Functional testing for Web Applications

WatiN
http://watintestrecord.sourceforge.net/WatiN - C# automated IE only automated testing (inspired by Watir)
(Have not used this but it looks way to interesting to not take a deeper dive for a dot net dev shop)
http://blogs.conchango.com/richardgriffin/archive/2006/10/18/WATiN-web-recorder_2B002B00_-prototype.aspx
the tool - http://watin.sourceforge.net/index.html
the recorder - http://watintestrecord.sourceforge.net/

Customization can be done in c# and vb.net which makes this very powerful - we will have to take a look and maybe post some results back here soon.

WatiR - Ruby based automated testing tool
(I have used this and although you dont have to learn ruby if you want to customize - which is only needed if you get deep - its very very good and easy to use)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watir
the tool - http://wtr.rubyforge.org/
the recorder - http://www.openqa.org/watir-recorder/documentation.action
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/NewReleaseOfWatirMakerNowWatirRecorder.aspx

Functional testing in web apps has up until recently been done well only well by full featured mature testing products which are of course come with appropriateprice tags, seem to have a perception of a steep learning curve and I always think the biggest issues of all is the team, department or organizational commitment required (that decision alone cripples developers or leads doing it unless they have some strengths in that area).

Functional testing is always done - whether you want to do it or not, do this formally or not - don't be mistaken that its skipped - its done by the team in informal manual ways - before or after the build in production breaks. If not then its done by your users and translates into - well we all know what. ALso in many cases I have experienced people in the periphery of the team (you name it someone that offers will be allowed to do this) - 'let me hit it till I break something' and then send you 10meg screen shots of a screen that is no one can repeat or even the user can describe how they got there. That includes 10 meg screen shots of the field validation for required fields which they think should not be there and the 'hey cant we do some ajax on this whole page so it looks cool' comments.

At some point in smaller tight teams that end up being successful building a large web app but never really commit to learning the big tools or hiring dedicated testers its just too painful to not think about getting help - a tool - an automated tool - scripts - DIY testing harnesses - dev testing tools used against UI - custom code - triggers and monitoring systems - your wife in her break between putting the baby for a nap and making dinner for you while you natter at the coffee machine waiting for her to excel spreadsheet the results back to
you.