At least two or three times a week I get a copy of the Globe and Mail to read on the train to work. One comic I often read when I get to that section is Fisher. It occurred to me that I would like to read all the archived strips that are available online on the train as well, however there is no internet access there. So I whipped up a quick script to download them all locally and put them into large yearly html. The script can be grabbed here.

But how does this relate to Quality? Easy. This script could be the basis for an automated testing suite for the Fisher website. If you had a directory that contained the strips that you *knew* were correct, all you would have to do is a diff from what you received from the server with what is on disk and VOILÀ! You can now make sure that at any point the right strips are being served. The point is of course, that automation is not hard. This script took me 3 or 4 hours total to write and debug. Were I to morph it into a proper testing script I would likely spend another 2 or 3 days on it, but by the end it would check all graphics (not just the comics), have better documentation inline, unit tests and some performance tuning and so long as the layout of the website did not change, it would never have to be touched again.

Now, to fully test this particular site through automation, you would have to do a bit of browser-control scripting (using WinRunner or SilkTest or similar) to actually push buttons to make sure they go where they are supposed to, but that too would be easy; a day tops by someone who knew the tool.

Just a short post today as I have 3.5 years of Fisher to read still, but enjoy the comic strip, and enjoy the script. If you do use the script (or some home-brewed derivative), please post what you are using it for. It would be interesting to see.