When faced with the task of testing an unfamiliar application, it's sometimes difficult to know where to begin. Discover how exploring with heuristics in mind can help you uncover bugs—even when you don't know what the system specifications are.

What if, instead of using tests to try to break software, we used tests to make software? That's the vision of storytest-driven development. We spoke to people who spend each day turning wishful thinking into working products. Find out how they do it.

For anyone involved in security testing, or for anyone who is just plain curious about this area of software testing, the following references will provide a good starting point for any effort that you might be asked to undertake. In this issue, Steven Splaine discusses this important aspect of software engineering.

Window mapping gives elements specific names so tests are easier to update and understand. Task libraries group sequences of steps that make up part of user tasks when those sequences show up in multiple tests. Data-driven test automation separates the parameters of a test case from the test script so that the test script can be reused for many related tasks. Keyword-driven test automation formats tests as tables or spreadsheets and creates parsers to read and execute the test descriptions. Take advantage of these four techniques to help you test a graphical user interface, and see how developers can make your life easier.