The Web Testing Companion: The Insider's Guide to Efficient and Effective Tests [Paperback]

Another point in this book's favor is that it is basic enough and structured to make it an ideal text for a course on web testing. The author did an excellent job of describing good practices in web testing and covering the basics. She also provides a good deal of sage advice on careen matters, which a more technical book will overlook.

I found the chapters on server-side testing accurate and clear enough for new test professionals to completely follow. The chapters on performance and security testing were reasonably complete, and the chapters on client side were as well and clearly written. I also like the author's objectivity - she works for Microsoft, but did not emphasize that company's technologies or processes over standard industry practices.

As a supplement to a more technical book, such as the one I cited above, or as a text in a basic web testing course this book shines. It is not the definitive reference, but is worth reading if for no other reason than to have the appendices nearby as a ready reference during test cycles.

Okay, enough with the background. Things this book does effectively; begins to get you thinking about security testcases (via malformed CGI/http requests, extended-char inputs, etc), but also covers a great deal broadly on automation, performance, static/dynamic HTML, and a few scattered topics such as form controls. She does seem to go overboard on character sets (both in security sections and in testing sections), though perhaps my experience in the 'real-world' at my company hasn't touched on this enough, I don't know. She does great on helping you formulate the browser matrixes, with all their resolution types, and she even differentiates between screen resolution and what she calls 'canvas size' (I refer to this as the viewport, but they're identical). This book is a fabulous introduction to the metholodies, and what a beginner or intermediate tester would expect to find in the real world. Bug cycles, templates, project cycles, roles, best practices, scheduling, bug severities and the like are all described in sufficient detail.

Now for the single disappointment. I was disappointed with her Test Planning and Design chapter, which is shy of 20 pages. This may or may not sound comprehensive enough, but to me it was terribly under-developed. She does break this chapter down and describe the different kinds of testcases/plans, but doesn't really show any templates, which I was expecting. To be fair, this is probably the hardest to encapsulate in a book, as each company (sometimes even each team) formats their test documentation differently (some to ISO standards, some in Word format, some in HTML, some in Excel spreadsheets, even).

Buy it for an excellent introduction to the subject, a good reference for HTTP error codes, characters sets, best practices, but for advanced security/performance/automation, I'd probably buy a book that specifices in those topics.