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testinguser-interfacewebui-automationweb-testing

Is there a way to automate 'look and feel' testing of a web page?


I have few resources to perform testing on many projects with hundreds of different web pages and the most tedious part is verifying the look and feel of the site is OK. Specially the layouts of HTML elements are not broken.

Is there a way to automate such testing by not developing highly sophisticated AI tools ? :)


Solution

  • I'll add my vote to Arran's comment that while you /can/ do this, you likely should /not/ spend your valuable time on this. I base this on a lot of years working around UI automation in many different tools including Watir, WebDriver, Selenium RC, Visual Studio, and Telerik's Test Studio.

    UI automation is difficult and brittle enough when you're simply trying to do functional testing. Trying to automate look and feel to validate CSS, layout positioning, image appearance, etc. is extraordinarily brittle--even the smallest difference between browsers and the smallest change to the UI will leave you spending a lot of time updating failing tests.

    Yes, it's possible. However, keep your sanity by focusing your automation efforts on functionality. Leave visual checks to the tools that do it the quickest and easiest: human eyes.

    UPDATE: Please do read the response from dcoder. He/she is absolutely right. There have been some significant (long overdue!) advances in the field. You need to evaluate those tools for fit.