On: Mobile at Scale

[programminggeek]

I'm going to geek out here for a minute at the fact that Facebook made a screenshot diffing tool for testing. I've been wanting to build that very thing for a long time, but every developer I've talked to about it looks at me like I'm crazy.

So, am I still crazy for thinking screenshot diffing might be an effective way to verify builds?

[dirtyaura → programminggeek]

It's a great idea. Even ability to render different views and inspect them quickly by eye is really valuable when you have huge configuration space (charts for example). Adding automatic diff testing on top of that is a good idea especially when the UI style stabilizes.

[wooster → programminggeek]

It can be very effective. For example, WebKit has used it extensively. On the other hand, it can slow you down if your software involves rapid iteration of the UI, in which case semantic UI testing (using, eg, accessibility) may be a better solution.

[SanderMak → programminggeek]

Let me add another suggestion: http://www.sikuli.org/

Originally developed at MIT, now freely available and maintained as open-source lib. It offers advanced (partial) matching at the UI level.

[DanielRibeiro → programminggeek]

I've been using another one in pure Javascript for testing WebGL Scenes: https://github.com/danielribeiro/threejs-test

[vjeux → programminggeek]

Huxley is being used by Instagram for their www stack and is already open source. https://github.com/facebook/huxley

[thejosh → programminggeek]

For web there is https://github.com/BBC-News/wraith , there needs to be something like this for mobile development.