What a user sees and uses in an application falls under the user interface category.
UI/UX has become increasingly important over the past few years. With the increasing number of competitors in the market, software should not only provide users with basic functions to meet their needs, but also provide users with the best user experience. That’s why it’s critical to make the process smoother and more intuitive for users. Otherwise, they can frustrate your application with complexity. This is why UI has become so important, and therefore why UI testing is important!
What are UI tests?
A user interface test or UI test is a type of test in which we check whether the application’s interface works properly or has any bugs that hinder user behavior and do not conform to written specifications.
Understanding how the user will interact with the site to perform UI testing is critical. In other words, by performing UI tests, the tester tries to mimic the user’s behavior to see how the user will interact with the program and to see if the site is performing as expected and without defects. Small bugs in the user interface, such as button issues, can cause your site visitors to be unable to fill out lead forms and never convert users.
Web sites contain many different Web elements from CSS, JavaScript, and many other languages. UI tests capture these elements and test and declare them. It focuses on the structural and visual parts of the site, because that’s what users care about, not how the data is stored in a database. Because THE UI test covers the user interaction portion, and the site elements can be connected to a screen, keyboard, mouse, or any other component that the user uses to interact with the site, the UI test is ultimately performed.
The following test scenarios will help you understand the components that are important for UI testing. In this test case, three movie tickets were booked on a popular website for booking movies and events. When I select seat E-13, it automatically selects 3 seats, as shown below:
They are selected consecutively, which is quite customary, as most people who book tickets sit together. Now, if I choose the F-23 over the E-13, let’s see what happens.
Note that since the application wants people to sit together, the e-13 selection is automatically deselected and the F-22 selection is next.
When I select E-13 as the next seat, the application will select that seat only. This is a major problem, because after selecting E-13 in step 1, the application can automatically select E-13, 14, 15.
These types of feature failures can be detrimental to the user experience and can frustrate their vision. Therefore, performing UI tests becomes critical.
Are UI tests the same as GUI tests?
GUI (graphical user interface) and UI (user interface) are often thought of as two similar concepts in the field of front-end testing. But, at a deeper level, this is not the case. UI testing is a broad field, and GUI testing can be considered a subset of UI testing. GUI testing includes testing of graphical interfaces, such as colors of elements, functions of elements visible to the user, etc., while UI testing also includes non-graphical parts of the interface. The reason UI testing and GUI testing are considered similar is that many components of UI testing are infrequently used. So, in a sense, GUI testing is the dominant use of UI testing today.
Manual or automatic, how to choose?
Like any other type of testing, UI testing can be performed manually or through automation. Manual testing requires testers to manually execute each test on each element. For example, a test input field would need to type different values over and over again for any differences. At first glance, if the site UI has fewer components, it is best to do UI testing quickly through a manual process. While it is right that it should be done for a simple and basic site, it should not be the approach for complex sites. Today’s web sites with rich user interfaces make manual UI testing inefficient, time-consuming, and error-prone.
So what are the benefits of automation?
- Speed: First, speed. Time is every company’s primary resource, and automated testing can save a lot of time. Selenium Automation testing requires us to write tests once, and then run them over and over again without any intervention with different values and different scenarios.
- Accuracy: Selenium Automation tests can help us execute tests correctly as long as they are written correctly. The main disadvantage of manual testing is that it is prone to human error.
- Transparency: Selenium Automation testing also helps to quickly generate reports and share them with the team immediately after testing is complete. Manual testing, on the other hand, requires time to extract the results and report them manually to generate a report either through software or manually
It is also important to ensure that your application does not have any cross-browser compatibility issues when performing UI tests. Because each browser uses a different browser engine, it may not support the same CSS functionality. Therefore, it is important to ensure that our UI is rendered seamlessly across all major browsers. Testing across different browsers is called cross-browser testing, which helps testers test their sites across multiple combinations of all major browsers and devices, including phones, tablets, and so on.
Similarly, cross-browser testing can be performed in two ways (manual and automated), and automation can improve efficiency in cross-browser testing. Selenium is the best method for automated cross-browser testing. A good learning curve helps testers to perform selenium tests quickly and easily.
UI testing technology
Testing techniques are required to know the answer to the question: “How do you perform tests? In the various techniques described below, various processes are followed. Once you determine the type of test technique to follow, you can more easily follow concepts and generate results.
Exploratory testing
Exploratory testing requires no advance planning, and testers create tests based on experience and a variety of other parameters, such as previous test results. These parameters may vary from project to project. Exploratory testing provides testers with very flexible and open opportunities. Exploratory testing in UI testing helps identify hidden test cases because the UI may behave differently on different machines. Testers can take advantage of automation capabilities while solving exploratory testing challenges to run cases against different data. Exploratory testing can also be performed manually and efficiently.
Test script
If exploratory tests execute tests without any planning, scripted tests do the opposite. Script testing is done after the script is written and the test cases are identified in advance. As the first step in script testing, the tester defines scripts that represent the tester’s entries and expected output. Then analyze the results and report accordingly. Like exploratory testing, testers can continue to perform automated or manual scripted tests. Despite the large number of lines of code and complexity of the project, automated testing in scripted tests is recommended today.
User experience testing
User experience testing techniques in UI testing can be accomplished by making the built project available to end users. The end user can use the product as we all do and provide his feedback, which can then be relayed to the developers through the test team. These companies also sometimes release Beta versions of the product to end users to gather feedback based on a broad geographic location.
User experience testing is exploratory testing because users don’t know what to test and how to do it, meaning there is no predefined plan. Needless to say, it was done manually. User experience testing can also be done on some products to examine the UI on a large number of screens and in different locations without developing an entire project. This helps companies test smaller components with the same intensity as the entire project, which ultimately improves product quality.
The UI performance
The average site size increases over time. Today, pages in a single site can range from a few to hundreds. Not only that, a page contains hundreds of elements to create a complete site. This creates a huge burden on the server from which the site is retrieved. A slower site does not bode well for any Web developer. Testing it also falls within the realm of UI testing, and performance can definitely be improved.
In a nutshell
In short, UI testing requires testers to test the web site as if they were imitating user behavior. With all the possibilities and permutations, testers need to ensure that the site works seamlessly with all elements as expected.
Why the environment is moving towards UI test automation. The role of UI test automation has increased significantly over the years due to increased complexity and project size.
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