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Wraith – A screenshot comparison tool from the BBC

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Re: Wraith – A screenshot comparison tool from the BBC

#31
post #14

Is there any reason why you couldn't do this non-visually? That is, using PhantomJS to determine that a DOM element is within certain bounds for a position using if statements?

They don't care about that. They don't care if it's within 10px of the right location, or whether it's one DOM element or multiple, or how it's structured. They care it looks right, and that certain things look identical between builds. The size and position of the BBC logo, for example, must be in exactly the same position.

Also, this means it can be verified by a non-technical person. All you need to do is verify that the differences are either 1) wanted or 2) irrelevant, and this is an extremely simple and robust way of achieving that.

Re: Wraith – A screenshot comparison tool from the BBC

#32
post #3

See also https://github.com/bslatkin/dpxdt , a more featureful/complex implementation of the same idea. It also has some discussion of why you'd want to do this.

I wrote https://github.com/gabrielrotbart/gatling ages ago. It integrates visual testing into normal Rspec specs. Focusing on specific elements rather than full pages, makes it more stable. Maybe it's time to revive it.

I'm sorry but… are you an idiot? this is the coolest thing ever. Like, my mind is blown right now. I futzed with something that did the whole page but wasn't really impressed by it. but this is 100x better. Like, you changed my life this morning.

Re: Wraith – A screenshot comparison tool from the BBC

#33
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote https://github.com/gabrielrotbart/gatling ages ago. It integrates visual testing into normal Rspec specs. Focusing on specific elements rather than full pages, makes it more stable. Maybe it's time to revive it.

I'm sorry but… are you an idiot? this is the coolest thing ever. Like, my mind is blown right now. I futzed with something that did the whole page but wasn't really impressed by it. but this is 100x better. Like, you changed my life this morning.

Thanks (I thought that line was going to end differently considering how it started).

I didn't put it out there because, although it's functioning perfectly, I'm not happy with the internals and would like to find time to refactor it before sending it out to the world.

Re: Wraith – A screenshot comparison tool from the BBC

#35
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but… are you an idiot? this is the coolest thing ever. Like, my mind is blown right now. I futzed with something that did the whole page but wasn't really impressed by it. but this is 100x better. Like, you changed my life this morning.

Thanks (I thought that line was going to end differently considering how it started). I didn't put it out there because, although it's functioning perfectly, I'm not happy with the internals and would like to find time to refactor it before sending it out to the world.

My advice would be to release it anyway, warts and all.

You'll never be truly happy with the internals and, if you're like me, you'll be forever "1 final refactor, 1 extra tweak" away from perfection.

Re: Wraith – A screenshot comparison tool from the BBC

#36
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks (I thought that line was going to end differently considering how it started). I didn't put it out there because, although it's functioning perfectly, I'm not happy with the internals and would like to find time to refactor it before sending it out to the world.

My advice would be to release it anyway, warts and all. You'll never be truly happy with the internals and, if you're like me, you'll be forever "1 final refactor, 1 extra tweak" away from perfection.

You're right. Although it is 'released' in a way, it has quite a few downloads on Rubygems even though I've never put it out there (HN posts etc).

Re: Wraith – A screenshot comparison tool from the BBC

#37
Great to see more visual regression testing tools on the block. https://github.com/Huddle/PhantomCSS has been around a while now and does pretty much the same thing (as far as I can tell).

Good reporting on failed regression is almost as important as detecting them which is why I developed this on top of PhantomCSS https://github.com/Huddle/PhantomFlow

Re: Wraith – A screenshot comparison tool from the BBC

#38
post #2

I don't see the value of this. What sort of use case does this have?

Disclosure: I'm a developer of this tool & work for BBC News. We use this for catching things that we'd never spot, a good example of how it has helped us is after a giant Sass refactor, we ran this tool against the old CSS site and the new CSS site, this showed us where things were off by a pixel or two (as well as big formatting changes). We've found this tool rather valuable, we're not saying everyone will, or tha…

If you get a chance look at our screenshot comparison tool. We ended up using the dom elements to do the comparison. It is a different tack on the same problem. http://crossbrowsertesting.com/layout-comparisons-for-screen...
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