Automated web application testing is done very rarely & it is generally thought as an unnecessary + hard to setup system.

Truth is, automated testing is a must, because it saves so much time during development & when the project is live. Also, with the right tools, it is generally very easy to setup.

Using testing tools, once the scenarios are created, you can:

• test every feature of the whole application with a click
• get written reports instantly with the error logs
• measure the capacity of your web application on every step
• get a continiously-watched, less-problematic web application as the result

There are 2 important web application tests to measure if everything is working (and will work) on your website:

• Functionality testing: using record-playbacks or scripting, a tool can browse your website, fill forms, click on the links you want & generate a report for you
• Load/stress testing: even if a web application is working ok with 1 or 10 users, it can show totally different attitudes (like bottlenecks in resource usage) when there are 100 or 1000 active users.

So, here is a collection of 15 Free Functionality And Load Testing Solutions For Web Applications to create better online experiences:

Functionality Testing

SeleniumHQ

Selenium has various projects that can be combined with each other to create a robust testing environment.

• Selenium IDE: a Firefox add-on to record and playback tests in Firefox.
• Selenium Remote Control: a client/server system to control web browsers locally or on other computers, using almost any programming language and testing framework.
• Selenium Grid: like Selenium Remote Control but runs tests on many servers at the same time.
• Selenium Core: Javascript-based testing system.

Also there are Selenium projects specifically for Rails, Ruby & Eclipse.

Watir

Watir is a set of Ruby libraries which drives browsers just like people. It clicks links, fills in forms, presses buttons. And, it also checks results to report back.

Watir supports:

• IE, Firefox, Chrome on Windows
• Firefox on Mac and Linux
• Safari on Mac
• Flash testing with Firefox

There is also Watij, which is an enhanced version of Watir with Java.

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Mozilla Prism (previously known as WebRunner) is an application that enables users to run web applications directly on their desktop. And, for developers, offers ways to make them act like desktop applications.

It is a very easy-to-use tool that simply asks you which URL to wrap, whether to sit on the system-tray and creates a shortcut for the new application. Once clicked, the URL mentioned runs in a desktop application.

With the help of a scripting support, developers can add events to their web applications to trigger actions like displaying system-tray notifications or popups.

It allows you to style (overwrite the default styles) the web application via CSS.

Prism also offers more customization options like enabling you to choose the icon for the application to be created, whether the navigation bar or navigation keys will be displayed & more.

It comes in two flavors:

• as a Firefox extension
• as a desktop application

Prism can run both on Windows & Mac OS X.

Onebit is a free icon set that is created by Icojoy.

The set is suitable to be used in web applications as it contains the most used icons like arrows, add-delete-cancel-ok, save, users & more.

It contains 50 icons in PNG format with 48*48px sizes.

Pattern8 is a website that presents beautiful & free repeating patterns.

A nice feature is the ability of sorting patterns by color that helps finding a pattern that will fit the overall of the design.

There are currently 90+ patterns & new ones are added frequently.

P.S. Pattern8 is a fork of PatternHead, a website that offers free vector and pixel patterns but with a wider content. It is also a place to find vector formats of the most patterns in Pattern8.

Supersized is a jQuery plugin that resizes images/backgrounds to fit the whole screen & display them as a slideshow.

No extra whitespace or scrollbars occur as the entire browser window is always filled.

The plugin preloads the images and offers various transition effects for presenting them.

An optional prev-next-pause control makes navigating easier & with the help of options provided, Supersize can be easily customized.

Free Premium Fonts is a website presenting 1000s of free fonts for download.

Fonts are very well-grouped into categories like futuristic, handwritten, 3D & more.

Once you view the details of a font, you can customize the text to have a better opinion about how it will look on your project.

Also, a magnifier helps you to zoom every letter & a "Top 50" list helps seeing what are the most downloaded fonts.

For every designer, Free Premium Fonts is a must-bookmark for reaching to a huge library of free fonts.

jPlayer is a jQuery plugin for playing and controlling mp3 files in a webpage.

It uses a Flash file at the backstage to play the files & the player can be totally customized via XHML/CSS.

The plugin offers functions like:

• selecting the Mp3 file to be played
• play, pause, stop
• volume control
• getting the progress & more.

Thee are various demos presented like a single-file player, a playlist player or a text-based player with progress bar. To check them all, click here.

XML Flash Voting Poll is a free component for creating nice looking Flash-based polls.

It is built with AS3 & supports one active poll with an unlimited number of answers.

Many variables can be controlled in the XML files like:

• the question’s height, text, color, size
• background colors used
• distances between items
• messages displayed after voting & more

The download package includes images (.AI & .PDF) & fonts used.

P.S. Free membership is required for downloading the component.

For membership-oriented websites, registration forms are one of the most important parts. A problematic experience, even if the sign-up is completed, will place a "question mark" to the visitor or vice-versa.

And, it is also the first step where you can show that you care about the security of the website & all the data collected.

Although you can control/improve the security of the website, it is sometimes the weak passwords used that may have unwanted consequences.

Guiding users to have a strong password with the help of password strength meters, besides being an easy process, will help improving the security of the whole & show that the website pays attention to it.

Here are 10 password strength meter scripts for a better registration interface:

PasswordMeter

PasswordMeter is a JavaScript function that checks the strengths of passwords with a well-defined algorithm.

And, the website of the resource nicely displays how the strength is calculated.

Ultimate Password Strength Meter

This password strength meter is an improved version of this script. It that has a graphical interface (uses Prototype & Script.aculo.us) that shows the strength of the input.

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When sharing codes on a website, even they are wrapped with code tags or styled differently, it is always a challenge to read them without syntax highlighting.

There are various syntax highlighters which can format the codes & color them appropriately according to the languages used. Whether it is a HTML page or runs on PHP, Ruby, Python, ASP, there is a suitable syntax highlighter.

And, here is a collection of 11 Syntax Highlighters To Beautify Code Presentation:

GeSHi (Generic Syntax Highlighter – With PHP)

GeSHi is a powerful syntax highlighter script that supports almost every language.

It is first created for phpBB forum system but became a project itself. It requires PHP to run (there is also a hack to make it work under ASP).

SyntaxHighlighter (With JS)

This is a flexible & extensible syntax highlighter built with JavaScript. It supports a wide range of languages from CSS to PHP or C++ to SQL.

SyntaxHighlighter offers ready-to-use themes an new ones can be created easily for a custom presentation.

It has support for 3rd party applications like Blogger, WordPress, Joomla & many others.

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