FAQ

How can AI help me write and maintain my tests?

AI can help you write tests by generating full draft tests from a plain-English description of a user flow, saving you the time of writing each step manually. Once your tests are running, self-healing snippets automatically regenerate failing steps when your UI changes, reducing the maintenance burden of keeping your suite up to date. AI Actions like AI Assertion and AI Search can also handle dynamic or hard-to-target elements within individual steps, filling gaps where standard screenshot or DOM matching isn't reliable enough.

Are Visual Editor tests code based?

A Visual Editor test does not require any code. This design makes it easy for technical and nontechnical teammates alike to own testing. Moreover, it offers flexibility, which Rainforest users value. Visual Editor tests work on a visual level and will try to predefine a DOM layer without you needed to know the code.

The Rainforest Automation Service runs your application automatically on our scalable virtual machine (VM) infrastructure. Your application is tested visually by comparing the results on the screen with those in your test.

How do Visual Editor tests perform their evaluation?

Visual Editor Automation is pixel based, which means we test what the user sees and how they interact with your site.

On a practical level, some things are not possible with DOM-based testing. These include:

• Working across browser windows
• Interacting with the OS
• Downloading, editing, and uploading files
• Any interaction with desktop software

No code-based system does this reliably, but Visual Editor tests can.

The other difference is more philosophical. Purely visual testing evaluates what a user sees and experiences. DOM-based tools test what the user’s computer sees. In some cases, this distinction is crucial, depending on your application.

My team isn’t technical and has never used automation before. How easy is it for nontechnical folks to use your automation?

We’ve built Visual Editor from the ground up to be the best no-code solution available. We’ve had nontechnical users from the start and continue to improve usability. While we want to stay as close to the release process as possible, you don’t need to know how to code to write and maintain good tests. Additionally, using our AI services test creation has never been faster and more convenient, turning plain- text prompts in automation tests.

My test application is dynamic. Some states remain from the last time the user visited. Is there any conditional logic I can use?

Yes, you can insert a conditional block to help with this use case.

How do I test with dynamic or unpredictable content?

For content that changes between runs, Rainforest gives you a few options depending on the situation. If the value is predictable but variable within a set, use test data variables in your steps or prompts to reference specific data rather than hardcoding values. If the content is truly unpredictable, conditional blocks and masking are better tools — masking lets you ignore a dynamic area of a screenshot so the test passes regardless of what appears there, and conditional blocks let you handle scenarios where different content may appear on different runs.

Are Visual Editor tests compatible with mobile?

Not at the moment. You can run mobile tests using our Tester Community.

How many automated tests can I run in parallel?

As many as your testing environment can handle. There is no limit to the number of automated tests (or tester community tests, for that matter) you can run in parallel.

Are scroll events captured automatically? Or does that require a manual event addition such as clicks and see?

If scrolling is necessary, add an explicit Scroll action; the automation bot does not scroll automatically.

What tooling powers the test runner? Are you running Selenium on the VM or something else?

Unlike Selenium, which locks you into the browser, ours is a proprietary solution. Our technology allows automation to interact with multiple browser windows, desktop software, and the operating system.

We have sensitive data. Will running automation tests guarantee that no human has access to our IP and data?

If you need custom guarantees about sensitive data, get in touch with us directly. Currently, executing a test with automation does not expose any data.

What if the page takes time to load? Is there a “wait” function, or does the test fail?

The automation service has some tolerance. For example, if you ask it to click a button, it waits up to 30 seconds for the button to appear. If the button appears within the window, the bot clicks it and continues; otherwise, it fails the test. Suppose your test requires a longer waiting period. In that case, you can add a Wait action, which pauses execution for the specified time.

What are the limitations?

• Not compatible with mobile apps.
• Optimized for a single browser, meaning that the test should run in the browser it was created for when executed by automation.
• Automation cannot execute steps that require human judgment (“Is this a picture of a dog?”). This is best handles using either an AI Assertion or an AI search Layer.

What do I do if I a cookie banner keeps popping up?

There are three options for dealing with cookie banner when using our automation tool.

Option 1:

• Disable cookies in your testing environment. This can be done for for the entire environment you are testing, or if you are able to disable them for specific IP addresses, here is a list of IP addresses used during testing.

Option 2:

• If the banner appears consistently with the same UI you can create steps within a test using a reusable snippet to dismiss the banner. This would be done using click actions to either accept or reject the cookies.

Option 3:

• Add a conditional block to dismiss the cookie banner.

If you have any questions, reach out to us at[email protected].