News

Desktop Version of Mabl's Low-Code Automated Testing Tool Released in Beta

• By John K. Waters
• February 25, 2021

Mabl, a Boston based provider of low-code testing tools, today announced the beta release of a desktop version of its test automation application for APIs and mobile web browsers.

Designed to enable high-velocity software teams to scale test coverage in a unified platform, the app provides integrated end-to-end test capabilities for DevOps teams faced with accelerating deployment schedules.

"With the addition of the desktop app, mabl is the simplest, most capable intelligent test automation solution on the market," said mabl co-founder Dan Belcher, in a statement. "Quality professionals now have a seamless, low-code solution for their browser, API and mobile web testing needs, enabling them to automate even more routine tasks and focus their talent on higher-level quality initiatives."

Low-code development has been on ever enterprise development team's radar since it graduated from novelty to genuine productivity enhancer about two years ago. In a report published last year ("Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms 2019"), analysts at Gartner defined a "low-code application platform" (LCAP) as one that supports rapid app development—one-step deployment, execution, and management—using declarative, high-level programming abstractions, such as model-driven and metadata-based programming languages.

Mabl claims that its low-code interface for test creation and maintenance requires "up to 80% less effort than alternatives, improving collaboration and significantly reducing the programming expertise required to write and maintain automated tests." Consequently, software teams can avoid testing bottlenecks and "harness the power of test automation to achieve the full potential of DevOps," the company says.

The list of new capabilities being test run in this beta release includes:

Desktop app: The desktop application, which was built with the open-source Electron framework, provides users with a low-code interface for creating, executing, maintaining, and analyzing results of all their automated tests. Because it eliminates the need to jump between multiple UIs, the company says, users can more efficiently run their browser, API and local web tests, in the cloud or locally through a single unified experience.

API testing: mabl's end-to-end API testing functionality was developed to improve test coverage by enabling users to easily validate API workflows alongside browser-based workflows in a single unified platform. Users can author and maintain API tests using mabl's low-code interface or import and export Postman collections to leverage existing automation investments.

Mobile web testing: New to the mabl platform, the desktop app includes support for mobile web testing. Users can validate responsiveness by creating and running tests across browsers and mobile device profiles in the same unified experience.