How to Automate Visual Regression Testing?

Automation is essential to simplifying this process since it provides the testing workflow with efficiency, accuracy, and scalability. Development teams can identify visual differences early in the development cycle by automating visual regression testing.

This allows for quick feedback and improves the overall quality of the software. Let's understand about this term in detail.

What is Visual Regression Testing?

Visual regression testing is a software development technique for identifying unintentional visual modifications made to the user interface (UI) of a web application. To find any differences, screenshots of the user interface (UI) of the application are compared before and after code changes. Developers can guarantee that changes to the coding don't bring about unexpected visual changes that could degrade the user experience by automating this process. Visual regression testing contributes to the overall quality and usability of the program by ensuring that it looks consistent across a range of browsers, devices, and screen resolutions.

Purpose of Visual Regression Testing

1. Detecting Visual Defects: VRT aims to identify any visual discrepancies or defects introduced during the development process, such as layout shifts, color changes, font variations, or UI element misalignments.
2. Maintaining Visual Consistency: It helps maintain a consistent and polished user experience by ensuring that UI elements render correctly across various devices, browsers, and screen resolutions.
3. Preventing User Experience Issues: By catching visual bugs early, VRT reduces the risk of user-facing issues that could impact usability, accessibility, and overall customer satisfaction.

Why should you Automate it?

1. Enhanced Cooperation: By offering a common framework for evaluating and verifying UI modifications, automated visual regression testing fosters cooperation across developers, designers, and QA engineers.
2. Consistency: Visual regression tests are performed consistently across various browsers, devices, and environments thanks to automation, which produces more dependable and repeatable results.
3. Early Issue Detection: Teams can identify and resolve visual inconsistencies early in the development process, preventing them from developing into more serious issues, by including visual regression testing into the CI/CD pipeline.
4. Efficiency: Teams may test more frequently and thoroughly due to automation, which drastically cuts down on the time and effort needed to do visual regression testing as compared to human techniques.
5. Accuracy: Automated tools can take and compare screenshots with precision, reducing the possibility of human error in manual testing and guaranteeing accurate results.
6. Better User Experience: Automation contributes to the upkeep of a polished and consistent user interface by proactively detecting and fixing visual flaws, which eventually improves user happiness and experience in general.

Why Visual Regression Testing?

Visual regression testing is more important when it comes to ensuring the inter face integrity when changes are being made. Here are some reasons why it's important:

1. Improve User Experience: To prevent these visual issues from reaching the end users, it is beneficial to incorporate it to catch visual issues before they get to the production stage of the application.
2. Cross-Browser and Responsive Testing: Allows checking the application look in different browsers and on different devices – in order this application to look the same everywhere it is used.
3. Detect Visual Bugs: It comes in handy in detecting some forms of user interface problems that may go unnoticed by comprehensive functional tests such as horizontal or vertical alignment of HTML elements or proper color choice and layout.
4. Maintain Design Consistency: Facilitating that new code for changes or update does not bring about shifts in the initial designs or the interface of a program.
5. Quick Feedback: Helps in giving feedback during a development cycle thus eliminating the common problem of visualize during the manual QA or post-release development cycles.
6. Automate Repetitive Checks: This software saves checking on other significant visual features of the application to other people thus eliminating errors that may normally have been made by human eye.

Importance of Visual Validation Testing

Visual validation testing is essential for ensuring that users of a web application or other software have the greatest possible experience. Here's why it is important:

1. Guarantees a Uniform User Experience

Importance: As versions of an application are built, visual validation testing allows a programmer to verify that there are no differences in the site layout or other objects that are visible. This kind of consistency is crucial for utilization since any inconsistency a user finds in an application will have an impact on how that user utilizes it.

2. Identifies Intentional Visual Alterations

Importance: While updating the interface, certain new and unexpected visual changes may arise due to code adjustments or style and interaction with third-party apps. certain changes are inevitable even during development. Violators are detected before they affect the end users, and the application maintains its original visual design.

3. Lessens the Need for Manual Testing

Importance: When using the unaided eye, it takes a long time and frequently results in human error. By comparing the screenshots and finding the evident and significant visual changes, automated visual validation testing reduces the amount of time that could be spent doing the test manually. The QA teams are able to focus on other crucial and challenging aspects of testing because of this efficiency.

4. Promotes compatibility across devices and browsers

Importance: Modern online apps need to work across a wide range of operating systems and browsers. Visual validation testing verifies that the program appears the same in all environments and user interface modes, including development mode, on various browsers and devices.

5. Enhances risk management and quality auditing

Importance: Synopsis By integrating visual validation testing into the development process, issues with visual defects can be resolved before they have an impact on consumers. It serves the best interests of the brand by aiding in overall quality control and assisting in the prevention of potential bad outcomes that could arise from providing end users with applications that are visually flawed.

Different Methods of Visual Regression Testing

1.Pixel-by-Pixel Comparison

Explanation: This method aims at comparing the pixel of the baseline image and the pixel of the current version. It does so on the basics of the color value in every pixel.

Pros:

• High Accuracy: Wed, see visual dissimilarities to an extent even though the variation is extremely trivial.
• Simple Implementation: Simple and clear method that people comprehend easily.

Cons:

• High Sensitivity: This is due to the fact that small changes like rendering differences from slightly different environment or different browser will also be identified as anomalies.
• Performance Issues: May take more time and required a lot of resources especially if the page is huge or contains many elements.

2. Layout-Based Comparison

Explanation: This method deals with comparing layouts and structures of the web page and not the pixel by pixel. It looks for disparities in term of position and size of items.

Pros:

• Focus on Structure: Recommended for identifying cases when the layout alterations affect the view perceived by the users, for example, repositioning or scaling of the elements.
• Reduces False Positives: It is not as affected by small changes in the pixel level which does not change the layout.

Cons:

• Less Granular: Does not capture other improvements that have not impacted the layout but rather the esthetics of the site.
• Requires Accurate Baselines: Yes, but it is possible to construct an efficient layout only if the coordinates of the baseline are defined and accurate.

3. Screenshot Comparison

Explanation: Here it involves capturing of the web page and then comparing it with other captured or baseline screenshots. This comparison can be pixel-to-pixel, where the layouts are compared, or based on some other metrics connected with the screen image.

Pros:

• Visual Representation: Looks at the pre-intervention and post-intervention outcomes with ease since the data is compared by Tenant.
• Flexible: Has the potential of using different types of comparisons that are pixel-based, layout based, etc.

Cons:

• Environment Sensitivity: Basically, it is caused by different screen resolution, browser, or operating system that may cause the false positives.
• Storage and Performance: Most likely, it involves storage of multiple screenshots and can use a lot of memory.

4. Visual AI Comparison

Explanation: There is always the option of using machine learning based tools for visual regression and they engage in analyzing and comparing of images. This way, they can identify visual alterations and measure how the impact the users in their interactions.

Pros:

• Smart Detection: Has contextual meaning and can recognize when a shift matters to when it does not.
• Learning Capabilities: AI can become progressively accurate because it acquires insights from the past test outcomes.

Cons:

• Complexity: Can be difficult for the organization to implement given the need for elaborate basic artificial intelligence models and training data.
• Cost: May presume higher costs as often requires additional tools and infrastructure compared to other sorts of learning.

5. DOM-Based Comparison

Explanation: Such a method is based on the comparison of DOM trees rather than on the looks of the web page. It identifies alterations in the structure of HTML elements and their characteristics.

Pros:

• Structural Focus: Suitable for identification of shifts in the web site’s layout and material.
• Faster: Typically faster when compared to pixel-based comparisons as it does not use image processing.

Cons:

• Limited Visual Insight: Doesn’t get the visual differences as such so it might overlook some of the fine visual issues with the DOM.
• Dependency on Accurate DOM: Is reliant on baseline DOM which must be well defined in order to be used effectively.

What about Manual Visual Checks?

Manual visual checks include human testers visually examining a web application's user interface to find any errors, inconsistencies, or variations. Although automation has many benefits, manual visual checks have a role in the testing process and offer certain advantages of their own.

Some of the benefits are:

1. Subjective Evaluation: Since automated methods could have trouble capturing important details like aesthetics, user experience, and brand consistency, human testers can offer subjective insights into the application's visual elements.
2. User Perspective: By emulating user interactions and evaluating the application from the viewpoint of end users, manual testers can evaluate the program by taking into account aspects like readability, accessibility, and intuitiveness that may have an impact on user engagement and satisfaction.
3. Complex Visual Elements: It can be difficult to precisely automate some visual aspects or interactions, such as animations, transitions, or complicated layouts. Manual visual inspections offer a more detailed evaluation of these components.
4. Edge Cases: Although automated tests might not fully cover uncommon scenarios and edge cases, human testers are skilled at spotting them. They can replicate real-world user interactions and assess the application's reaction by using their imagination and domain knowledge.

What percentage of Visual Bugs are caught by Automated Visual Regression Tests?

Although a large percentage of visual flaws can be detected by automated visual regression tests, the precise percentage depends on test design, UI complexity, and the tools and techniques used. To obtain complete test coverage and guarantee a superior user experience, it is frequently required to combine automated testing with manual verification and exploratory testing.

1. Effectiveness of Test Cases: A large percentage of visual problems can be detected by thorough, well-designed test cases. Between 70% and 90% of visual problems may be found by automated tests, depending on how extensive the test cases are.
2. Accuracy of Comparison Algorithms: One important consideration in visual comparison is the accuracy of the algorithms employed. The accuracy of automated visual regression tests is increased by certain systems that use complex picture diffing techniques to precisely detect even minute visual changes.
3. Human Oversight and Verification: Despite automation, results verification and the detection of false positives or negatives depend on human oversight. Using human testers can help ensure a more thorough testing strategy by identifying visual issues that automated tests might miss.
4. Complexity of UI Elements: Automated tests are good at spotting simple visual alterations like layout modifications or color variations. More complex components, such as animations or dynamic content, may be difficult for them to handle, which could reduce the total percentage of visual problems found.

Automated Visual Regression Testing Use Cases

The technique of ensuring that the visual components of a web or mobile application are constant and free of inadvertent changes during development is known as Automated Visual Regression Testing, or AVRT.

The following are some important AVRT use cases:

1.User Interface (UI) Consistency

• UI Element Integrity: Recognize or locate non-intentionally created elements in controls, such as new buttons, icons, fonts, and colors.
• Responsive Design Testing:Ensure that the freshly produced application layout and design operate correctly at various resolutions such as desktop, tablet, mobile, and so on.

2.Regression Testing

• Post-Deployment Verification: The ‘revision history’ tab indicates that the changes affecting the application over the last hour have not altered the application’s appearance.
• Continuous Integration (CI): To initiate AVRT to run as a part of CI pipelines where it form part of tests to performed every time changes are made and merged to the branch.

3. Content Validation

• Dynamic Content: Ensuring that other content (i. e. , content generated by users, data from APIs) is properly shown and has no issues.
• Localization Testing: For instance, preventing translation in multiple languages from resulting into the layout of the material being affected or text to overwrite one another.

4. Brand Compliance

• Marketing Campaigns: Confirming that banners and ads, as other types of promotional content, are displayed properly on any chosen platform and in various devices.
• Theming and Skinning: It is especially important to ensure that the developed skins or themes that are used in the application are properly coordinated and as far as possible, are truthful to their concept.

5. E-Commerce Applications

• Product Display: Confirming that the correct product images, prices, and descriptions are being viewed by other people.
• Checkout Process: Making sure that all the checkouts steps look good both in terms of structure and there are no defects on the elements and controls on the page.

6. Content Management Systems (CMS)

• Template Validation: Keeping modification on the templates from having degradation to the appearance.
• Content Updates: Ensuring that new or updated content loads to the page is visible and does not affect the site’s layout.

7. Gaming Applications

• UI/UX Consistency: Maintaining the cohesiveness of menus in game, Head’s up displays and any other UI devices or components between levels or patches.
• Cross-Platform Testing: Verifying the authenticity of a video game’s look and feel from one platform to another (PC, Console, mobile gaming).

8. Accessibility Testing

• Visual Clarity: Checking that referenced images and videos are correctly tagged so that structure and form elements that more or less allow for readable text from a distance are correctly coded.
• Text and Image Visibility: Confirming that the text is easy to read and not overlaid by other elements of a UI or obscured by an image.

Benefits of Visual Regression Testing

The benefits of visual regression testing are stated in five important points:

• Early Detection of Visual Bugs: The use of automated visual regression testing allows developers to detect any changes in the visual interface that were created during the development phase, thereby eradicating such problems at an early stage rather than after the product has been released and is on the market.
• Ensures Visual Consistency: Additionally, by comparing current and prior versions of the program, it equally retains the overall interface and makes updates and upgrades visually consistent.
• Reduces Manual Testing Effort: The redundant manual vehicle inspection time is greatly reduced, and the system performs the majority of the regular inspections.
• Facilitates Faster Release Cycles: Because it is easily compatible with CI/CD procedures, it provides immediate RFI on visual changes, hence speeding up development and release processes.
• Improves User Experience: It increases the user's happiness and engagement since the looks and functionalities he sees and experiences correspond to his expectations, hence improving his entire user experience.

Tools for Automate Visual Regression Testing

1. BackstopJS : automates visual testing and generates visual results for tested web applications.
2. Percy: Easily integrates with CI/CD systems for end-to-end visual testing.
3. Applitools: stands out for using powerful visual AI to describe visual abnormalities and provide test coverage.
4. Selenium: When used with visual comparison tools, it can automate visual testing across several browsers.
5. Puppeteer: Puppeteer is another type of browser testing tool that may be used to perform visual testing in a variety of environments.

Features and Benefits of Visual Regression Testing

Key Features:

• Automated Screenshot Capture: During the test execution, Testsigma gives the opportunity to take screenshots of the web pages. These screenshots are appealing and may be used as a baseline for future comparisons.
• Intelligent Comparison: When photographs are compared, it can detect changes in the look of the item with low fluctuation.
• Integration with CI/CD: The testsigma tool will be included in the CI/CD practice, allowing you to see tests as part of the development process. This aids in the early detection of visual changes as they evolve during the lifetime.
• Cross-Browser Testing: Testsigma supports cross-browser and cross-device testing, allowing teams to assure the visual compatibility of their apps.
• Collaboration & Reporting: This allows testers to adopt a more visual approach, sharing presentations comparing baseline and current photos with other developers and stakeholders. Most of the reports are rather clear and may be beneficial in making certain judgments.
• Version Control: Most baseline pictures have many versions, and Testsigma users may simply maintain track of such versions.

Benefits :

• Improved Quality Assurance: Thus, using Testsigma, deviations from the expected quality of the video are quickly found, which contributes to improving the overall quality of web applications and stabilizing the experience of using the service by users.
• Reduced Manual Effort: Visual regression testing helps QA teams to free up more time than the regular manual testing so that more complicated tests can be done.
• Faster Feedback Cycles: Integration also with CI/CD pipelines helps to get the feedback on the changes in visuals in the real-time which decrease the time to deliver the changes to the market.
• Scalability: The company has designed its testsigma cloud based interface in such a manner that it can be used for other large teams and complicated applications hence appropriate for the many organizations.
• User-Friendly Interface: The easy to use platform enables even the technical ordinarily, weak users to be able to perform visual regression tests creating, executing, and analyzing them.

Popular Libraries for Automating Visual Regression Testing

1. Percy.io

A visual testing tool called Percy works well with current front-end development processes. It takes screenshots of websites and recognizes visual differences between versions automatically. Percy provides features including responsive design testing support, interfaces with common CI/CD technologies, and visual review and approval workflows.

Who Uses: Development teams who work on websites and online applications and wish to automate visual regression testing as part of their CI/CD processes use Percy.io.

Pros:

1. Smooth interaction with widely used CI/CD tools, such as GitHub Actions, Jenkins, and CircleCI.
2. Offers graphic dashboards that make it simple to compare screenshots and identify changes in appearance.
3. The capacity to take screenshots with different viewport widths and browsers.

Cons:

1. Restricted free tier, premium programs offer more extensive functionality.
2. Needs internet access to take and process screenshots.
3. May not be able to handle dynamic content or complex visual elements without some constraints.

2. BackstopJS

This open-source tool for visual regression testing can be used headless with Puppeteer or within a browser. It uses an easy configuration file to build test scenarios for developers, and it takes screenshots of websites automatically. Features like custom thresholds for change detection, visual diffing, and connection with CI/CD pipelines are all offered by BackstopJS.

Who Uses: Developers and QA engineers who want a command-line interface for setting up and executing visual regression tests are the ones who use BackstopJS.

Pros:

1. A JSON-based configuration file is used for easy setup and configuration.
2. Integrating into CI/CD pipelines is made simple by the command-line interface.
3. Allows for testing on various devices and viewports.

Cons:

1. Restricted analytical and reporting capabilities in contrast to certain other tools.
2. Additional manual labor is needed to set up and manage test scenarios.
3. Perhaps not as appropriate for groups who need sophisticated visual diffing algorithms or a lot of collaboration tools.

3. Applitools Eyes

AI-powered visual validation and regression testing capabilities are offered by Applitools Eyes, a potent visual testing tool. Numerous programming languages and frameworks are supported, such as Cypress, Selenium WebDriver, and others. Advanced functionality like cross-browser testing, layout testing, and connection with CI/CD processes are available with Applitools Eyes.

Who Uses: QA engineers and developers who work on online and mobile applications who need automated visual testing capabilities are avid supporters of Applitools Eyes.

Pros:

1. Powerful AI-powered visual testing techniques for precise image comparison.
2. Supports a large number of programming languages and platforms, including desktop, mobile, and web apps.
3. Intelligent maintenance tools to lower false positives and automatically manage baseline photos.

Cons:

1. For solo developers or small teams, prices could be somewhat high.
2. The complex feature setup and configuration learning curve.
3. restricted offline testing capacity in contrast to several other tools.

Visual Regression Testing and AI: What’s Next?

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are the future of visual regression testing. Modern AI-based VRT technologies are more clever and can precisely pinpoint minor changes that conventional pixel differential checks may ignore. They can also distinguish between substantial and trivial changes in the interface, reducing false positive results and focusing on issue areas that may harm end users. Furthermore, by learning from past test runs, accuracy improves, and it may forecast the probability of a visual error and potential fixes before they occur. This evolution delivers benefits in testing current operations, which helps  to contribute a faster software development cycle and ensures great graphics resolution across a variety of devices and browsers. In the future, as AI advances, more automated and intelligent test solutions will emerge, reducing the need for human effort and improving visual regression testing.

Related Articles:

• Visual Testing – Software Testing
• Regression Testing – Software Engineering
• Automation Testing – Software Testing
• Software Testing Tutorial

Conclusion

In conclusion, an essential technique in modern software development is automating visual regression testing, which enables teams to effectively maintain the visual coherence and caliber of their online applications. Developers can quickly detect visual regressions, accelerate testing procedures, and produce a refined user experience by utilizing automated tools and frameworks. Accepting it enables development teams to produce high-caliber software that fulfills user expectations while also accelerating release cycles and improving teamwork.