In the dynamic world of software development, ensuring flawless visual appeal and user experience is essential. As users progressively engage more with apps across multiple platforms and devices, guaranteeing a flawless visual presentation has become a non-negotiable facet of QA (quality assurance). This is where visual testing, an approach devoted to verifying the visual facets of applications, emerges as a critical factor of the QA procedure.
Unlike traditional manual testing, which confirms that features work as proposed, visual testing involves detecting any visual discrepancies that might impact user satisfaction. It guarantees a consistent user experience across multiple browsers, devices, and screen sizes. In this article, we will delve into the arena of visual testing and explore some of the top visual testing tools that play a crucial role in streamlining the Software Development Life Cycle., certifying pixel-perfect apps and a seamless user experience.
What is visual testing?
Visual testing is a software testing technique that verifies the visual aspects and behavior of a software app’s UI or GUI (graphical user interface). Visual testing is important for QA which aims to identify visual discrepancies and authenticate that the app’s visual components such as images, colors, layouts, and fonts are displayed correctly, ensuring a polished and consistent user experience.
Key Components of Visual Testing:
- User Interface (UI) Components: Buttons, colors, images, fonts, text, and other graphical elements
- Layout & Responsiveness: Layout of the app across varied resolutions and screen sizes.
- Cross-Browser Compatibility: Layout of an application across different web browsers.
- Visual Regressions: Unintended visual changes are introduced during the development process.
- Accessibility Compliance: Elements such as color contrast and font size, comply with accessibility based guidelines.
Methods of Visual Testing:
- Manual Visual Testing: QA specialists manually relate screenshots of the app before and after modifications to detect visual discrepancies. While effective, this technique is time-taking and might not be suitable for large-scale projects.
- Automated Visual Testing: Automated visual testing includes the usage of specialized visual testing tools and frameworks to capture and compare screenshots automatically. This approach is effective for dynamic and large projects, allowing rapid and perfect detection of visual changes.
Why should you Perform Visual Testing?
Performing visual testing is critical for multiple reasons, as it directly contributes to delivering a smooth and positive user experience. Let’s take a look at some of the crucial reasons why visual testing should be an important part of your QA process:
- Confirming Consistent User Experience
- Why it Matters: Users communicate with apps visually, and discrepancies in the user interface can result in frustration and confusion.
- Visual Testing Benefit: By verifying the visual appearance of your app, you ensure an unfailing and polished user experience across various devices, browsers, and screen sizes.
- Finding Layout and Design Flaws
- Why it Matters: Layout and design glitches, like incorrect spacing or misaligned elements, can negatively influence the overall aesthetics and usability of an app.
- Visual Testing Benefit: Visual test help catch these bugs early, controlling them from hitting the end-users and managing a visually appealing user interface.
- Validating Responsive Design
- Why it Matters: With the prevalence of several devices, displays, and screen sizes, confirming a responsive design is essential for reaching a varied user base.
- Visual Testing Benefit: By testing how your app reacts to varied screen sizes and resolutions, visual testing confirms that your app is visually appealing and functional across a suite of devices.
- Identifying Visual Regressions
- Why it Matters: Code updates and alterations can inadvertently introduce visual regressions, impacting the application’s visual appearance.
- Visual Testing Benefit: Automated visual test tools can find even subtle visual alterations, letting QA teams detect regressions early in the software development process and maintain a constant look and feel.
- Enhancing Brand Image and Reputation
- Why it Matters: A visually appealing and bug-free app contributes to a positive user perception and brand image.
- Visual Testing Benefit: Visual testing confirms that your app aligns with your brand’s visual identity, promoting a positive user experience and contributing to a robust brand reputation.
- Improving Cross-Browser Compatibility
- Why it Matters: Users access apps utilizing varied web browsers, each with its rendering engine and odds.
- Visual Testing Benefit: Testing your app across multiple browsers guarantees that it looks and functions appropriately on famous browsers, avoiding visual discrepancies and glitches specific to definite browsers.
- Meeting Accessibility Standards
- Why it Matters: Accessibility is an essential aspect of application and web development, guaranteeing that all users, counting those with disabilities, can access and use your app.
- Visual Testing Benefit: Visual testing can help detect accessibility glitches linked to font size, contrast, and other visual components, confirming your app meets accessibility standards.
Top 16 Visual Testing Tools to Streamline QA Process
With the rise of manifold mobile and web apps, the necessity for automated visual testing tools has become paramount and more critical than ever. These incredible testing tools allow QA teams to identify and address visual regressions early in app development, thus saving extra time and money.
- LambdaTest
As we explore the diverse world of visual testing tools, one of the top-performing platforms that stand out is LambdaTest. This incredible platform assists testers and developers in locating visual UI regression errors in just a single click using AI-based smart visual testing. With its all-inclusive suite of visual testing competencies, LambdaTest provides a smooth and positive solution for certifying pixel-perfect apps across myriad browsers and devices. The platform’s scalability, ease of use, and incorporation with popular test automation frameworks, and comprehensive visual testing reports make it a game-changer in the arena of visual testing.
LambdaTest offers you an online browser farm of three thousand plus desktop and mobile devices to serve your cross-browser test requirements. The best part is that you can flawlessly integrate LambdaTest using distinct test frameworks like Puppeteer, Cypress, Playwright, Selenium, and Appium with a comprehensive CI/CD tech stack.
- Applitools
One of the famous visual testing tools in the market, Applitools, is popular for employing Artificial Intelligence in visual regression testing. It provides feature-rich products such as Ultrafast Grid, Eyes, and Ultrafast Test Cloud, for intelligent, effective, and automated testing. It offers an extensive range of features and integrations to assist users to automate their test process. It provides an AI-centric visual validation engine to identify the slightest visible modifications.
- Functionize
Functionize is a premier QA testing tool that uses Artificial Intelligence to empower teams with E2E testing that self-heals and runs at scale in the cloud. This enables for rapid testing, cut costs, and enhanced quality in Contiguous Integration/ Contiguous Delivery environments. Its AI-centric platform creates more stable testing resulting from its exceptional big data approach. Functionize also empowers QA teams and future-proofs expertise with low-code smart testing, reducing the requirement for highly technical “coders” to automate tests.
- Hermione.js
It is an open-source or free visual testing tool that streamlines integration and regression testing even though only for more straightforward sites. It is simpler to kick-start Hermione with previous knowledge of WebdriverIO and Mocha, and the tool assists in parallel testing across multiple browsers. Besides, Hermione efficiently uses sub-processes to tackle the computation concerns associated with parallel testing. Besides this, the tool allows you to segregate tests from a test suite by only adding a path to the testing folder.
- Wraith
It is an open-source or free visual testing tool that enables users to distinguish and compare the layout of two web pages effortlessly. Wraith can be used to identify visual regressions in web apps. The specialized tool utilizes a headless browser and is simple to install and implement within your workflow. Wraith functions alongside CasperJS, PhantomJS, ImageMagick, and Ruby23.
- BackstopJS
It is a visual regression testing tool that lets users identify and fix visual regressions in their web apps rapidly. BackstopJS is a testing tool that can be smoothly incorporated with Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery pipelines for catching visual regressions. As others cited above, BackstopJS relates webpage screenshots with a standard test suite to flag any alterations exceeding a minimum threshold.
- Aye Spy
A visual regression tool, Aye Spy is free or open-source and heavily inspired by Wraith and BackstopJS. At its core, the makers had one concern they wanted to challenge- performance. Many visual regression tools available in the market are missing this key component that Aye Spy finally decided to integrate with 40 User Interface comparisons in under 60 sec (with optimum setup, indeed)!
- PhantomCSS
PhantomCSS is one of the most preferred visual regression testing tools that enables users to effortlessly identify and address visual regressions in their web apps. It uses PhantomJS to capture screenshots of web pages automatically and then compares them to earlier versions to discover any visual changes.
- Leapwork
Leapwork is an AI-centric automation tool that is beneficial for visual testing automation with a smaller learning curve, outstanding technical assistance, and a GUI-centric Windows platform that makes it simple to learn. Most effective for User Interface snapshot testing. Leapwork is easy to use and supports automation of desktop, web, and APIs, and regression tests of test cases during app upgrades, which is a huge time saver.
- Huxley
It is a visual regression tests tool that allows users to effortlessly identify and address visual regressions in their web apps. Huxley allows users to record a suite of activities on a web page and then compares screenshots of the page automatically taken before and after the activities to detect any visual changes.
- Needle
This is an amazing testing tool that can be used for testing CSS and Visuals through Nose and Selenium. Needle checks the visuals (images/SVG, fonts, CSS, etc.) render properly by taking screenshots of a portion of a site by comparing with screenshots.
- Galen Framework
It is an open-source tool for testing web User Interfaces. Galen Framework is mainly used for interactive sites. Even if developed in Java, Galen Framework offers multi-language support, counting JavaScript and CSS. The framework runs on Selenium Grid and can be easily incorporated with any cloud testing platform.
- Storybook
It is a popular development tool for crafting UI elements and visualizing their differences in isolation. Storybook offers a dedicated sandbox environment to display User Interface components, aiding in speedy iteration and error detection. It assists in documenting elements, provides automated testing capabilities, and promotes collaborative development and design via its accessibility and design system integration traits.
- Resemble.js
It is a visual comparison testing tool that enables users to compare the layout of two different images. Resemble.js can be used for detecting visual regressions in web apps by comparing screenshots of similar web pages taken at distinct times.
- VisualEyes
It is a visual testing tool that provides automated visual testing and assessment for web applications. VisualEyes uses ML (machine learning) to notice even the slightest visual alterations in web pages using heat maps.
- VisualCeption
It is also one of the popular visual testing tools that uses a straightforward, 5-step procedure to run visual regression testing. VisualCeption uses WebDriver to capture a snapshot, JS (JavaScript) for calculating component positions and sizes, and Imagick for cropping and contrasting visual elements. An exception, if turned out, is handled by Codeception.
Why LambdaTest for Visual Testing?
- Scalability: Easily scale your visual test efforts based on project needs, enabling for effective testing in varied scenarios.
- Broad Browser and Device Coverage: Provides access to a huge suite of real devices and browsers, confirming all-inclusive visual testing across distinct environs.
- Incorporation Capabilities: Flawlessly incorporates famous automated testing frameworks, allowing teams to incorporate visual tests into their current workflows.
Note: You can also subscribe to the LambdaTest YouTube Channel and keep yourself updated with the most recent tutorials around automation testing, Selenium testing, and more.
Conclusion
In the wide series of visual testing tools existing in the market, the right tool streamlines the test process and helps identify and fix flaws effectively, improving the overall app quality. For QA teams devoted to delivering visually impeccable mobile apps, LambdaTest emerges as a robust and versatile visual testing platform. LambdaTest, for instance, offers automated visual testing competencies, letting you compare screenshots and confirm error-free employment in a short timeframe. On a side note, one could even highlight visual alterations to detect bugs and deliver pixel-perfect websites through our Screenshot Comparison Tool.
Streamline your QA process, ensure a flawless user experience, and stay ahead in the competitive market scenario with LambdaTest. Happy Testing!!
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
- How do visual test tools contribute to cross-browser compatibility?
Visual testing tools allow testing an app’s visual appearance across distinct browsers, guaranteeing that it looks and functions appropriately on famous web browsers. This assists in preventing visual discrepancies and bugs specific to specific browsers.
- How do visual testing tools contribute to meeting accessibility standards?
Visual testing tools can assist in identifying accessibility flaws related to font size, contrast, and other visual components. Confirming compliance with accessibility standards is vital for making apps accessible to every user, counting those with disabilities.
- Can visual testing be automated?
Yes, visual testing can be automated with the usage of visual testing tools. Such tools capture screenshots of pages and then relate them to earlier versions to detect any visual alterations. Hence, automated visual tests can save resources by finding and addressing visual regressions early on in the app development process.
