Harvesting and Comparing Screenshots for use in FM

[Karen Mardahl]

Hi

On 2/2/07, Elks, Loren <lelks at exstream.com> wrote:
> Is anyone aware of a tool that can go through an application and harvest screenshots of all menus and dialog boxes?  Then, would it be able to compare screenshots of the last version to indicate where changes have occurred on the GUI?

I don't know about the harvesting, etc., but Total Commander is
absolutely amazing when it comes to comparing files. I call it my Feng
Shui tool. You can compare many different types of files (don't dare
say all types, but it's been all types for me so far). If you compare
files that are different and they are not pure text files, then it
gets messy (if not impossible) to read the differences. In those
cases, it should be sufficient to know they are different and that you
have to deal with them.

Shareware: http://www.ghisler.com/ Some people get stars in their eyes
when they talk about Total Commandor... I am still at the novice
level.

Another tool you can use for comparison is http://www.clonespy.com/. I
know nothing about them. This was just recommended today in a
newsletter. It compares on the basis of the checksum.

Another tool that brings out stars in the eyes of some people is
Emacs. I don't know how it would deal with graphics. Again, I am a
novice Emacs user, using it on Windows.
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/

I have to agree with Richard Combs. I cannot see how you can avoid
some sort of manual check. You might need a critical thinker who can
say that the picture is slightly different, but is actually OK in this
case. And there should be editing function that goes through
everything anyway at some point. Still, I hope this tool suggestions
can help in some way.

regards, Karen Mardahl