It's true for me as well that Watir's API is one of it's huge benefits over Selenium. In the many talks about Watir I've given, I always make the point that other tools borrow the API - Funfx, various language implementations and libraries. Additionally as Bret mentioned, there are other benefits - dialog handling (not perfect but better than the alternatives), native browser integration for IE. Some of these have been mitigated by Webdriver, which takes the same approach for native browser driving, and now has slick Watir apis on top, thanks to Jari.
I'm awfully excited to play around with rautomation, and glad you chose to implement it with Watir's simple and effective api concepts in mind. This is really cool. I think Apple's accessibility API might work well for MacOS, I'm hoping to play around with it a bit. Webdriver itself also has native OS integration for some things which is also worth taking a look at. I think think this is a meaty topic for the Selenium Conf coming up, definitely something we all have to deal with, and can benefit from each others experiences. Cheers, Charley On Sat, Dec 18, 2010 at 11:56 AM, Bill Agee <billa...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi, > > On the topic of Firefox UI automation on Linux, I've been wanting to > investigate the use of Ruby FFI in combination with AT-SPI, to interact with > Firefox UI elements: > > https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Accessibility/AT-APIs > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT-SPI > > Don't know yet how easy it will be, though. :) > > But over in the Windows world, using windows-pr and Win32::API, I've had > some limited success writing Ruby code that uses the MS Active Accessibility > C interface to manipulate UI objects. > > So I'm hoping that something similar is possible with the Firefox > accessibility API on Linux, via Ruby FFI. :) > > Also, as you mention, I think there are existing tools to manipulate the UI > of X Windows apps, which might be an alternative to wrapping a bunch of C > functions. > > Bill > > > On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 5:39 PM, Jarmo <jarm...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> Well, that depends if there are proper tools-possibilities to do the same >> kind of things as it is possible with Windows API. >> All you Linux and OS X guys, could you recommend me anything or have any >> ideas/tips related with these platforms? Maybe there's some external tools >> already available to mess with windows if there's no direct access from >> Ruby? Of course if anyone would like to contribute their own code, i'd be >> happy to accept that pull request :) >> Also, i'd have to say that i'm pretty dumb when it comes to window >> managers in those OS-es, but i'm eager to learn :) >> I have always thought that the main advantage over Selenium is Watir's >> easy-to-use and nice API. >> Jarmo >> >> On Sat, Dec 18, 2010 at 2:38 AM, Bret Pettichord <b...@pettichord.com> >> wrote: >>> >>> I am so excited about this. One of the things that makes Watir a better >>> tool that Selenium today is that it has much better support for dialogs of >>> all types. This all depends on our promiscuous use of the Win32 API. Using >>> Rautomation puts us on the road to being able to do the same with other >>> platforms. >>> >>> Bret >>> >>> On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 5:14 PM, Jarmo <jarm...@gmail.com> wrote: >>>> >>>> I'm pretty sure that some of you already have noticed the library i've >>>> made to automate windows and their controls. I've now written a short blog >>>> post about it. >>>> >>>> http://www.itreallymatters.net/post/2352350743/automating-windows-and-their-controls-with-ruby >>>> If that thing seems to work well then what do you think if we'd replace >>>> AutoIt and win32-api in Watir with this eventually? I'd be happy to do >>>> that. >>>> Jarmo >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Wtr-development mailing list >>>> Wtr-development@rubyforge.org >>>> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/wtr-development >>> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> Bret Pettichord >>> Lead Developer, Watir, www.watir.com >>> >>> Blog, www.io.com/~wazmo/blog >>> Twitter, www.twitter.com/bpettichord >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Wtr-development mailing list >>> Wtr-development@rubyforge.org >>> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/wtr-development >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Wtr-development mailing list >> Wtr-development@rubyforge.org >> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/wtr-development > > > _______________________________________________ > Wtr-development mailing list > Wtr-development@rubyforge.org > http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/wtr-development > _______________________________________________ Wtr-development mailing list Wtr-development@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/wtr-development
