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Mike359's avatar
Mike359
Contributor
4 days ago

page.PagePicture - Screenshot duplication

Hi everyone, I seem to have an intermittent issue when using the method page.PagePicture(0,0,-1,-1) with Oracle Cloud Applications. If I try to capture a screenshot of a full page (e.g., var shot...
rraghvani's avatar
rraghvani
Icon for Champion Level 3 rankChampion Level 3
3 days ago

Reaching out to the community is definitely the best option. In my experience, AI tools like ChatGPT aren't always reliable when it comes to TestComplete specific issues, though they can be useful for general programming questions.

If something isn't working as expected, I'd recommend testing it in a new, clean project and using a simple site like w3schools.com to rule out project specific issues. You could also try upgrading TestComplete, but that may sometimes introduces new problems.

Other forum members may be able to test this on their own versions of TestComplete and share their findings. If no workaround turns up or they can't reproduce the issue, then opening a Support Ticket would probably be the best next step

Hassan_Ballan's avatar
Hassan_Ballan
Icon for Champion Level 3 rankChampion Level 3
1 day ago

AI currently are good search tools and have good reasoning when you ask the right questions. 

This behavior isn’t just a random timing quirk, it's an inherent technology limitation. To confirm, you may try the documentation provided example as is in a loop to see if it fails. If it does not, the intermittent root cause would be the highly dynamic web apps "Oracle Cloud" re-rendering while scrolling.

The page.PagePicture(0,0,-1,-1) works by scrolling the page and stitching viewport captures together to produce what looks like a full-page image. That approach can struggle on dynamic, virtual-scrolling content (like Oracle Cloud pages), because portions of the page are re-rendered or recycled while TestComplete is scrolling. When that happens, you can see duplicate top content and a truncated bottom instead of a complete screenshot.

PagePicture Method (Page Objects)

Remarks

  • To capture an image of the whole page, call PagePicture without any parameters. The method will automatically scroll the page and combine the images of hidden areas.

SmartBear’s documentation for PagePicture notes that the method automatically scrolls and combines images and that sticky elements or scrolling behavior can affect the final result. 

Practical suggestions that may help:

  • Use page.Picture() to capture only the visible viewport and avoid full-page stitching entirely.
  • Manually scroll via JavaScript (window.scrollTo(...)) and capture multiple viewports yourself.
  • Disable browser hardware acceleration — this can reduce frame re-use that might cause repeated captures.
  • Break the screenshot into sections and stitch yourself if a true full-page is required.

 

Unfortunately, there’s no TestComplete setting that guarantees totally consistent full-page captures for highly dynamic web apps; this is an inherent limitation of the current scrolling-and-stitching approach.

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