First on this list is Playwright with JavaScript by Ixchel Meza. Playwright is a hot, new web testing framework from Microsoft. It’s a modern framework with automatic waiting, built-in tracing, and cross-browser support. Plus, it’s fast – really, really fast for UI testing! It’s quickly gaining industry traction. In this course, Ixchel teaches you how to get a Playwright project up and running in JavaScript. The distinction of saying “in JavaScript” is important because Playwright also supports Java, C#, and Python.

Next up is one of my personal favorites: Intro to Testing Machine Learning Models by Carlos Kidman. Machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), “algorithms” – whatever you call it – is indispensable to software products today. Just like every business plan in 1999 needed a website, every new app these days seems to have an ML component. But how do we test ML models when they seem so opaque and, at times, questionable? In this course, Carlos breaks down where testers fit in this brave new world of ML and all the techniques for properly testing models.

UI Automation with WebdriverIO v7 by Julia Pottinger is actually a special course: it’s the first course that we “refreshed” for TAU. Julia’s original course covered a now-older version of WebdriverIO, so she developed a new edition to keep up with the project. WebdriverIO is a Node.js-based browser automation tool that can use either the WebDriver Protocol or the Chrome DevTools protocol. Alongside Selenium WebDriver, Cypress, and Playwright, it’s one of the most popular web testing tools available! Julia covers all the ins and outs of WebDriverIO v7 in this course.

Visual testing is indispensable for testing any app with a user interface (UI) these days – which is basically every app. In The Basics of Visual Testing, Matt Jasaitis teaches how to incorporate visual testing techniques as part of a well-balanced test automation strategy. You’ll build a Selenium Java project together with Applitools Eyes chapter by chapter, learning the best practices for visual testing along the way. Visual testing will help you catch all sorts of bugs like overlapping text, missing elements, and skewed layouts that traditional automation struggles to find.

“Observability” means the ability to understand what is happening in a software system based on telemetry being reported in real time. Just like any other software system, test automation and build pipelines have telemetry worth analyzing for improvements. In her course Introduction to Observability for Test Automation, Abby Bangser teaches how to expose metrics, logs, traces, and events of an automated test suite written in Java running through GitHub Actions. She provides excellent guidance on what is worth capturing and how to capture it.

A blockchain is a distributed ledger that links records or “blocks” together in sequence using cryptographic signatures. One of the most popular blockchain applications is cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Blockchains also serve as a cornerstone for web3 and web5. Although blockchain technologies are controversial due to environmental concerns from high energy consumption and due to perceived scams around cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), they are nevertheless ingrained in our tech landscape. In Introduction to Blockchain Testing, Rafaela Azevedo shows you how to get your hands dirty with blockchains by setting up an Ethereum blockchain on your local machine, writing your first contract with Solidity, and finally testing your contract.

The final course to round off this list is Testing from the Inside: Unit Testing Edition by Tariq King. Unit testing is such a vital part of software development. It’s one of the first lines of defense in catching bugs in code. In this course, Tariq takes a unique approach to unit testing: thinking “inside the box” of the software product under test to explore the actual code and its data. Tariq covers foundational principles as well as practical techniques like parameterizing, mocking, and spying.

Like I said before, Test Automation University offers dozens of courses from the world’s best instructors, and we add new courses all the time! These are just seven out of many excellent courses. Be sure to peruse our catalog and try some courses that interest you!