On 3/23/06, Marcus Tettmar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I've been keeping a close eye on this list but apart from the forms issue, > which I raised myself, and one posting that brought the spaces thing to my > attention, I wasn't aware of any extra support issues directly related to > webrecorder or anything to the effect of "the recorder works, but watir > doesn't" as you have suggested. Had I seen anything like that I would have > jumped right in, I can assure you.
We have had many people send problem scripts and the problem was that there were extra spaces. This is the problem you just sent mail about fixing. This was the first i'd heard that this frequently discussed problem was actually a webrecorder bug and not an emailer issue, as had been frequently suggested. I didn't see you jumping in on these problems. > In regards to the forms issue - I raised that myself in reference to > WebRecorder, yes, but didn't necessarily expect you to have to change > anything in Watir. An alternative approach would have been that I could > have changed WebRecorder to not insert the form() reference if it found only > one form on the page. I just needed to know how it was meant to work. Watir 1.4.1 has a bug when using form() and there is only one form. This bug is fixed in development. I don't recall you reporting this bug. This came from users of WebRecorder. I could probably release 1.4.2 with this fix. It's a one-line change. It's going to be a while before 1.5 becomes generally released and supported. Or you could update WebRecorder to work around this bug. What do you suggest? > I did not provide this version of WebRecorder in order to create any extra > burden for you, and I am sorry if you feel that is all it has achieved. I'm > not aware that it has in fact directly contributed to any extra support > requests, but I suppose as a product grows in popularity, as Watir clearly > is doing, and whether or not WebRecorder is in some way responsible for > that, the support burden will increase as more and more people get to know > about it, many of whom will be less technical than the earlier adopters. > That's almost a fact of life - a side effect of success. This is complete bull. You are either not actually following the list or you are completely deluded. > I have made it quite clear when running WebRecorder and on the WebRecorder > web page that knowledge of Watir and Ruby is essential and that any problems > with recording are not indicative of any problem in Watir. But if you think > WebRecorder is causing you undue burden then clearly we must do something > about it. I think there is agreement that there needs to be separate list to support web recorder users. > One thing that I think would benefit this mailing list, for a number of > reasons, would be a weekly FAQ posting. By posting this regularly it will > keep people aware of it and new subscribers would always see it. This could > explain how best to post questions, how (not) to report bugs, where to find > answers, how to download the latest version .. etc. This should help keep > the quality of postings high and remove some repetition. This could also > address WebRecorder in some way - something to the effect of - if you get a > problem with a WebRecorder script don't post to the general Watir group > until you've understood what it is doing and/or emailed Marcus, or, if we > had a WebRecorder list it, you've posted there first. I agree that we need more work in this area. > Ultimately, if WebRecorder is causing too big a nuisance for everyone then I > could simply withdraw it altogether. I would be interested to hear what > people feel about that. Is it useful? Is it bringing new users to Watir? > If so, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Or is webrecorder just a > complete waste of time? Happy to consider its future based on the feedback. > I'm open to ideas. My suggestion is that you make WebRecorder open source and add unit tests to it. And create a separate mailing list to support these people. I was at Segue when they added a recorder to QA Partner. Originally the people calling for tech support were pretty savvy and they talked to knowledgeable people right away. But with time they had to create a new tier of tech support just to deal with the recorder people. By then i had left Segue, but was still using their tools. It was frustrating for me because when i called in i had to work my way through a layer of staff who knew less about the tool than me, but who were convinced that i was just a stupid user (because 90% of their users were in fact stupid users). Widespread use of recorders for Watir will also force us to create a tiered community. _______________________________________________ Wtr-general mailing list [email protected] http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/wtr-general
