Horrible Experience of using Test Explorer in VS 2012

Today I install VS2012 on my virtual machine to see if there any good feature related to coded UI tests.

The first thing I encounter that there is no test view window available which was present in VS 2010.

Instead, there is a new window called Test Explorer. I build my project and all my tests become visible in the Test Explorer. Now the real horrible experience begins. I was trying to group my test according to the class name like I used to do it in Test View. To my surprise, there are only two options for the group by . Either by duration time or by test outcome.

This was the not the first issue. I begin to explore Test Explorer and amazed how many features it is missing. some of them are:

• we cannot “copy” exception messages from the unit test results.
• we cannot control the columns as we like to see.
• There is no refresh button to refresh test cases.
• we cannot see that which test is currently running.
• The summary page keeps displaying information about the previous run which is very confusing. It should display information about the current run.
• With VS 2012 I  have to wait at least 18-20 seconds to see the results in the Test Explorer after my test is executed.

Overall it was a big disappointment. I searched on the internet and found an update of VS 2012 link. They are saying that this update will provide some Group By features in the Test Explorer.

There is also a suggestion posted that Microsoft should drop Test Explorer and bring back Test View in 2012.

This was my experience. How about yours?

Related articles

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 gets first update (neowin.net)
• How do you disable the test explorer in Visual Studio 2012 (stackoverflow.com)
• Fail: VS2012 Test Explorer (codeproject.com)