Engineers describe interface elements so automated tests keep running through design changes
INDIA – Keysight Technologies, Inc. has announced Keysight Eggplant Find by Description, which allows automation engineers to locate interface elements by describing them rather than capturing and matching screenshots. Each test targets an element by its description rather than its visual appearance, enabling it to keep running through redesigns, theme changes, and resolution shifts. This removes the manual recapture work that has historically wasted engineering resources.
Half of organizations believe a chief test automation barrier is the upkeep of scripts that fail as applications change. Maintaining image-based scripts is a hidden cost, as they break when the interface shifts, even when the underlying software runs correctly. Engineers then spend hours recapturing screenshots for cases that should still pass, a cycle that repeats across every release and environment.
With Keysight Eggplant Find by Description, part of Eggplant Studio and Eggplant Functional, an engineer can describe an element, such as a ticket price for a given date, and the software locates it without reference to screenshots, document object model access, or changes to the system under test. In a Keysight demonstration, this reduced script volume by 92 percent and cut the task from over an hour to under 15 minutes. This extends Keysight Eggplant’s use of AI and computer vision in test automation, which lets a description keep working as the design changes and applies across legacy desktop, embedded, and web applications.
Key benefits include:
- Tests that survive change: Descriptions hold up through redesigns, theme updates, and resolution shifts, so automation no longer breaks whenever the interface changes.
- Less time on authoring maintenance tests: Hours spent writing scripts and fixing broken tests can now be used to expand coverage.
- Manual tasks automated: When image matching was the only option, testing was manual; now tests can run automatically using text descriptions.
Gareth Smith, Software Quality Engineering General Manager, Keysight, said: “Our goal is to help teams automate more of their testing. However, for too long, the maintenance burden has held that back. Keysight Eggplant Find by Description clears one of the biggest barriers, moving us toward a future where teams automate what they want, not only what their tools allow.”
