A shortfall of UI automation and a creative way to deal with it
Posted by Mike Longin on October 28, 2009
One of my biggest flaws with automation in my eyes is that when you run most UI automation (excluding bitmap comparisons that are more trouble then they are worth) the UI can change but the test will not catch it. This is actually a very common scenario and usually when people discuss solutions they go back to bitmap comparisons. However I have heard (but not confirmed) that Google has a better way.
What Google has done is to run their UI automation on very public monitors. Then when people are walking by, hopefully if they see a defect they will go let the responsible team know and it will be rectified. I think this is an absolutely great idea and one I hope to implement some time in the near future.
