Launched this month, Atlassian Bonfire 1.0 is a new Agile-focused testing tool positioned as a route towards testing web applications across all the "major" browser brands. Built to capture bug reports when analyzing web apps, this tool arms developers with an additional test mechanism over and above checks performed by QA engineers.

"Agile teams need a way to test early and often, to be able to easily submit bugs and issues as they arise, and to report on the status of the testing. That's where Bonfire comes into play," said Mike Cannon-Brookes, Atlassian CEO and cofounder. "Bonfire makes it easy for everyone on an Agile team to test their applications."

Developers can access Bonfire from the browser, test their applications, and then submit a JIRA bug report without leaving their screen.

Atlassian recounts the genesis of its new product as having come about after it began to run 20% time (modeled after Google's 20% time), in which developers can take one day per week (or spread their time out) to work on whatever project they want.

This time was open to free experimentation and research — provided that it was related somehow to Atlassian's products or markets. "As a result of 20% time, one of our developers wrote what would become our newest product, Bonfire," said the company.

Bonfire has four key features for allowing teams to test early and often: submitting bugs directly from the browser; adding annotated screenshots with each bug; establishing setup test sessions to track activity against a requirement or user story; and creating bug report templates to pre-populate meta-data and repetitive content.