Evil Tester

I have just released a beta version of my ‘Automated Web Testing with Selenium & Java’ tutorial over on my ‘other’ site.

At the moment “Selenium Simplified” has 210, A4 formatted, pages presented as a pdf ebook.

I haven’t quite finished it yet, but it seems ‘good enough’ to get someone started on their journey to test automation splendidness.

I have gone down the ‘self-publishing’ route, as others have recently done before me:

• The Tester’s Pocketbook
• Bridging the Communication Gap
• Test Driven .Net Development with FitNesse: Second Edition

This has the benefit, that I have complete freedom in how I release, edit and market the text.

So I have started with a 69 page preview, downloadable for free (yes, almost 1/3 of the book for free).

I will probably ‘serialise’ it, on either this site, or over on compendiumdev.co.uk. I think the serialisation will have text (from the beta) but none of the images, so would suit a more technically advanced tester, but not the beginner that I have targeted the tutorial at.

I don’t yet know when I’ll start the serialisation, as the completion of the book will keep me busy for a while yet.

So, if you always wanted to learn how to do web automation, but couldn’t get your head around the online tutorials or the official documentation. And if you didn’t want to spend too much money on a training course, then “Selenium Simplified” might help.

I wasn’t planning on making it public quite so soon, but when an offer from Google, for a whopping £75 worth of free Google Adwords, came through the post. The cheapskate in me pushed the publishing deadlines forward, and since beta books, or early access books, seem to have formed part of the standard publishing process these days, I thought I’d just try and keep up with the joneses.