One of the magic's of the internet and more specifically, blogs, it puts you in touch with people you'd NEVER otherwise talk with.  I recieved a comment on my Selenium and the Kiss Theory from InCisif.net suggesting their Web unit testing.  Initially, I denied the response and asked for a more detailed comment as to why and explain how their product is better in x, y, z for reasons a, b and c -- Here's the response I recieved... 

Generally I avoid saying things like "I believe ours [product] is better in x, y and z for a, b and c reasons", making a good case will take a long paragraph, and it is just my opinion and I am bias. Anyway,  here is my case.

Selenium is the only automation tool under $1000 that support cross browser testing. And If you absolutely need functional cross browser testing, Selenium and Selenium RC (remote control) are good choices. Selenium comes with some weaknesses that are due to its architecture that allow cross browser testing (Speed of execution, installation of the Selenium Core on the server).
 
If you are more interested in implementing a lot functional testing, focusing

• On the speed of development
• The speed of execution
• The quality of the IDE and debugger
• Having a direct access to the DOM
• You have to support only Internet Explorer or you will address the others browser manually

You could chose between Watir, WatiN, TestComplete or InCisif.net.

If you want to develop your automation in Ruby, then you will choose Watir.
 
If you want to develop your automation in DelphiScript, VBScript or JavaScript, then you will choose TestComplete.

If you are more .NET guy and want to develop in VB.NET, you probably want to look at our product, because we are committed to support VB.NET and C# to the same level (Selenium IDE does not support VB.NET, WatiN focus primarily on C#).
 
Here are some of the some differences between WatiN and InCisif.net.

By the way why do I known so much about WatiN, because I was been using it since January 2008 extensively on one web development. I think WatiN is a very good product. And I have been chatting with the author Jeroen van Menen via email.

InCisif.net has a more advanced record mode than the WatiN recorder. WatiN recorder is little buggy and still not mature. Here you must try for yourself (see our screen casts at http://www.incisif.net).

Web automation testing is not about dummy capture/replay, but a good code generator (AKA record mode can save time). See our screenshots.  Our record mode support: C#, VB.NET and IronPython.

InCisif.net has a tracing mode that allows reviewing the execution of tests. Making easier to find where exactly a test failed.

( full sized image here InCisif_net_Trace_File.jpg (466.08 kb) )

InCisif.net API to look up control is based on what we call the “HTML Control Naming Algorithm”, documented in our help file. 9 steps to determine what is the best information to identify uniquely an html control. Used at record and run time.

WatiN also as a pretty good API, but the record mode does not know how to use it.

When accessing an html control WatiN uses the type of the html control for example : 

ie.Link(Find.ById("LinkButton1")).Click();
ie.Button(Find.ById("btnSubmit")).Click();

Incisif.net uses the following syntax:

Page.Control(“LinkButton1”).Click();
Page.Control(“btnSubmit”).Click();

If the html control changes from a <button> to a <div> Incisif.net code will still work.

WatiN API is a little bit faster than InCisif.net API. Our 9 steps algorithm and our tracing feature have a cost.

I was not able to get WatiN to work with the NUnit 2.x GUI Application. InCisif.net supports NUnit, but also comes with its own test framework including a UI, similar to NUnit, but we added the concept of parameterized test (see here, here and here) and the concept of Test Dependency, very important for UI testing (see this link)

InCisif.net has some special features at record time and runtime to deal with the ASP.NET I'd like “ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_butCreateAccount”. See the blog we also have a screen cast about it.

InCisif.net can use some of the C# 3.5 LINQ features and some of our API can use Lambda expression.  That is not absolutely required to program web testing, but is kind of fancy.
 
InCisif.net supports to start and stop Cassini, the web server that ship with ASP.NET 2.0. Very usefull.
 
Other features from InCisif.net

• Reporting API, XML report, HTML report about the tests and test suite execution.
• Grab Screen shots when an assert failed or an un-expected error is raised.
• Email notification of the HTML suite report. Attached in a zip file: the xml report, the text trace file and the screenshot grabbed in case of errors.
• WatiN may support FireFox in the future, InCisif.net may support testing SilverLigth 2.0 application.

Pricing: WatiN is Free. InCisif.net is not, but we are about to reduce our price to $99 a license. We will also offer to license the source code later this year.
If you want to develop applications using InCisif.net and distribute them, we have what we call InCisif.net Run Time For Application which requires a simple files copy to install.
There are royalties between $25 and $50 per install based on the quantity.
 
Jesse, let me known what you think.

Frederic Torres
www.InCisif.net
Web Testing with C# or VB.NET

I think this week at home I'm going to take a look at this - Frederic was nice enough to send me a personal key and I just so happen to have a few sites I could use this against.  More to come on this, no doubt.