A new and significantly improved version of Testdroid Recorder is out and this time our development team has really really delivered good stuff – and plenty of it! Here are the new features and improvements in Testdroid Recorder:

ScaleClicks

First and maybe the most important new feature in Testdroid Recorder is ScaleClicks. With ScaleClicks your xy clicks (clicks on certain coordinates on the screen instead of clicks on certain button or text field etc) become truly scalable across all resolutions! That’s right – even if you have xy scrolls and clicks in your recording, the new Testdroid Recorder stores them in a way that they can be re-scaled when the tests are run. This means that even if you make your recording on one resolution, you can run your tests on a totally different resolution and all clicks that are using coordinates work – this is ground breaking! You can check out the power of  ScaleClicks just by recording your tests and then running them on all devices at Testdroid Cloud, it is just amazing

Resolving R.ids when recording tests from APK

Testdroid Recorder can now resolve the resource id’s for UI elements even when you are recording your tests without having the application source code available. When you record your tests from APK you now get the same robust Robotium code using refences to r.ids whenever they are resolvable. This together with oher improvements in this release will take your Robotium tests to a higher level in terms of robustness and scalability across different Android devices.

Clicks on hardware keys are now recognized

The new version of Testdroid Recorder recognizes also all clicks to hardware keys as well as to all soft keys.

Improvements on recording text field inputs

Now the text input to any text field is identified right after the focus moves away from the text field. This enables much more accurate capturing of entered texts. Also text inputs are now recorded with correct indexes.

Recognizing all inherited UI widgets

Testdroid Recorder can now recognize even all custom UI widgets as long as they are inherited from some standard Android UI widget – again a huge improvent that allows very versatile use of Testdroid Recorder.

Faster recording

We have optimized the recording event so that the Recorder and the application under recording are more responsive and the whole Recording is much smoother.

Bug fixes

On this release we fixed a good amount of clear bugs, some of which were reported by our loyal users – Thank you very much for those ‘improvement suggestions’! The highlights of fixed bugs include:

Testdroid Cloud is a fully automated online service for testing Android appications on real Android devices. It is the best way for anyone to ensure that their application runs on as many Android devices as possible and it is open for all Android developers. Please sign up at http://cloud.testdroid.com for a test drive.

]]> http://testdroid.com/tech/701/android-design/feed 0 http://testdroid.com/tech/695/out-of-memory-exception-when-change-activity-or-create-bitmap-object-in-android http://testdroid.com/tech/695/out-of-memory-exception-when-change-activity-or-create-bitmap-object-in-android#comments Mon, 09 Jan 2012 20:44:02 +0000 Krystian Kamiński http://testdroid.com/?p=695 One of the most common causes of fragmentation is limited hardware specs, whether it’s small RAM, slow processor or low resolution screen, they all create a challenging environment for Android application developers aiming for ultimate device compatibility. A lot of Android developers face memory issues on low costs devices and this is how it usually goes: You created a bitmap and your application throws an OutOfMemory exception but there is still a lot of free memory and you are left wondering: What is the source of problem? How to limit this? Let me explain.

Android has two kinds of stacks – one for application and one for graphics. In an activity method setContentView(int i) Android inflates XML layout and initializes all objects. In this part of code every graphics object is located in a memory. This same situation happens when your application creates a Bitmap object. Android creates object in the graphics stack and sends reference to it and sometimes, for one reason or another,  you will receive an OutOfMemory exception.

I discovered this problem when I was testing my application with our product – Testroid Cloud ( Online cloud of real Android devices for running automated tests for Android applications).

When I was running my automated tests on all Android devices, I was constantly getting OOM exceptions on same devices – mostly  on low spec ones. It was very strange because when I started debugging, I found out that there was still free memory left but my application just could not access it. I tried to search for a solution but all tracks pointed to a comment from a Google staff: “Your application uses too much graphics and you don’t manage your memory”. It was a strange answer because Java has garbage collector and, because of that,  I thought I don’t have to delete objects manually.

On the behalf of everyone here at Bitbar, allow me to thank each of you for  participating in the Testdroid story this past year—and take a moment to share some of the highlights.

2011 Highlights

• Testdroid Cloud service with real Android devices was launched about 6 weeks ago and our user base has grown dramatically.
• In only 6 weeks we passed the 20,000 completed tests mark on Testdroid Cloud.
• We also saw over 1,000 different customers using our products, including most of the leading technology companies and start-ups around the world.
• We have rapidly increased the number of Android devices in our device cloud and are adding new devices every day.
• Our current range of devices cover over 90% of the Android user base.

One of reasons for running a beta is to gather feedback from users to make the service more fit for purpose for real users. This is what we have done and we will continue to do this in the future as well. The features added during the beta include:

Screenshot baseline:
The screenshot feature of Testdroid Cloud seems to be one of the most popular ones. It is true that it is quite amazing to see your app exactly how it looks on each real Android device – pixel to pixel. Based on a user recommendation the screenshot view is now even better with Screenshot Baseline feature. Now for every screenshot on every device you can mark a screenshot to be a baseline (i.e. this screenshot looks exactly as it should) and then every time you run your tests the new screenshots will be compared to your baseline screenshot and if they are not exactly the same you will be notified. To make things even better, this feature can show you exactly how the screenshots differ from each other!

Running a specified subset of tests:
Sometimes you may may want run only certain subset of your tests or you want to run your tests in a specific order. With Testdroid Cloud you can now specify exactly which test classes or test packages will be run and you can even specify the execution order by using a comma between the test class or test package names. This feature was also suggested by an active Testdroid Cloud beta user and now everyone can benefit from it.

Recording timeline:
Recording timeline feature is actually an improvement in Testdroid Recorder but Testdroid Cloud users reap the most benefit out of this feature request. Now Testdroid Recorder has an option to capture the time between user actions during recording and then repeat the same user actions with exactly same time intervals during the playback. This feature is very useful for instance when your application accesses a web service to retrieve some data or does some other time consuming processing before the the user can continue. Especially when you are running the same test on very different kinds devices with wildly different performance this feature makes sure that the user inputs in tests are not entered too early.

How do we do all this?
A lot of people are asking how we are able to automatically control all these devices and what is the exact setup. Here are some answers: Yes, all the devices are real physical Android devices connected to clusters of Testdroid Servers. Before every test run Testdroid Server uninstalls all non system applications, formats the SD-card and reboots each phone. All this is done to ensure that each phone has a consistent starting state and to ensure that there are no data or processes running from previous test. Then when the test execution starts, Testdroid Server installs the application under test and starts executing the tests. (This in done in parallel in asynchronus way to optimise the capacity of Testdroid Cloud) Once tests are finished Testdroid Server copies the results from each phone and publishes them on Testdroid cloud. Below is a screenshot of the device management view of Testdroid Server to show how easy it is to manage tens of Android devices in one server.

And last but not least this is how our device racks look like. The sound of all these phones rebooting at the same time is amazing

Pricing
Some users have been asking about the pricing of Testdroid Cloud and we can tell you at this point that there will be always some free user level and some features and higher test execution priority will cost something. We are currently working on the pricing model but we want to take our time to ensure it will be fair and that there will be options for developers of all shapes and sizes. If you like what you see on Testdroid Cloud but would prefer to run your tests on your own phones you can contact sales (at) bitbar.com for more details.

The new version of Recorder observes not only your actions but the intervals between them. It places sleep() between test commands, so they will be executed with the pace they were recorded. It prevents tests from failing due to too fast execution. Please note that when you are pausing the recording, the time spent in pause is not taken into delay interval.

However, if the situation is different – test is Wile E. Coyote and your application is a Road Runner – the timeline recording can be turned off. Go to Eclipse->Window->Preferences->Testdroid->Robotium and tick off checkbox Preserve intervals between actions.

Have fun with the new Recorder!

Testdroid Recorder has truly cemented its place in Android testing tools market and we can safely say that Testdroid is the most comprehensive Android testing solution around. However, we at Bitbar don’t stop here as our goal is to even accelerate our rate of innovation and improve the end to end solution even further.

Since our first release we have received great feedback from you. We have heard many cheerful words. You have been pointing out some annoyances too. Thank you for all comments, they help us to maintain the lead on Android testing solutions for your benefit!

On this release we have been focusing on functionality that helps us to improve Testdroid Recorder even further. We are making it as easy as possible for you to notify us about any irregularities you might encounter during Recorder usage.

That is why in this release we have introduced an issue reporting feature. If anything unexpected happens during recording, you will be able to send us a report with just one click. It will help us to provide you more accurate and faster support for the benefit of even better Testdroid Recorder. Hopefully, this will be the most rarely used feature in Testdroid Recorder!

AnDevCon is focused 100% on the hot and exciting world of Android apps. In the AnDevCon exhibit hall, you’ll learn about the best tools, services and resources for Android developers and marketers. It is application developer focused with dedicated tracks for developers (Developer Essentials), for enterprise (Android Enterprise), for entrepreneurs (Android Business) as well as own tracks for Tablets (Android Tablets and beyond) and Embedded Andriod.

The conference itself is at the heart of innovation, in San Francisco. Developer workshops start on Sunday 6th and the conference itself on Monday 7th. The event finishes on Wednesday 9th.
Bitbar will be exhibiting our automated application testing solution at Booth 405. Come to see how easy it is to generate test cases for your app with our Recorder and then run the tests automatically, check compatibility, lay-out issues and performance on Android devices on hosted Testdroid Cloud. Or if you are an enterprise with larger teams and own devices, you can set-up your own device cloud with Testdroid Server and do the tests continuously after every release or even after every commit!

Please join the entire world of Android in San Francisco, come to see us and talk to our nice team! See you there