Function Over Form: Why we delayed Dark Mode
May 17, 2024
Sappo
Software development teams can be divided into two camps: those who build Dark Mode early and those who choose to wait.
Dark Mode looks sexy! It's visually appealing but with minimal actual benefit. So whenever a team spends time on it, they prioritize form over function. Furthermore, they marginally slow development and testing for all future features.
We chose to wait.
We always planned to offer a Dark Mode but said it would remain at the bottom of the list. All user-requested and headline features will come first! Today, we're proud to say we've cleared that list.
Let's just take a moment to look at just a few features that pushed Dark Mode down in just the last year:
Email Inbox: fully testable complete with its own family of Nodes
MFA: Hold MFA Secrets in your account and generate authentic MFA tokens mid-test
Customizable failure states: giving you more control
Adyen Payment Express Node: to simplify your checkout tests
SFTP: A collection of Nodes to Upload and check files & folders
Node Groups: the power to build your own reusable functions
Cross-browser: adding Firefox, Edge, and countless simulated devices
File generation: generate CSV, PDFs, PNGs (and more) to test file uploading
Slack integration: including Automation-to-Manual handover
Lighthouse & Pa11y Audits: to improve user experience and prove compliance
Wait for Text Change: because sometimes the element doesn't change; only the text does
Conditional Stop: for advanced multi-environment test flows
Custom headers: Inject custom headers, for the people who need it
Trigger Child Test: Tests triggering other tests, with values passed over.
Everything above, and honestly, so many more, are now done and battle-tested by our rapidly increasing user base. Moreover, Dark Mode became the most user-requested feature as we started the work, proving our alignment with customers.
We strongly believe that this is the right way to develop software, and we would have been comfortable continuing to push Dark Mode for another year or more if needed. So, the fact I can now say...
"DARK MODE is HERE, and it is stunning!!!!!!!!"
...brings a tear to my eye! Not because "Light Mode" was burning my retinas but because this marks a new chapter for DoesQA.
We will continue to prioritize function and push user-requested features to the very top of our roadmap, but when I look at people's accounts and see tests with hundreds of Nodes interacting with hard-to-test services like Microsoft Dynamics 365, Salesforce, Excel online, and custom CMSs, and hundreds of thousands of the highest quality tests I've seen in my career running every month and growing! I know we have done what we set out to do, "enable the best testers to make the best tests, faster, cheaper and easier than anyone could have imagined".
To everyone who's created a feature request pushing Dark Mode down by a few days or weeks, sincerely, we thank you! You have really helped make DoesQA what it is today!
And, to all the cypress and playwright fanboys, I have this to say... You had Dark Mode from day one, but when are you getting MFA, a testable email inbox, live file generation, or branching test flows?! 😜
Software development teams can be divided into two camps: those who build Dark Mode early and those who choose to wait.
Dark Mode looks sexy! It's visually appealing but with minimal actual benefit. So whenever a team spends time on it, they prioritize form over function. Furthermore, they marginally slow development and testing for all future features.
We chose to wait.
We always planned to offer a Dark Mode but said it would remain at the bottom of the list. All user-requested and headline features will come first! Today, we're proud to say we've cleared that list.
Let's just take a moment to look at just a few features that pushed Dark Mode down in just the last year:
Email Inbox: fully testable complete with its own family of Nodes
MFA: Hold MFA Secrets in your account and generate authentic MFA tokens mid-test
Customizable failure states: giving you more control
Adyen Payment Express Node: to simplify your checkout tests
SFTP: A collection of Nodes to Upload and check files & folders
Node Groups: the power to build your own reusable functions
Cross-browser: adding Firefox, Edge, and countless simulated devices
File generation: generate CSV, PDFs, PNGs (and more) to test file uploading
Slack integration: including Automation-to-Manual handover
Lighthouse & Pa11y Audits: to improve user experience and prove compliance
Wait for Text Change: because sometimes the element doesn't change; only the text does
Conditional Stop: for advanced multi-environment test flows
Custom headers: Inject custom headers, for the people who need it
Trigger Child Test: Tests triggering other tests, with values passed over.
Everything above, and honestly, so many more, are now done and battle-tested by our rapidly increasing user base. Moreover, Dark Mode became the most user-requested feature as we started the work, proving our alignment with customers.
We strongly believe that this is the right way to develop software, and we would have been comfortable continuing to push Dark Mode for another year or more if needed. So, the fact I can now say...
"DARK MODE is HERE, and it is stunning!!!!!!!!"
...brings a tear to my eye! Not because "Light Mode" was burning my retinas but because this marks a new chapter for DoesQA.
We will continue to prioritize function and push user-requested features to the very top of our roadmap, but when I look at people's accounts and see tests with hundreds of Nodes interacting with hard-to-test services like Microsoft Dynamics 365, Salesforce, Excel online, and custom CMSs, and hundreds of thousands of the highest quality tests I've seen in my career running every month and growing! I know we have done what we set out to do, "enable the best testers to make the best tests, faster, cheaper and easier than anyone could have imagined".
To everyone who's created a feature request pushing Dark Mode down by a few days or weeks, sincerely, we thank you! You have really helped make DoesQA what it is today!
And, to all the cypress and playwright fanboys, I have this to say... You had Dark Mode from day one, but when are you getting MFA, a testable email inbox, live file generation, or branching test flows?! 😜
Software development teams can be divided into two camps: those who build Dark Mode early and those who choose to wait.
Dark Mode looks sexy! It's visually appealing but with minimal actual benefit. So whenever a team spends time on it, they prioritize form over function. Furthermore, they marginally slow development and testing for all future features.
We chose to wait.
We always planned to offer a Dark Mode but said it would remain at the bottom of the list. All user-requested and headline features will come first! Today, we're proud to say we've cleared that list.
Let's just take a moment to look at just a few features that pushed Dark Mode down in just the last year:
Email Inbox: fully testable complete with its own family of Nodes
MFA: Hold MFA Secrets in your account and generate authentic MFA tokens mid-test
Customizable failure states: giving you more control
Adyen Payment Express Node: to simplify your checkout tests
SFTP: A collection of Nodes to Upload and check files & folders
Node Groups: the power to build your own reusable functions
Cross-browser: adding Firefox, Edge, and countless simulated devices
File generation: generate CSV, PDFs, PNGs (and more) to test file uploading
Slack integration: including Automation-to-Manual handover
Lighthouse & Pa11y Audits: to improve user experience and prove compliance
Wait for Text Change: because sometimes the element doesn't change; only the text does
Conditional Stop: for advanced multi-environment test flows
Custom headers: Inject custom headers, for the people who need it
Trigger Child Test: Tests triggering other tests, with values passed over.
Everything above, and honestly, so many more, are now done and battle-tested by our rapidly increasing user base. Moreover, Dark Mode became the most user-requested feature as we started the work, proving our alignment with customers.
We strongly believe that this is the right way to develop software, and we would have been comfortable continuing to push Dark Mode for another year or more if needed. So, the fact I can now say...
"DARK MODE is HERE, and it is stunning!!!!!!!!"
...brings a tear to my eye! Not because "Light Mode" was burning my retinas but because this marks a new chapter for DoesQA.
We will continue to prioritize function and push user-requested features to the very top of our roadmap, but when I look at people's accounts and see tests with hundreds of Nodes interacting with hard-to-test services like Microsoft Dynamics 365, Salesforce, Excel online, and custom CMSs, and hundreds of thousands of the highest quality tests I've seen in my career running every month and growing! I know we have done what we set out to do, "enable the best testers to make the best tests, faster, cheaper and easier than anyone could have imagined".
To everyone who's created a feature request pushing Dark Mode down by a few days or weeks, sincerely, we thank you! You have really helped make DoesQA what it is today!
And, to all the cypress and playwright fanboys, I have this to say... You had Dark Mode from day one, but when are you getting MFA, a testable email inbox, live file generation, or branching test flows?! 😜
