Graphical User Interface Testing

Software testing is one of the major challenges in the software community today. Graphical user interface (GUI) testing is inherently more difficult than traditional, command line interface testing. This paper briefly describes why this is so, and gives an overview of the state of the art in GUI testing. The main focus of the paper is a presentation of the features of a new GUI testing tool, called XTester, and a methodology which can be used to create tests with the help of such a tool. XTester offers a simple mechanism for capturing and replaying test scripts. It is able to synchronize test input with window creation requiring no special effort by the tester. Bit map images can be captured and compared using several mechanisms. Special features are available to limit the size of captured images to the smallest area of interest. A complete testing language is available for the creation of customized tests. The methodology advocates that testing should be divided into layers and suggests a hierarchical approach for the organization of test suites.