Reflecting on 2023: A Year in Review

December 21, 2023

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By Farah Shalwani

As we bid farewell to 2023, it's time to reflect on the incredible journey we've had this year at Cypress. Here are the highlights.

A year of community engagement

Events, conferences, and talks, oh my!

At Front End Test Fest 2023, over 7000 registrants delved into the latest trends and innovations in frontend testing. Then, we had our first CypressConf 2023. This game-changing event brought together developers and QA professionals worldwide for visionary insights, best practices, and practical tips, offering a marathon of sessions and vibrant community interactions.

Education is at the heart of what we do, and this year, we hosted 7 community webinars, along with a dynamic half-day "Getting Started with Component Testing" event. These initiatives aimed to empower developers with the knowledge and skills to optimize their testing strategies.

Our Discord reached 12,000 strong 💪

The growth is a testament to the collaborative spirit within the Cypress community, where ideas are exchanged and challenges are tackled collectively. Join us!

If you've frequented our Discord, you may have started recognizing some standout names – our invaluable testing heroes known as Cypress Ambassadors. These passionate experts generously share their knowledge through blog posts, articles, webcasts, conferences, meetups, and more. Get acquainted with them on our blog.

Delivering global impact

Ultimately, our success is measured by the impact we make. This year, Cypress played a pivotal role in helping over 3,600 customers across 80+ countries run a staggering 1.6 billion tests. These numbers reflect not only the global reach of Cypress but also the trust bestowed upon us by developers worldwide.

A year of raising the bar for application quality

We continue to invest in our community, our open-source app, and Cypress Cloud, a service that unlocks the full potential of Cypress test automation tools in your CI pipeline. Let’s review some of the exciting features and improvements we’ve shipped this year.

Website overhaul and documentation enhancements

We not only launched a sleek website, but also invested significantly in enhancing the architecture of our documentation site. These improvements aim to provide our users with a seamless experience, making information readily accessible and navigating our platform a breeze.

Debug page

Debug enables seamless debugging of failed CI test runs directly from your local app. This feature, supercharged by Cypress Cloud, streamlines the debugging workflow by eliminating the need to switch between your local editor and CI provider's website, offering a time-saving and efficient solution for developers.

Component Framework Definition API

This API makes Cypress more extensible as a platform, enabling third parties to provide a more deeply integrated, seamless, and polished experience for component testing and development.

Docker Factory

Cypress docker images come with pre-determined versions of Node, Chrome, Firefox, Cypress, etc. With this change, we gave users the flexibility to create Docker images with the specific node, Cypress, and/or browser versions that fit their workflows. This gives our users more power to build the image that is just right for their situation in CI.

V3 of the Cypress Circle CI Orb

Setting up CircleCI configuration for your Cypress tests is now easier than ever. Cypress partnered with CircleCI in 2018 to introduce the Cypress Orb, simplifying CI/CD configuration for developers running automated tests. The release of version 3 enhances user experience, offering a more streamlined setup with predefined jobs and commands, emphasizing flexibility and efficiency in integrating Cypress into CircleCI workflows.

Microsoft Teams Integration

This integration enables users to monitor Cypress test results in real-time, directly within their Microsoft Teams channels. Cypress Cloud users can now ensure timely detection of failed or flaky tests in CI, preventing delays or blockages in progress by addressing issues promptly after the point of failure.

Branch Review

Branch Review allows Github-integrated developers and QA engineers to analyze changes in their test suite through a before-and-after view for each pull request. This new feature enhances the workflow by providing insights into newly failed, flaky, pending, and resolved tests, as well as added or modified tests, streamlining the review process and preventing regressions.

Test Replay

Test Replay seamlessly integrates the familiar debugging experience from the Cypress app into Cypress Cloud, enabling you to review past test runs in a live browser, inspect your application, and troubleshoot test failures. With all the necessary data at your fingertips, you can swiftly understand issues without the need to replicate the test run locally.

Experimental test retries

We introduced an experimental feature allowing users to configure thresholds for test retries. This enhancement provides fine-tuned control over retry settings, enabling users to specify levels of test flakiness for a more focused and efficient workflow, reducing noise, increasing agility, and improving control over CI resources and time.

Cypress Cloud Plan User Limits Increased to 50

Last but certainly not least, we increased user limits to 50 users across all plans. This improvement fosters enhanced collaboration, streamlined testing efforts, and faster feedback loops for developers, supporting the scaling of test automation efforts and reflecting Cypress's commitment to meeting user needs in software development.

Looking ahead to 2024

We are hard at work with more exciting releases just around the corner.

Building upon the humble test, we are allowing developers to measure additional quality dimensions in pre-production environments without any extra legwork, integrated seamlessly into Cypress’s tried-and-true debugging workflow and DX. These insights reports in Cypress Cloud include:

  • Accessibility reporting for assessing accessibility violations on a per-page basis— now in private beta!
  • UI coverage to visualize your testing coverage in your application— now in private beta!

Our engineers dedicated to our open-source app are hard at work as well building: 

  • Puppeteer plugin for some multi-tab or -window use cases, so you can hook outside of Cypress into the browser context. We are gathering feedback on v0.1 of the plugin. Let us know what you think in this Github Discussion!
  • Improvements to flake detection so Cloud users can catch flake in a timely manner, as soon as the root cause is introduced.
  • Performance bug fixes for the open-source app.

Stay tuned on our blog for updates, and we’ll see you in the new year!