Downplay relevance of visual tests

[jugglinmike]

People looking to learn how to write a test for WPT have a lot to learn.

The "Writing Tests" page lists four different test types, including both "Visual Tests" and "Reftests". Much of the guidance for these tests is located in a more generic document, "Rendering Test Guidelines."

• Writing Tests
  • Reftests
  • Rendering Test Guidelines
  • Visual Tests
  • Rendering Test Guidelines

Since "Visual Tests" are so uncommon (WPT currently has 35 in total) and since the guidelines for writing them is so minimal (six sentences), I think they ought to be demoted in the site hierarchy. By documenting them instead as a special case of Rendering Tests, we can meaningfully decrease the number of concepts which potential contributors are initially confronted with.

• Writing Tests
  • Rendering Tests (+Guidelines)
  • Reftests
  • Visual Tests

This also demotes the far more pervasive Reftest. I think that's acceptable because the path is still clear, but we might also choose to merge "Rendering Tests" and "Reftests", and just document Visual Tests as a special case:

• Writing Tests
  • Rendering Tests (+Guidelines, +Reftests)
  • Visual Tests

Neither of these structures directly map to the organization of wptrunner internals, but I think the disconnect is acceptable if it meaningfully improves the documentation's usability.

[gsnedders]

WPT currently has 35 in total

We have a lot more, mostly not explicitly with the -visual name but with the legacy CSS test detection stuff. There's thousands, AFAIK.

[zcorpan]

Still, visual tests I would say is a legacy test format and it should be presented to new contributors as a don't-use-unless-you-have-to special case.

[gsnedders]

Yes, I agree.