Think it. Make it. Test it. Break it. Fix it. Save it.
FavCreate it.
In October, the team gathered in our Bucharest office for FavCreate, our internal event dedicated to innovation. It’s a time when we step away from our daily projects to experiment, collaborate, and explore new ideas that can help us grow as professionals and serve our clients even better.
This year, however, we traded our developer hats for something a little more… arcane. Welcome to Crowd Favorite’s Grand Browser-Testing Conjuring!
For too long, the dark arts of manual testing have plagued our digital realms, all tedious, repetitive tasks that consume valuable time. Our quest was clear: to master powerful automation spells that could banish tedium, strengthen our applications, and free our developers to focus on creating even greater magic.
Our developers were formed into three intrepid Houses, each tasked with championing a different browser testing tool. It wasn’t a competition of winners and losers, but a showcase of skill, strategy, and magical prowess in the face of daunting digital beasts.
Here’s a look at what they built in just a few short days:
House Thunderhawk – Wielders of Playwright
Patience in Darkness, Strength in Unity
Framing their tool as a powerful “tome of enchantments” from the digital academies of Microsoft, House Thunderhawk showcased Playwright’s versatility and raw power. Knowing that Playwright already commands every major browser – Chrome, Firefox, and Safari – they built a tool that can open web pages, cast clicks and keystrokes, and reveal hidden bugs before they strike. Their presentation highlighted its advanced features, like running invisibly (headless), recording its magic with screenshots and replays, and performing parallel charms for faster testing.
House Ursamonte – Masters of Laravel Dusk
Patience in Darkness, Strength in Unity
With a nod to their emblem, House Ursamonte showcased their profound mastery of Laravel Dusk by revealing a magnificent “bear-owser”. They built a robust, real-world application of Dusk, simplifying end-to-end testing by seamlessly controlling a browser with precision-crafted code. They emphasized its remarkably easy setup (freeing them from complex dependencies like Selenium), its fluent and expressive syntax, and its flawless integration into CI/CD pipelines. All of this results in a perfect guardian for ensuring critical paths like logins and checkouts consistently work flawlessly.
House Najmara – Champions of Cypress
By Wisdom We Navigate, By Knowledge We Illuminate
House Najmara focused on an often-overlooked aspect of testing: collaborative spellcasting. They championed Cypress as the tool that makes testing easy and accessible for the entire team, not just developers. Their masterstroke was building a Cypress Chrome extension, which allows clients and project managers to record their actions in a browser and create a test without writing a single line of code. This “no-coding-required” approach empowers everyone to contribute to quality assurance, creating a workflow where tests are created, refined by developers, and stored in GitHub for continuous, automated use.
Beyond the Magic: Connection and Collaboration
This year’s FavCreate was made even more special by the presence of our colleague Nicolas. He journeyed all the way from Canada to join us. Having him here in person, sharing ideas and good laughs, was a powerful reminder of our company’s culture.
For a distributed company like ours, with teammates spread across four continents, these moments of physical connection are truly valuable. They strengthen the trust and understanding that make our remote collaboration work so well. They also remind us that behind every message, there’s a real person who shares the same passion for what we do.
Photos from the week
After a few days of work, we headed to the mountains for a team-building weekend in Sinaia. It is a charming city known for its royal heritage and was the perfect way to relax and recharge after an intense week. We enjoyed a walk on the mountain trails, explored a spectacular cave, and ended with a wonderful dinner. At that dinner we were able to surprise Nicolas with a small celebration for his birthday.
These moments remind us that true innovation, like magic, doesn’t happen in isolation. It’s built through collaboration, curiosity, and genuine connection, which is exactly what FavCreate stands for. We returned home refreshed, inspired, and even more connected as a team, ready to automate the magic.Photos from the week
Looking to Make a Move?
Central to our core is an ongoing commitment to create a rewarding workplace, one that empowers you to solve challenges, seize opportunities, and build a career that you’ll love. At Crowd Favorite, we are always looking for talented people to join our global team. Visit our Careers page, we’d love to talk
