I've just read Scott Hanselman's post about WatirRecorder.

Imagine you're developing a web application, and you want to see what happens if you enter some text in an inputbox, and then click a button.

It's quite simple. just browse to the page, enter the text, and click the buttun.

Now let's say that this page is a part of a flow that demands that you're a) logged in, b) did some actions (started the flow), c) have made some selections, all that before you can try the input-text-button-click scenarion.

So on every change in the page's source you'd have to go through all that to try the change.

This is where WATIR comes in handy. This system is intended to automate form actions on IE (there is also a Firefox version in alpha stages). It's based on running Ruby scripts againts the browser, therefore giving a developer who knows a bit about common control blocks (if, for, etc.) to learn some basic Ruby syntax and create even complex integration tests that will run using WATIR.

The WatirRecorder is a nice addin that can actually record your typing and clicks in the browser, and generate the Ruby script, ready to be customized and enhanced.

While this is great, I'm still having some problems with the recorder. It records fine, but doesn't run the test when I hit playback. But since the script is valid Ruby, I am taking the output file, changing it's extention to rb and running the test from the console.

Saves a lot of time. I intend to start using this tool as part of our development lifecycle.

My mate, Oren, has recently started digging deep into TDD, with the coaching of Roy Osherov, and started giving his insights on his blog.

As Roy mentiones on his blog, Oren's way of writing about his experience with TDD, is clear and enjoyable, therefore I'd recommend on reading is upcoming posts on the subject. It's going to be fun, I promise.

updated:
The link to Oren's first post was fixed, and I am adding two more links: to the series preface, and to the second post in the series.

I'd like to recommend on a rock band named Bend, from NY city.

Established by a friend of mine, Yoav Erez, they make great indie rock music, and they're on a struggle for a first album.

From AcidPlanet.com: "Bend spent the winter of 2006 fine tuning its songs about love and life, building on the British pop influences of bands like Coldplay and Radiohead, who inspired the band's inception earlier that previous year."

Their website is at http://bend.cc.

So listen to their demos on their site and on AcidPlanet, MySpace and Stage.co.il, and if you're in NY city, try to catch a show. I'm sure you won't be disappointed

I've just been hacked !! I feel sooo important ...

Last Tuesday (06/07/2006) I gave a presentation with Oren at our company, for the company's .NET forum.
The forum is made of all the employees from all the branches of the company, who are dealing with Microsoft's development tools, at any level.
Oren talked about our in-house architecture and presented our code generating tool - Code-Agent, that incorporates our architecture to generate a full blown n-tier application from a mere SQL Server database, in just a few clicks.
Afterwards, I talked about the problems (as I see 'em) in the data querying world today, ran a quick overview of some methods and tools that help developers to solve them, and showed a bit of the way that ADO.NET vNext (ADO.NET Entities, or ADO.NET 3.0) and LINQ, come to the rescue.
After the presentations, we've talked with some of the attendees. It was delighted to meet very capable, experienced and sharp minded people, and we encouraged them to take more active part in future meeting of the forum. I hope that this forum will evolve to be a great place to share knowledge.
The presentation that accompanied my lecture can be found here (or here if your browser cannot handle it), and if you have any questions or ideas about the subjects discussed, you are more than welcome to send them to me.