All about Playwright

JS Party: JavaScript, CSS, Web Development

Debbie O’Brien –Senior Program Manager at Microsoft– joins Amal & Nick for a deep-dive on Playwright, an automation library for cross-browser end-to-end testing. Along the way, we learn why Microsoft decided to fork Puppeteer, Playwright’s unique value proposition, cool features like auto-waiting & the trace viewer, how it compares to Cypress & a lot more.

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Sponsors:

• Square – Develop on the platform that sellers trust. There is a massive opportunity for developers to support Square sellers by building apps for today’s business needs. Learn more at changelog.com/square to dive into the docs, APIs, SDKs and to create your Square Developer account — tell them Changelog sent you.
• Sentry – Working code means happy customers. That’s exactly why teams choose Sentry. From error tracking to performance monitoring, Sentry helps teams see what actually matters, resolve problems quicker, and learn continuously about their applications - from the frontend to the backend. Use the code CHANGELOG and get the team plan free for three months.
• Ship It! – A podcast about getting your best ideas into the world and seeing what happens. Listen to an episode that interests you and subscribe today.

Featuring:

• Debbie O'Brien – Website, GitHub, X
• Amal Hussein – GitHub, X
• Nick Nisi – Website, GitHub, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

Shout out to Caio Amaral for requesting this episode. You, too, can request an episode!

• Mallorca
• playwright.dev
• Playwright on GitHub
• Nuxt
• puppeteer
• Selenium
• Playwright test for VSCode
• Getting started - VS Code
• Testing Library
• Playwright on YouTube
• What’s new in Playwright 1.27
• Test Generator
• CI GitHub Actions

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Chapter

1. Opener (00:00:00)

2. Sponsor: Square (00:00:19)

https://changelog.com/square

3. It's party time, y'all! (00:01:12)

https://changelog.social

4. Welcome Debbie! (00:02:02)

5. Getting to know Debbie (00:03:03)

6. Where is Mallorca? (00:03:34)

7. Life before Microsoft (00:04:02)

8. Playwright is like the Beatles... (00:05:18)

9. What is Playright? (00:06:09)

https://playwright.dev

10. The origin of the name "Playwright" (00:08:35)

11. Why fork Puppeteer? (00:09:43)

12. Playwright's value proposition (00:11:29)

13. Test isolation is the answer (00:14:24)

14. Don't sleep on auto-waiting (00:16:14)

15. No Selenium legacy here (00:17:24)

16. Sponsor: Sentry (00:19:21)

https://sentry.io/demo/sandbox/

17. More on multi-browser support (00:20:13)

18. Please explain this black magic! (00:23:57)

19. What about older browsers? (00:24:54)

20. Debugging straight from the browser (00:26:45)

21. "Nick's Playwright Infomercial" (00:28:38)

22. On Playwright's release videos (00:31:09)

23. The VS Code extension (00:34:26)

https://playwright.dev/docs/getting-started-vscode

24. Talkin' 'bout code generation (00:34:54)

25. Nick's beloved TypeScript (00:39:07)

26. Sponsor: Ship It! (00:39:56)

https://shipit.show

27. The Trace Viewer (00:41:25)

28. Recommended CI practices (00:48:22)

29. Playwright vs Cypress (00:49:43)

30. How to get involved (00:58:02)

31. Debbie's Playwright magic wand (00:59:32)

32. Wrapping up (01:00:24)

33. Outro (01:00:48)