Snapshots Through Time - How We Evolved Screenshot Testing at Our Company
14th December 2023
-
Locked
Alyssa Burlton
Head of Engineering Effectiveness

Talk Description
As our app grew, we found it necessary to refactor our components as new requirements emerged. But how could we do this without breaking some styling by mistake? You can't write tests for CSS... can you?
A screenshot test is one that takes pictures of your pages and compares them to how they looked before. Done right, they can be a great way to increase confidence when making these types of changes.
This talk will take you through our journey with this type of testing, which started back in 2020. I'll share all the lessons we learned along the way, including how to make these tests run faster and flake less.
By the end of this session, you'll be able to:
- The gaps that screenshot testing covers that other types of testing can't
- The factors that can make these tests flakey or brittle, and how to mitigate or eliminate them
- How to make life easy when the screenshots have to be updated for intentional changes
Head of Engineering Effectiveness
Alyssa is an Engineering Effectiveness Lead from Leeds in the UK, working at Glean. She has worked in development for 8 years, and over that time focused on writing easily deployable, testable software. An infrastructure as code fan, she writes repeatable architecture scripts and loves teaching others.
Outside of work, she’s a Taskmaster fan, and has even has made it into the official #HomeTasking compilations! She also enjoys sailing, trampolining and a good ale.
Suggested Content
An educational tool to explore Risk Analysis and Quality Strategy building with the whole team.
Explore MoT
Tue, 6 May
The Future of Testing in an Automated World: Embracing Continuous Learning and A
Elevate to senior test automation roles with mastery in automated checks, insightful reporting, and framework maintenance
A one-day educational experience to help business lead with expanding quality engineering and testing practices.
Debrief the week in Testing via a community radio show hosted by Simon Tomes and members of the community