[Wtr-general] I want to use Watir to test Firefox and Safari

[Nathan]

So I haven't rejected Firewatir, rather I have not been able to find any new info on it, and as far as the site here goes, it appears to have been abandoned.  I'd like very much to use it and develop it more if necessary.  We would like a good way to test in Firefox and Safari that isn't proprietary, and free if possible.  One difficulty in our experience, though it is a good thing, is that only Microsoft products are bound to putting OLE/COM servers in their products, so as Firefox and Safari don't have these things, I'll need to rely on a plugin.  I am not opposed to plugins to do the job.  Quick Test Pro after all uses a plugin to automate both Firefox and IE, but it has no support for Safari, and it's pretty costly for what we get.  Also it doesn't do everything we want it to do.  The one thing I want to completely avoid though is recompiling a browser just so we can test on it - a plugin is something everyone can get and use, but recompiling the browser voids our tests in our mind.  If it works here or doesn't work here when we've recompiled the browser, then we cannot guarantee even similar results to people who use a precompiled browser.  We're a professional business and we need to guarantee our product and have reproducible results.  I disagree that automating something "always has the potential to perturb the results" as you put it.  If that were indeed the case then automation would not be as common as it is, and more people would be more reluctant to pursue it.

Thanks for the insight,

Nathan
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