Applitools – How to Create Reliable Visual Validation Tests

Test Automation is difficult. It’s even harder if you need to perform any sort of visual validations in your test script. It’s often easier and more reliable to make visual validation type test into manual tests. So how do you solve this pixel predicament?

If you have a “mission critical” or complex visual application that needs to have many visual elements tested, you should check out Applitools.

But where Applitools really shines is it’s ability to allow you to automate previously un-automatable tests and run them on a huge variety of web-browsers, devices and operating systems out there, regardless of the complexity of your applications.

With its sophisticated visual algorithm, Applitools makes visual validation easy and stress-free.

About Adam Carmi

Adam started programming when he was eight and is passionate about all aspects of software development and testing. He is the Co-founder and VP R&D of Applitools – a company delivering a visual testing cloud service. He dedicates most of his time to developing image comparison algorithms and making large scale visual testing a reality.

Quotes & Insights from this Test Talk

• Visual Software Testing is the process of validating the visual aspects of an application’s User Interface (UI). In addition to validating that the UI displays the correct content or data, Visual Testing focuses on validating the Layout and Appearance of each visual element of the UI and of the UI as a whole
• With traditional functional testing, if you don’t assert it, it doesn’t get tested.
• Stop doing regression testing and start doing progression testing.
• Tools like UFT’s insight, Eggplant and Sikuli were designed to handle a different problem than visual validation.
• Applitools was actually designed to validate full application pages and screens.
• Applitools has put years of research and development into their image processing algorithms.
• Applitools was developed from the ground up, specifically for visual validation.
• Declaring validation points in Applitools is quick and easy. Best of all, it’s easy to update and change, making maintenance a breeze.
• There are no visual processing settings, percentages or configurations that need to be set up in order to create visual testing with Applitools. The algorithm is completely adaptive.
• With other visual tools, any small change to the pixels can cause scripts to fail. Applitools focuses only on the changes that a human can see, helping to reduce false failures.
• Can handle rendering difference between different hardware and configurations like anti-aliasing, moving content on the page and image scaling.
• Can easily tell tools’ regions to ignore things like dynamic data like dates, ads
• Applitools allows you to automate visual validation tests that normally could only be done with manual testing
• Can do full-page validation saving you from having to write hundreds of lines of assertions.
• When you do full-page validation, you protect yourself from unexpected scenarios.
• The simulation part of test automation is usually very easy, like navigating to a URL. The actual validation piece is the hard part, but Applitools makes validating the logic just as easy, if not more so, than the simulation piece.
• Applitools works with any image, whether it’s from a web browser, mobile device or thick client application

Resources

• Automated Visual Testing In The Cloud: Enhance Your Cross-browser Coverage – Sauce Lab Webinar

• Automated Visual Testing is the Missing Link in Software Test Automation

• How to Do Visual Testing with Selenium – by Dave Haeffner

Connect with{Name}

• Twitter: @applitoolseyes
• Blog:  http://testautomation.applitools.com/
• Company: https://applitools.com/

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