Visual Testing - Overview

Visual Testing, also called visual UI testing, is the answer to many prevailing problems. It verifies if the software user interface (UI) appears accurately to end-users across different devices, browsers, and screen resolutions.

For example, on an e-commerce website, a customer is trying to make a purchase. A customer looks for a shirt that they like, but is not able to find the "Add to Cart" button because it's hidden or misaligned on their device.

This was a classic example of where Visual Testing comes to play. Scenarios like these can be resolved quickly and prevented with running a visual test before deployment.

Why Visual testing?

We perform visual testing because visual errors occur more frequently than we might realize. Visual testing requires the tester to consider how the application appears to the end user.

Performing visual testing enables us to see if each element on a web page, web/mobile app appears in the right shape, size, and position. It also checks if these elements don't overlap or hide each other.

Limitations

Both Base Image and Differentiating format should be in the same format (supported formats - PNG, JPG)
Both Base Image and Differentiating Image resolutions have to be the same. The User will also need to ensure that the resolution of the device you perform the test on matches the baseline image resolution
Image resolution should be same as the device resolution

Importance Of Visual Validation Testing

No matter how accurately your application functions, it won't be of any use to the customer unless it provides an astounding user interface and user experience.

These days, we not only talk about UI (User Interface), but we also focus a lot on UX (user experience). When we talk about delivering superior user experience, visual testing becomes critical.

Some areas where visual validation testing is highly recommended are:

Mobile Apps
Mobile Web/Responsive Web
Marketing websites
Consumer systems like airlines, travel, banking, etc.

note

To perform Visual Testing the uploaded baseline image should be in png format.

Methods

You can perform the Visual Testing using two methods:

Method 1 - Through API
Method 2 - By using pre-build command

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