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Compass vs Protractor: What are the differences?

Compass: A Stylesheet Authoring Environment that makes your website design simpler to implement and easier to maintain. The compass core framework is a design-agnostic framework that provides common code that would otherwise be duplicated across other frameworks and extensions; Protractor: End-to-end test framework for Angular and AngularJS applications. Protractor is an end-to-end test framework for Angular and AngularJS applications. Protractor runs tests against your application running in a real browser, interacting with it as a user would.

Compass can be classified as a tool in the "CSS Pre-processors / Extensions" category, while Protractor is grouped under "Javascript Testing Framework".

"No vendor prefix CSS pain" is the top reason why over 8 developers like Compass, while over 2 developers mention "Quick tests implementation" as the leading cause for choosing Protractor.

Compass and Protractor are both open source tools. Protractor with 8.24K GitHub stars and 2.23K forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than Compass with 6.91K GitHub stars and 1.23K GitHub forks.

According to the StackShare community, Compass has a broader approval, being mentioned in 88 company stacks & 42 developers stacks; compared to Protractor, which is listed in 24 company stacks and 22 developer stacks.

Advice on Compass and Protractor
Yildiz Dila
testmanager/automation tester at medicalservice · | 5 upvotes · 244.2K views
Needs advice
on
CypressCypress
and
ProtractorProtractor

In the company I will be building test automation framework and my new company develops apps mainly using AngularJS/TypeScript. I was planning to build Protractor-Jasmine framework but a friend of mine told me about Cypress and heard that its users are very satisfied with it. I am trying to understand the capabilities of Cypress and as the final goal to differentiate these two tools. Can anyone advice me on this in a nutshell pls...

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Replies (2)
Kevin Emery
QE Systems Engineer at Discovery, Inc. · | 4 upvotes · 147.8K views
Recommends
on
CypressCypressProtractorProtractor

I've used both Protractor and Cypress extensively. Cypress is the easier and more reliable tool, whereas Protractor is the more powerful tool. Your choice of tool should depend on your specific testing needs. Here are some advantages and disadvantages of each tool:

Cypress advantages:

  • Faster

  • More reliable (tends to throw fewer intermittent false failures)

  • Easier to read code (handles promises gracefully)

Cypress disadvantages:

  • Cannot switch between browser tabs

  • Cannot switch to iFrames

  • Cannot specify clicks or keypresses explicitly as if a real user was interacting

  • Cannot move the mouse to specific co-ordinates

  • Sometimes has trouble switching between different top-level domains, so not good for testing external links

  • Cypress is a newer tool with less extensive documentation and less community support

Protractor advantages:

  • More powerful because it is Selenium-based - it can switch between tabs, it can handle external links to other domains, it can handle iFrames, simulate keypresses and clicks, and move the mouse to specific co-ordinates within the browser.

  • More extensive community support and documentation

Protractor disadvantages:

  • Slower and more brittle - in general there is a higher likelihood of cryptic and/or intermittent errors which may cause your tests to fail even though there is nothing wrong with your application

  • For highly experienced automation engineers, the fundamental "brittle" nature of Selenium can be worked around - it can be reliable but only if you really know what you are doing

  • Less graceful handling of promises - relies on async/await or .then to manage the order of execution. Therefore it is a bit harder to read the code.

  • Harder to set up, and the method of setup impacts its reliability. For example, a hub/node configuration where the selenium jar is on a different physical machine than the browser under test will cause unreliability in your tests. Not everyone knows about this type of thing, so it's common to find Selenium frameworks that are set up poorly.

It's probably better to use Cypress if

  • you're at a smaller company and have a close relationship with developers who can help write hooks or stubs in their code to assist your testing

  • you don't need to do things like switch between tabs or test links to external top-level domains

It's probably better to use Protractor if

  • You might need to switch between tabs or test external links to other domains within the scope of your framework

  • You want to use a more accurate simulation of how a real user interacts with a browser (i.e. click at this location, type these keys)

  • You're at a company where you won't have any support from developers in writing hooks or stubs to make their code more testable in a less powerful framework like Cypress

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Jian Wang
Web Engineer at sentaca · | 1 upvotes · 176.6K views
Recommends

Please try Handow, the e2e tool basing on Puppeteer.

Gherkin syntax compatible

Chrome/Chromium orentied, driven by Puppeteer engine

Complete JavaScript programming

Create test suites rapidly without coding (or a little bit), basing on built-in steps library

Schedule test with plans and arrange stories with sequential stages

Fast running, execute story groups in parallel by multi-workers

Built-in single page report render

Cover page view, REST API and cookies test

https://github.com/newlifewj/handow

http://demo.shm.handow.org/reports

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Pros of Compass
Pros of Protractor
  • 9
    No vendor prefix CSS pain
  • 1
    Mixins
  • 1
    Variables
  • 1
    Compass sprites
  • 9
    Easy setup
  • 8
    Quick tests implementation
  • 6
    Flexible
  • 5
    Open source
  • 5
    Promise support

Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions

Cons of Compass
Cons of Protractor
    Be the first to leave a con
    • 4
      Limited

    Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

    What is Compass?

    The compass core framework is a design-agnostic framework that provides common code that would otherwise be duplicated across other frameworks and extensions.

    What is Protractor?

    Protractor is an end-to-end test framework for Angular and AngularJS applications. Protractor runs tests against your application running in a real browser, interacting with it as a user would.

    Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

    Jobs that mention Compass and Protractor as a desired skillset
    What companies use Compass?
    What companies use Protractor?
    See which teams inside your own company are using Compass or Protractor.
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    Sign up to get full access to all the companiesMake informed product decisions

    What tools integrate with Compass?
    What tools integrate with Protractor?

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    What are some alternatives to Compass and Protractor?
    Cherokee
    Cherokee is highly efficient, extremely lightweight and provides rock solid stability. Among its many features there is one that deserves special credit: a user friendly interface called cherokee-admin that is provided for a no-hassle configuration of every single feature of the server.
    Sass
    Sass is an extension of CSS3, adding nested rules, variables, mixins, selector inheritance, and more. It's translated to well-formatted, standard CSS using the command line tool or a web-framework plugin.
    Animate.css
    It is a bunch of cool, fun, and cross-browser animations for you to use in your projects. Great for emphasis, home pages, sliders, and general just-add-water-awesomeness.
    Less
    Less is a CSS pre-processor, meaning that it extends the CSS language, adding features that allow variables, mixins, functions and many other techniques that allow you to make CSS that is more maintainable, themable and extendable.
    css-loader
    The css-loader interprets @import and url() like import/require() and will resolve them.
    See all alternatives