FAQ

Does Rainforest allow customers to test on actual devices?

Rainforest uses virtual machines to provide a test environment that is stable and robust. You can choose from a variety of platforms and browsers. Moreover, mobile device support includes simulators for Apple and Android devices. For more information, see Supported Web Browsers and Mobile Device Specs.

Can I test audio capability?

Not at this time.

For crowd testing, can I choose where testers come from?

Our system is optimized to provide testers fast without consideration to their location. And rest assured, our testers are a Rainforest proprietary crowd, managed by a dedicated community team. The majority have been with Rainforest for 5 years. For more information, see Testing with the Tester Community.

Can I use Rainforest Automation to test mobile applications?

Not at this time. For these kinds of tests, we recommend our Tester Community.

Does Rainforest Automation support cross-browser testing?

For running tests across multiple browsers at a time, we recommend using our Tester Community.

We don’t recommend running automated tests on more than one browser at a time. Here’s why:

An automated Rainforest test looks for an exact match of each action screenshot. When an exact match can’t be found, the test will fail. Since every browser renders the look and layout of a web page slightly differently, an automated Rainforest test will work best on the browser on which it was created. Running the test on other browsers increases the chance of “false positive” failures.

When writing a test for Automation, do I have to keep running the test to see if it worked?

That’s what the Preview feature is for. With the Visual Editor, you can execute one or more steps by selecting them. Using Preview makes test writing easy.

I don’t want to create lots of test data. Can I make the data reusable?

You can. But keep in mind that marking dynamic data as reusable can significantly impact your test result time. Let’s say you have two rows of login data and three testers. The third tester cannot proceed until one of the other testers has finished. For more information, see Reusable Dynamic Data.

When I capture screenshots in the Visual Editor, does Rainforest Automation look at the underlying HTML? Should I be concerned about where an element is on the screen?

Visual Editor operates on a visual level—just like humans. Users interact with the UI, not the Document Object Model (DOM). Just make sure to capture enough of the element to make it identifiable. For more information, see this Best Practices article.

I am looking to test my companies web extension on 3rd party sites, but the websites aren't loading on any Rainforest QA virtual machines. What can I do?

We don't have a way to stop 3rd party sites from blocking us, and for many consumer focused sites it's likely we could get blocked because all of our IPs are "commercial" (versus residential), and that information is easy to discover (Because our IPs are things like AWS, DigitalOcean, or GCP). Depending on what you need to test, you may be able to host some fake/sample retail site that you control, and use that for a bunch of your regular test flows (e.g. making sure the extension pops up correctly, that settings/preferences work, or some other basic interactions that don't actually depend on the actual page content).

Can I enter custom environment variable to disable the v3 captcha?

Yes, to test a login you can set a local env variable to true : localStorage.setItem('dev-email-auth', true). This can be done in two ways:

• Add a Navigate command with localStorage.setItem('dev-email-auth', true) as the URL.
  or
• Press key F12 (to open devtools), then click console, then enter in the command, then press key enter, and then press F12 to close devtools.

If you have any questions, reach out to us at [email protected].