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Good day, I've been working for some time now on a web app and recently my workload has grown tremendously. I have to take presentable (showing correct info and setup) screenshots for our product and they are around 300 per language, with 6 languages supported and more coming. This is done monthly.

Currently, I'm using a combination of Selenium (for the web UI navigation and inputs/clicks), Lighscreen (to take screenshots) and ImageMagick(to format the screenshots).

My questions is - is there a better way to do this? What tool(s) could replace or improve my existing setup? Could I find/create a Python/Perl/ custom script that would do the same job?

An example workflow is - I record my actions via Selenium, add the necessary inputs to trigger Lighstscreen where I need it, use AutoIT or just manually run ImageMagick.

Thanks!

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  • " is there a better way to do this?" - do what? You described your tool stack and workflow, but (is it just me?) what are you trying to accomplish? Do you need to compare images? How much changes in images are between versions, and how you deal with it?
    – Peter M. - stands for Monica
    Commented May 18, 2016 at 14:07
  • To automate the setup done in the web app and automate the screenshots. Comparing images is not required as the changes are obvious and the necessary images jut get replaced. That's what i'm doing. To clarify - I'm wondering if there are better tools to deal with this type of workflow and make my life easier.
    – hilchev
    Commented May 18, 2016 at 14:57
  • You may want to edit your question (add info from comment) to clarify it, so next guy can use question/answer. "Making Internet better, one bit at a time" (TM) :-)
    – Peter M. - stands for Monica
    Commented May 19, 2016 at 14:12
  • If your web pages change from month to month, Selenium is your best bet. If you control the web pages yourself, you can probably code them so that changes to page layout or DOM structure do not require corresponding Selenium changes.
    – user246
    Commented May 22, 2016 at 16:19

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Automating the screenshots can be done by webdriver directly - see example. But I assume that by saying "I record my actions via Selenium" you mean Selenium IDE - that is different from webdriver.

Selenium webdriver requires some (not much, especially in Python) programming skills. Python would be more future-proof than Perl, and also easier to learn - substantially less quirky, IMNSHO. Google will give you plenty of examples.

So depending on your programming skills, it should be relatively straightforward to write Python script using Selenium webdriver to completely automate navigation between pages, making screenshots, saving images with appropriate names into directories. Would be a really fun and straightforward project to do. Not sure if you can find free ready-made tool to do that, unless you are ready to pay for it - take a look at https://applitools.com/

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  • Thank you very much Peter, this was exactly what I was hoping for. I have some basic knowledge of Python and find it easy to understand so I'll try to make my own tool first :) I didn't know Selenium had a different flavour than the IDE, will definitely try it out!
    – hilchev
    Commented May 19, 2016 at 12:24
  • Easy way to say "thank you" is to upvote the answer :-) If you were not afraid of Perl/ImageMagick, Python/webdriver should be easy for you.
    – Peter M. - stands for Monica
    Commented May 19, 2016 at 14:09
  • I don't have enough points to be able to upvote :) I did, but until i gather those points, you won't get my +1 :(
    – hilchev
    Commented Jun 2, 2016 at 6:07

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