Using automated bdd-gui-tests to keep user-documentation-screenshots up do date?
- by k3b
Are there developpers out there, who (ab)use the CaptureScreenshot() function
of their automated gui-tests to also create uptodate-screenshots for the userdocumentation?
Background: Whithin the lifetime of an application, its gui-elements are constantly changing.
It makes a lot of work to keep the userdocumentation uptodate, especially if the example data
in the pictures should match the textual description.
If you already have automated bdd-gui-tests why not let them take screenshots at certain points?
I am currently playing with webapps in dotnet+specflow+selenium, but this topic also applies to
other bdd-engines (JRuby-Cucumber, mspec, rspec, ...)
and gui-test-Frameworks (WaitN, WaitR, MsWhite, ....)
Any experience, thoughts or url-links to this topic would be helpfull.
How is the cost/benefit relation? Is it worth the efford? What are the Drawbacks?
See also:
Is it practical to retroactively write specifications documenting a system via automated acceptance tests?