GUI Testing: A Quick Annotation for QA Engineers

What is GUI testing?

GUI testing is a special software testing type that checks whether the graphical user interface complies with the established standards specified by the client. Such tests are validation of interface objects that users see when they interact with the software. Everything that users see is a graphical interface.

When performing such testing, the first thing to check is the design patterns used, the content, and the overall external presentation of the GUI.

Why Do We Need GUI Testing?

After we’ve determined what such testing is, we need to figure out its relevance and significance. The need for GUI testing can be analyzed based on 3 questions:

1. Why test GUI?
2. How to create working test scenarios?
3. Who should conduct GUI testing?

To answer them, we should think like a user, not a tester. Since it’s the GUI that is a key factor that defines whether a user wants to continue with the software now or in the future.

External manufacturing and software graphic design is the first thing that every user sees. Next, we’ll need to define whether it will be easy and understandable for a user or an involved QA engineer to interact with the interface. If a user says that the web product is unattractive and its design is puzzling, there is an extremely low chance that he will want to use it again in the future.

For these and other reasons, GUI testing requires special attention, focusing on solving even the most insignificant things.

Examples of Commonly Used Test Cases for GUI Testing

Since GUI testing focuses on visual appearance, the content of test cases should be just such that they can fully validate the performance and correctness of all graphic elements.

So, one way or another, the test case should focus on the following elements:

• Position, width, and height of the tested objects relative to other objects of the software structure;
• Error messages highlighted in a special color (usually red);
• Font color, presence of hyperlinks, error messages;
• Quality of content elements, if necessary;
• Punctuation, spelling, and grammar;
• Scroll bar, if any;
• Disabled fields, if any;
• Testing the size of pictures, video blocks.

The big idea of GUI testing is to make a visual part as attractive and user-friendly as possible for common usage. That is, test cases do not always have to contain template test conditions. Sometimes, exploratory testing techniques are indispensable.

GUI Testing Problems

1. Test cases aren’t always comprehensive and exhaustive.
2. It depends on the manual tester’s skills. Hence, the human factor is crucially important.
3. The number of automated tools is extremely limited.
4. Since GUI testing is performed at the final stages of project delivery, this can make some temporary difficulties.
5. GUI bugs have a lower priority than functionality issues.

Conclusion

The quality of the software largely depends on how user-friendly its graphical interface is and how it interacts with the user. This is the root cause why GUI testing is extremely important and should be conducted properly.