Articles and Reviews on Testing Tools

Tools are specifically designed to target some particular test environment. Such as: Windows automation tool, web automation tool etc. It serves as driving agent for an automation process. However, automation framework is not a tool to perform some specific task, but is an infrastructure that provides the solution where different tools can plug itself and do their job in an unified manner. Hence providing a common platform to the automation engineer doing their job. There are various types of frameworks.

Graphical User Interface (GUI) testing - GUI testing tools know how to grab the information on every object or window seen on screen, it can be a windows object or an html element, or other depend on the operating system information API. 
Some tools can even set a virtual blocks on the screen and follow them as an object.
After recording the test scenario the tester can edit the script and add to it parameters, conditions, loops, etc., This might requires some scripting skills, but not necessary the traditional scripting language.