you can check the website http://www.osboxes.org. There are images for both VirtualBox and VMWare. You will need to read the FAQ article for the default user credentials.
Random Data Generation
An example for online site for test data generation is https://www.generatedata.com/. I like that there are predefined test data fields, including names, cities, credit card numbers. You can also download the data easily as Excel file.
You can generate lorem ipsum or human readable text at http://www.blindtextgenerator.com/lorem-ipsum.
Random strings generator is available on https://www.random.org/strings.
When you need random picture, you can take it from https://unsplash.it.
You can also get placeholder images with width and height, specified by you, on https://placeholder.com.
Text Operations
Simple text checker for differences is present on https://www.diffchecker.com/. I like the way it highlights the differences. Do not use it for sensitive information.
You can encode and decode URLs on https://www.urldecoder.org/.
If you need to quickly generate C# classes from JSON string, you could do it on http://json2csharp.com/.
https://codebeautify.org has the most exhaustive collection of text manipulation tools I have seen. I mostly use the JSON code formatter.
https://www.freeformatter.com has also many online formatters, validators and converters.
Validators
HTML validator is available on https://validator.w3.org. You can use direct input for not publicly accessible pages. View page source, copy it, and then choose direct input and paste it. If you make too many requests, your IP could be temporarily blocked. I use it for additional verification for more important pages. For example, it is useful for finding not properly closed HTML tags.
Feed validator could be accessed on https://validator.w3.org/feed.
Structured data JSON LD validators
Structured data is getting more and more important.
https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool is my favorite tool for testing structured data, but there are two more:
http://linter.structured-data.org
https://webmaster.yandex.com/tools/microtest
Speed
Google page speed insights service can show a score from 0 to 100, that ranks your website, both for desktop and mobile.
GTmetrix displays page speed, YSlow score, fully loaded time, page size, number of request and performance details.
Webpagetest allow you to select location and browser for testing. Has some nice visual reports and resources.
Pingdom offers free speed check with performance details.
Quick page speed and mobile friendliness test is offered on https://testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com.
Testing from other country (Proxy testing)
Before I start any proxy testing I first see my current IP address at https://whatismyipaddress.com or https://whoer.net. I check also my changed IP, after I use the proxy, so that I am sure I am testing IP in the correct country.
I like https://whoer.net/webproxy because of the predefined countries drop-down.
Mobile testing
Check out this excellent Appium based framework for testing Android and iOS native mobile apps. It is written by our great NativeScript colleagues.
Wonder what are the dimensions of the current device you test with? You can check it on http://viewportsizes.com/mine/.
You can check the version of your browser here.
Cheats
You are curious what technologies are used to build a website? You can see them on https://builtwith.com.
Do you need a short-lived email? Get a temporary email address at https://10minutemail.com.
You could check the web archive of page that is interesting for you. Real time travel machine.
Conferences
GTAC has Google Test Automation Conference resources for more than 10 years. There are many interesting videos.
Selenium Conf is one of the most famous, has useful videos too. Of course, the main topic is Selenium.
Jenkins World conference videos are available in YouTube, for 2017 check out this playlist.
Summary
I presented you my favorite online resources. What are yours? Why are they awesome? Feel free to comment.