Since the mid ‘90s, test automation has grown from a handful of crude macro-recording tools and custom-built one-off applications to a suite of high-priced, high-powered frameworks. While the frameworks tend to perform as advertised, the pricing typically leaves small software shops out in the cold and mid-size test teams struggling to justify the budget. The framework itself can also have some limitations imposed by the limited flexibility of the scripting language behind it.

In the last few years, the open source movement has produced a series of tools that the enterprising tester can combine into a free framework with all the power and flexibility of full-fledged programming languages. One combination that I’ve used to test various Web-based applications consists of nUnit and WatiN.

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