Hello Katalians! Let’s go straight to the point, our latest release of Katalon Studio (8.2.0) is here, and it is awesome. For this release, we focused on speed and performance, and we are happy to announce that Studio now consumes less resources and gives more horsepower to your software delivery pipeline.

Katalon Studio 8.2.0

What’s New?

Studio 8.2 delivers performance enhancements that aim to increase the resources efficiency of your test automation cycle, and it focuses on improving the following features: startup, opening projects, test cases, keyword files and more.

Additionally, open-source software compliance enhancements have been continuously implemented as Katalon Studio addresses high-risk security vulnerabilities, further enhancing synchronization between Katalon Studio and systems under test (SUT).

Some other tidbits include the introduction of Idle Timeout Bypass Limit, support for Chrome and Edge Chromium version 95.

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Enhanced Studio IDE and Runtime Engine (KRE) Performance

As a focus in our development journey, performance is continuously enhanced and has been given a boost in v8.2.0, with a single, simple yet powerful keyword: speed.

Opening big projects in KRE is now 2x faster and 1.5x for small and medium projects
Renaming test cases is now ~ 2x faster
Opening test cases is now 2x faster
Moving test cases is now 1.5x faster

We’ve minimized CPU and memory consumption by removing and loading less unessential content, refactoring code, and adding new features such as the delay between instances and keywords to disable HAR files generation. Together, these features increase responsiveness, which means less waiting and more doing.

Below are some details on the major enhancements in the newest version.

Delay between instances for Test Suite Collection running in parallel mode

Test Suite Collection (TSC) with parallel execution helps to save running time, but also consumes lots of memory and CPU at the start; imagine >20 executions/browsers starting at once.

To tackle this, we introduce a new setting called Delay between instances, so executions will now have a delay in between creating buffers for devices to react. It’s a small change yet powerful enough to prevent resource usage spikes for a “smooth like butter” experience.

Feel free to choose between Katalon Studio’s UI option or -delayBetweenInstances parameter in the Katalon Runtime Engine to apply the feature.

New keywords to disable HAR file generation

HAR file is a format used for logging interaction information between a web browser and a website. Although helpful in troubleshooting performance issues, generating HAR files for each web service request by default creates an excessively large workload, especially for thousands of requests.

Therefore, adding keywords allows you to enable or disable HAR file generations on demand that will significantly enhance execution speed for big test suites. Learn more in [WS] Set HAR File Generation and [WS] Get HAR File Generation.

Software Compliance Enhancements

Open-Source Vulnerabilities Report

With the ongoing priority of enhancing safety and accessibility to the testing environment, the Katalon Studio team is working on the White Source Bolt Build report by:

Removing MySQL lib to add the option to disable external domain connections.
Upgrading the version scope for xmlBeans and Apache Commons Compress.

Options to disable external connections

When working with Katalon Studio you will need to connect to certain external domains such as update.katalon.com, backend.katalon.com for multiple purposes: getting updates, content, and notifications. However, in certain organizations that require a high level of security (e.g., healthcare and banking) external connections will be limited.

You can disable or have alternatives for several domains, while some remain untouched. In this version, we added options to disable the remaining domains. This will appear on the UI for easy access, and a tooltip is added to inform the correspondent domains, helping users identify the connections.

Handling Selenium’s Timing Issues – Studio’s Remedies

Rushing to interact with elements when they haven’t finished loading and be visible is the hassle Selenium users frequently face. A testing tool without a waiting mechanism might take action too early, creating false-negative test results.

Auto-delay for click keywords when an element is behind a loading overlay

Loading overlays are commonly used to provide offers, discounts, or email subscription boxes to website visitors all over the internet, but this also blocks interaction with elements on websites until they finish loading. Hence, a good testing tool should know if there is an overlay and wait to take action.

In this version, we’ve improved the test engine (KS and KRE) to detect if the failure is caused by a loading overlay covering the target element, and if so, the Test Engine will wait for a period (predefined in Project Settings), and then perform the click action keywords again.

Enhanced Smart Wait to wait for Fetch API Requests

Previously available on Chrome and Firefox, Smart Wait has also been added to support Edge Chromium.

Smart Wait is one of Katalon Studio’s unique capabilities, designed to specifically wait until web elements are visible and clickable before proceeding. From Studio 8.2.0 onwards, Smart Wait also knows that it needs to wait for Fetch API requests as well.

Before 8.2.0, Katalon Studio only supported XMLHttpRequest and AJAX requests. But to bring to the community a newer and better interface for holistic web UI testing, this has led us to the Fetch API (or promise-based APIs).

Allowing you to make HTTP requests to a server from a web browser, Fetch APIs are commonly used as they provide a more powerful and flexible interface to solve tougher challenges.

More News!

Newly supported browser versions

Chrome 95
Microsoft Edge (Chromium) 95

Introducing Idle Timeout Bypass Limit

From version 7.8.0 onwards, admin users can maximize the usage of KSE licenses by setting a time restriction for users of Katalon Studio, called Idle Session Timeout. However, continuously clicking ‘Continue’ every time this pops up makes the license appear to be in usage and ineffectively renders this feature.

In 8.2.0, to further enhance the control of active licenses, Katalon Studio provides a configuration called Idle Sessions Threshold that limits the number of consecutive times users are allowed to click Continue on the pop-up notification, which prevents occupying a license without using it.

You can access the configuration on the Katalon TestOps page, simply click Settings and choose Organization Management.

To use this feature, find the Idle Timeout Bypass Limit section in Settings.

Idle Timeout Bypass Limit section

Wrapping Up!

We are thrilled about Studio 8.2 and we hope you are too. We encourage you to download Studio 8.2 to start taking advantage of its many new features and improvements.

For a complete list of new features, improvements, and fixes, please visit the release notes. As always, please post any questions, ideas, or concerns on our community site, we are eager to hear from you.

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