Professional Silverlight® 4

Appendix B. Testing Silverlight Applications

As software applications become more sophisticated and increasingly part of our daily lives, they are also becoming more complex. It therefore becomes all that more important that we focus on the quality of the software we produce. Fantastic progress has been made in both the development processes and development tools we use to create software, including advances in how we think about quality and testing as we develop applications. Processes like unit testing ingrain testing and quality into a developer's daily life.

A variety of testing platforms are currently available for Silverlight, each with its own pros and cons, but remember that in general, anything that helps you test is good. Some testing tools focus exclusively on unit testing, and others focus on UI automation, though as you may find out when evaluating these tools, the lines between the different types of testing are not always clear. This appendix looks at three different testing tools that can help you unit test your application and create recorded UI automation tests.

Because software testing is an enormous topic all on its own, this appendix is not intended to be a guide on how you should test your software. Nor is this appendix intended to cover every commercial and free testing tool available. Instead, it reviews a selection of popular tools that you can use to help test your applications. The good news is that even though Silverlight is a relatively new platform, a ...