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Apple launches iCloud Passwords extension for Chrome on Windows

Besides iTunes, Apple’s biggest offering on Microsoft’s operating system is the iCloud sync client for files, photos, and mail. Apple is now extending its presence on Windows with an iCloud Passwords Chrome extension.

Apple quietly published the extension to the Chrome Web Store on Sunday evening:

iCloud Passwords allows you to use the same strong Safari passwords you create on your Apple device, with Chrome on Windows.

After updating iCloud for Windows to version 12.0 — which teased the extension’s existence earlier this week, you’ll see a new “Passwords” section in the list of available services. Tapping “Apply” to proceed at the bottom opens a dialog box to download the tool inside Chrome. 

It provides access to the passwords that you’ve created, had automatically generated, or saved in Safari for iOS and macOS while using Chrome. The sync is bi-directional with new credentials you store in Google’s browser saved to the iCloud Keychain, so that it’s accessible on iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices.

https://9to5google.com/

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Microsoft makes Win32 APIs available to more languages

Microsoft has expanded the scope of Win32 APIs beyond support for C and C++, with added support for C# and Rust through the win32metadata project now available in preview on GitHub. Other languages will follow, according to the Windows development team. 

Previously, developers using languages other than C and C++ had to use wrappers or bindings in order to access these APIs, which increases the chances of an error and doesn’t scale to broad API coverage, according to Microsoft. 

This has prompted several community projects to try to provide a more strongly typed and idiomatic representation of those wrappers and bindings to provide an improved developer experience such as PInvoke for .NET and winapi-rs for Rust.

However, since these projects are all manually maintained, the Windows SDK team said it started its own version to take some of the burden off of the community.

“The goal of the win32metadata project is to provide a complete description of the Win32 API surface in metadata so that it can be projected to any language in an automated way, improving correctness and minimizing maintenance overhead,” the Windows SDK team wrote in a blog post.

The project is an ECMA-335 compliant Windows metadata file (winmd) that was published to NuGet.org.

The first such language projection is C#/Win32,which parses the metadata and generates P/Invoke wrappers that are required to call APIs. Developers just have to add a reference to the Microsoft.Windows.CsWin32 package from NuGet.org and add the file NativeMethods.txt to the root of their project with a list of the Win32 functions that they want to call. 

“C#/Win32 provides rich Intellisense, strong types for parameters, and also includes the relevant documentation from docs.microsoft.com, all dynamically generated from metadata based on the APIs you request,” the Windows team explained. “No additional dependencies are required, broad API coverage is achieved with improved correctness and minimal maintenance overhead, and the APIs are expressed idiomatically as C# developers would expect.”

Meanwhile, the Rust language projection follows the C++/WinRT of building language projections for Windows and the windows crate lets developers call APIs just like they do for any other Rust module. 

The team is also working on adding the Modern C++ projection on GitHub and welcoming community contributions there. Other languages will follow base on popular demand. 

https://sdtimes.com/

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Why and how are financial institutions modernizing testing?

Today financial services firms face unprecedented consumer expectations. The pressure is on to produce always-on apps that deliver whenever and however users need it. 

Organizations are responding to this pressure by choosing to focus on DevOps, agile development and other initiatives that can accelerate time to market, boost performance and improve efficiency. Those producing the best outcomes, though, have one additional thing in common. They are modernizing testing. 

Why is test modernization so important? Just consider the experiences of one, large financial services enterprise, who had adopted proprietary test tools that were costly to maintain. Test scripts were developed manually, resulting in long delays as development teams waited for code to be tested. There simply was no way to integrate and deliver code continuously at speed without sacrificing quality. 

The dilemma is all too common. Application testing simply hasn’t kept pace with market demands. Many organizations are locked into complex, proprietary tools that require specialized knowledge and lack the scale and flexibility needed to deliver continuous, accelerated test coverage. Instead, they conduct tests only after design and development are complete – often with less than total coverage. 

According to Andrea Cabeça, Executive Superintendent at Bradesco Bank, legacy systems can limit modernization programs. As an example, developing shorter test cycles can be a challenge when dealing with mainframe systems that take 20 hours to run transactions. Regulatory demands on the financial industry add a further layer of complexity- you need to transform and give space for your team to be creative and try new things, while staying within those regulatory demands that limit you. 

There is also the problem of adapting new tools to manage the old legacy world,  according to Cabeça. Although financial teams want to embrace collaborative work, unit tests, and more, these new steps don’t always work with old monolith systems. Making a push to go cloud first, can add challenges of its own.

An automated alternative
Forward-thinking financial services teams are now modernizing testing to break through such barriers. They are moving to an open-source, technology-agnostic test automation framework able to span the entire DevOps lifecycle. 

These new platforms transform and democratize testing. With an automated framework that is easy to use, anyone in the application delivery chain can run SaaS-based, open-source tests at any time, from anywhere. All it takes is a software browser. You can validate performance at every stage of the application lifecycle – from product strategy and code development to delivery and production. 

As a result, you have the data you need to determine whether the work you are doing is moving the needle on key business strategies. You can establish a continuous feedback loop that improves quality, drives higher levels of customer satisfaction and builds a better bottom line. 

The business case for modernization
As you might expect, financial institutions take a no-nonsense approach to technology investments, and they’ve found the business case for continuous, automated testing is compelling. 

A report from industry analysts at Forrester explores the total economic impact experienced by five companies making the move to an enterprise-ready, open-source testing framework. Each has adopted a solution that supports continuous delivery, providing 100 percent test coverage at speed. They can automate and standardize end-to-end performance testing and conduct load testing at scale.

Analysts found that over a three-year period, the companies experienced a 207 percent return on investment, realized a net present value of $2.6 million, and produced almost $4 million in operating savings and other benefits. 

By diving deep into each company’s experiences, analysts identified the source of these significant, bottom-line benefits. A few examples: 

A 10 percent improvement in developer efficiency

Forrester found that testing during development saved a half-day of developer time for every 40 hours worked. Unplanned work was reduced by 28 percent, and team members spent half as much time on test case design.

A 10-fold improvement in application performance. 

Forrester found nearly 40 percent of the financial benefits realized with test automation were linked to these significant application performance improvements.

A $300K annual reduction in operating costs

Faster time to market
Improved strategic alignment 

Join the test automation revolution 
If your testing tools have become a bottleneck, it’s time to adopt a modern, open-source framework. When you do, you will be poised to broaden your test program and to keep up with the fast-paced demands of today’s marketplace.

https://sdtimes.com/