What is it?
An anchor area is an area of the website that you select to check.
To define an anchor area
- Click on left button of the mouse and draw a dashed rectangle.
Now the selected area is scanned. This area is called an anchor area. It is the basic action in visual testing.
Once an anchor area is defined, it is possible to perform different actions such as check, click and swipe.
What do you use it for?
Check for a Healthy Website
Healthy Website means that all elements of the page are correct and in the right place. Therefore good anchor areas are:
- Page Titles,
- Order Confirmations,
- Static headlines,
- Static images, and
- all other static parts of the webpage.
Determine Anchor Areas to perform the next action
Anchor areas are also used to determine if the next action can be done, especially clicks and keyboard inputs. For clicks, drawing an anchor area is mandatory. This allows us to wait until the page is ready and not still loading. Good anchor areas to perform clicks (swipes, keys) are:
- Button text
- Links
- Menu items
- Search and input fields
- and everything which can take a click.
Note, that you can click outside of anchor areas. They indicate when, not where the click appears.
Please notice
Do not record Areas which are changing
If you record an anchor area, which is planned to change, the test will break. Examples for changing content are:
- Text with Date / Time
- Comments
- Number of likes
- Video
- Product of the day
Do not record areas which contain something from above.
