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August Product Update

August 13, 2019 By Joan Liu Leave a Comment

August Product Updates

Hot out of the hottest month on record, here are product updates from the last month. It’s a short one but it highlights some valuable updates from the team. Be on the lookout for some bigger updates in the coming months!

Free automation minutes

Live plans now have access to a limited number of automation minutes per month. This means you can now launch screenshot tests via our API, use our Replay suites, and schedule recurring screenshots and replays. This is a great option to set up some very basic automated tests of your site or application. The minutes are reset every month on your billing date and there is no rollover.

Here’s a refresher video on our scheduling feature.

More Filters

We received some customer input on filters they would like to see and we’ve added two. You can now filter screenshot results by those that have annotations.

We also added a filter so you can easily see your running or queued tests.

New Browsers and Operating Systems

We released Firefox 68, Chrome 76, and Opera 62.

Bug of the Month

We noticed that some of our Edge browsers were displaying pages a little strangely. Digging into this issue, we discovered that Edge thought it was supposed to be displaying the mobile view, even though it was a desktop configuration. After some investigation, we determined the issue was due to a race condition between our code to resize the browser to full screen and code to launch the browser. We have fixed this Edge case.

Try out all the new improvements for yourself. Log in now to get started. 

Filed Under: Product Update Tagged With: automation, browser update, product update, screenshot comparison, screenshots

June Product Updates

June 10, 2019 By Joan Liu Leave a Comment

June Product Update - CrossBrowserTesting

The days are getting longer but apparently not long enough for me to have written a May updates post. Oops! Here’s what’s new in the last two months.

Screenshot Improvements

We built our screenshot system in the early days of CrossBrowserTesting when the available technologies were very different. After years of incremental improvements, we’re finally devoting a large part to our Q2 to making our already powerful screenshot testing system into a premier Visual Testing tool.

So far, we’ve reduced the amount of time it takes for screenshots to complete by an average of 20 seconds. This included switching to Selenium’s screenshot functionality, which didn’t exist when we started building screenshots.

We have also given our Full Page comparisons an updated UI and brought it within our app to accommodate for some new things we’re still working on.

The old DOM-based comparison is still available on the results page, under the ellipses menu in the top right. We’re continuing to work on the comparison UI, so keep an eye on it!

Status Page

We have a new status page that can alert you when we’re down. You can subscribe to text or email notifications, or to our RSS feed. The data is powered by Alertsite, another great product in the SmartBear portfolio of Testing solutions.

We love hearing from our customers, but:

Hackathon

The CrossBrowserTesting team at SmartBear held a 2-day hackathon, and as it coincided with the season premiere of Game of Thrones, we had a Game of Thrones-themed hackathon. The teams chose houses and projects. The winner’s project was pushed to production. Other projects are in our backlog.

Our teams and their punny battle-cries:

  • Stark – Fully-Headless Ned
  • Targaryen – CSS AND BLOOD
  • Lannister – We Make the Difference
  • Night’s Watch JS – Frameworks gather, and now my watch begins
  • Bolton – Our Knives are Sharp

SPOILER ALERT – Our team’s performance accurately predicted the series’ ending House Targaryen came in 2nd, both in our hackathon and in the series. House Stark won the crown, with their Fully-Headless Ned project.

Their battle-cry was also an insight into their project, as it involved headless Chrome! Using our existing screenshot service, we now also run a Lighthouse audit using headless Chrome. This provides actionable items for you to improve the performance, accessibility, and SEO of your site, all while you’re visually testing your site. To learn more about how to use our results, read our help documentation.

New Browsers and Operating Systems

We released Chrome 73, Chrome 74, Firefox 66, Firefox 67, and Opera 60 for testing. Opera skipped version 59.

We updated our iPad Pro to iOS 12.2, previously running on iOS 10. This update allowed for faster interactions and more uptime.

Bug of the Month

We discovered that we had some Selenium sessions that seemed to be idle. Idle sessions would occur when a user cancels a CI job, in Travis for example, which kills the virtual machine. There is not a way to clean up after this happens and we would never receive notification that the session had ended, keeping the parallel in use. We now have a timeout capability for Selenium tests. Adding “idle_timeout” and a value in seconds allows users to set a timeout time, and we default it to 3 minutes otherwise.

Try out all the new improvements for yourself. Log in now to get started.

Filed Under: Visual Testing Tagged With: hackathon, june, product update, screenshot comparison, screenshots

CrossBrowserTesting Meets Applitools Eyes in Our Most Recent Integration

December 13, 2017 By Alex McPeak 1 Comment

CrossBrowserTesting and Applitools Eyes integration visual testing

CrossBrowserTesting and Applitools Eyes integration visual testing

What happens when you combine over 1,500 real desktop and mobile browsers with the leader in AI-powered visual comparison testing tools? Simply put, an unbeatable codeless visual testing strategy.

Now it’s easier than ever to take automated browser screenshots across hundreds of different browsers with CrossBrowserTesting, and then have Applitools Eyes analyze the differences, down to the pixel level.

We’ve always thought Applitools did an amazing job with their visual comparisons, and once we investigated the solution further, we saw what a great choice it was for regression testing. We also thought we could couple our browser and device lab’s Automated Screenshot functionality with the Applitool’s Image Comparison engine to create something really special and bring consumers a faster, simpler way to produce the screenshots needed for comparison.

What is Visual Testing?

So, what is visual testing in the first place and why should you be excited about this partnership? Visual testing allows you to test that your website or web application looks correctly at the UI level. While functional testing focuses on making sure things work, visual testing focuses on making sure things look right. And it’s becoming a bigger deal!

Since different browsers will often render an application differently, visual testing is critical in cross-browser testing to make sure the actual user experience aligns with how it’s designed to look in terms of layout, text, images, etc. If a button can be clicked, but it’s nearly off the page entirely on an iPhone 6 and looks awful, this code shouldn’t go to production. But if you simply had Selenium tests or another type of functional testing, this error would be missed as it “technically” did pass our functionality test.

Previously, visual testing on multiple browsers and devices requires technical knowledge of scripting or a long manual process. However, with the CrossBrowserTesting and Applitools integration, comparing screenshot regressions is smooth and streamlined for a tester of any level — no coding necessary.

Getting Started with the Applitools Integration in CrossBrowserTesting

You’ll first need to set up a CrossBrowserTesting account and Applitools account if you don’t already have one. This will give you an API key to use once you’re in CrossBrowserTesting.

Then, when you pick your browsers, run a test under “Screenshots” in CrossBrowserTesting, and click advanced options, you should see an option to “Send to Applitools”. Click “Set” to enter your Applitools API key, pick the browsers you want to use, run the test, and that’s it! You will receive screenshots of your application in each browser, and the test will be automatically sent to Applitools where you can see each batch.

Applitools Eyes Visual testing CrossBrowserTesting

The best part is that when you run your tests again in the future, it’s easy to find the test in CrossBrowserTesting and select “Run Again” to create new screenshots that will automatically upload to Applitools and match against their earlier versions. That’s when you can go to Applitools for a visual comparison that shows passing and failing tests. These types of visual regression tests can be incredibly powerful and save hours of time writing code.

CrossBrowserTesting and Applitools visual testing

For more information on using the CrossBrowserTesting and Applitools integration, you can visit our support page here.

Happier Testing

To sum it up, here are a few reasons why the CrossBrowserTesting and Applitools Eyes integration will be your new favorite visual testing duo:

  • Visual regression testing with screenshot comparisons
  • 1500+ real desktop and mobile browsers
  • Zero Selenium knowledge or coding skills needed
  • Easy to save and easy to share test results

While CrossBrowserTesting and Applitools have exceeded expectations on their own terms, the integration will be a powerhouse for teams looking for the ultimate responsive design package. Test faster and across more browsers with no coding and maintenance with confidence that you’ll be releasing an application that will impress your users.

Filed Under: Product Update Tagged With: Applitools, screenshot comparison, screenshots, visual testing

7 Times You’ll Wish You Had a Visual Testing Tool

October 9, 2017 By Alex McPeak 1 Comment

automated visual testing tool screenshot comparison

automated visual testing tool screenshot comparison
Recently, visual testing tools have been a popular way for designers and developers to evaluate a website’s responsiveness across browsers. However, to some software teams, a visual testing tool might seem like a luxury instead of a necessity.

While the idea of a good full-page screenshot is satisfying to any UX enthusiast, when does visual testing become really valuable? There are a few key moments where software teams tend to end up wishing they had a visual testing tool.

1. When you change code – In a perfect world, we could simply integrate changes to code every day without worrying about it breaking another part of our application. Sadly, that’s not an accurate reality. When we change code, we have to check to make sure everything still works. Then, we have to do this again on a few different browsers. However, doing this manually every time on your work computer is not only annoying, it’s also inefficient. Instead, running visual tests lets you compare your new changes to historical versions across browsers for easier and more accurate regression testing.

2. When you don’t have the same machine your customers use – Again, life would be a lot easier if you could get away with just testing on the same computer you use for developing every time. Of course, your customers are actually on hundreds of different browser and device combinations. Check out Google Analytics to see which configurations you should be testing on, and make sure they’re being visually verified. You can do this laboriously with a device lab or smoothly with a visual testing tool for screenshot comparisons — the choice is yours.

3. When a new browser, OS, or device is released – Even after looking at Google Analytics, you can’t depend on these few machines to cover your testing needs for very long. New browsers, operating systems, and devices are coming out all the time. While a good amount of users might be on the iPhone 7 now, the iPhone X will surely throw a wrench in your testing. Unless you want to go out and buy all these devices yourself and physically compare them side-by-side, a visual testing tool provides a way to access browsers that are continuously added, updated, and maintained via the cloud.

4. When you want to increase communication – Test reporting and documentation is always a struggle, not to mention getting results to the people that need them. Fortunately, visual testing tools usually have a few ways to make test reporting more accessible for everyone. With integrations like Slack, Hipchat, and Jira, screenshots can be easily shared on the messaging platforms that your entire team uses. Additionally, features like visual reporting make it simple to analyze usage and stay on the same page every sprint.

5. When you need extra help finding layout differences – There’s a lot of reasons we still need dedicated testers. But if you’re working on building your QA team or operating as a one-man-band (a.k.a. freelance developer/designer) then having a tool that literally highlights browser differences can be a lifesaver. This way, you can stop searching each browser for elements that ruin your design and instead, get to fixing them faster.

6. When you want to speed things up – We’re living in the golden age of test automation. It’s not good enough just have to have access to unlimited browsers at the drop of the hat, getting the results should be automated. While live testing is a great tool in itself, it can only take you so far when it comes to gaining fast feedback and meeting deadlines. Automating your visual testing is multi-beneficial — you can more easily pull up screenshots, evaluate them more quickly, and debug them in a more timely manner.

7. When you want to test your design before the public sees it – The whole point of testing is to make sure your application looks great before it gets to the user, so what’s the point of running regression tests after you put a redesign into production? Using a tool that includes local testing allows you to address issues before your website goes live so a bug doesn’t ruin your latest unveil.

Conclusion

Visual testing is more than just a pretty interface, it’s a tool that’s inherently helpful during development.  Additionally, as teams continue to shift left and users continue to access the web from increasingly fragmented devices, an efficient website visual testing tool will be an asset for creating your goal app.

Filed Under: Visual Testing Tagged With: regression testing, screenshot comparison, visual testing

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