[Wtr-general] ANN: Watir WebRecorder

[saud aziz]

Cannot agree more. I actually liked Scott Hanselman's approach (WatirMaker)
to recording "chunks" better and have extended it for myself to record all
the steps i would normally take while doing Exploratory testing. Very much
helpful and since i can edit and add any sort of functionality to it
whenever and wherever i want and can. It has it's own set of issues but
works pretty much like what Marcus has and is a bit less crowded as far as
code is concerned (Doesn't reference forms and works for me as under .NET
1.1 you can have only 1).

One thing i didn't like in Marcus's macro recorder is that if you are
testing a page with sets of fields, it doesn't allow you to TAB through
those fields and complains to use Mouse. For me that is not good as that is
one less test case i could do while i was recording the script.
Additionally, with that 'chunk editor' (as you put it so nicely in one other
place Bret), Scott had RichText box control instead of Listbox. And i don't
have do right click-modify/insert, and can do just about anything right in
that text box. Plus, it also shows up as Syntax highlighter ;=), which looks
pretty cool.

So in short, Scott's implementation works really good and since it's in
.NET, i can, therefore, easily modify it to suit my need(s).

Thanks once again to Scott.

Saud

On 2/15/06, Bret Pettichord <bret at pettichord.com> wrote:
>
> This looks useful. I wanted to report a couple of bugs, comment on some of
> the limits you mention of WebRecorder and/or Watir, and clarify my position
> on recorders, including a general concern about claims made about
> WebRecorder.
>
> First the bugs.
>
> 1. When i recorded a script i saw a lot of calls to IE#wait. I don't
> believe they are necessary in any of the cases i saw. In fact, my position
> is pretty much that users shouldn't have to make calls to IE#wait in their
> scripts. If they do, it is a bug in Watir. I'd suggest removing them and
> reporting any cases where they seem necessary to you as bugs.
>
> 2. Not really a bug, but i think the "require
> 'test/unit/ui/console/testrunner'" is also unnecessary.
>
> One thing missing from the Watir version right now is an easy way to
> > record code to extract data from the page.
>
>
> OK.
>
> It also doesn't support file downloads yet.
>
>
> I plan to rewrite Watir's support for this. The current implentation is
> buggy.
>
> The other thing that is missing is support for Area tags.  While
> > WebRecorder can record clicks on Area maps I couldn't find any support to
> > play them back in Watir.
>
>
> True. I haven't seen much demand for this, so i don't think any one is
> working on it.
>
> Regarding my views of recorders...
>
> I think that recorders can be useful aids to programmers. But i think you
> need to know how to write and modify the code that is being generated. One
> problem is that recorders often lead people into thinking that they don't
> have to be a programmer to use the tool. In fact, your website makes this
> very claim. This is what i object to. Not to recorders themselves.
>
> A second concern is that it simply is much harder to make a reliable
> recorder than it to make a reliable execution tool. This is why Watir is an
> execution tool, only. The problem is that there are always all kinds of
> controls that a tool can execute against but can't record. For example, i
> tried to use WebRecorder against a random website that had some javascript
> links (probably div tags, i didn't even look) and they didn't get recorded.
> I didn't even report that as a bug, because i didn't expect it to work.
> Every test tool i've ever used that had a recorder had more reliability
> problems with the recorders than the execution. I see them as two separate
> things. But that isn't the view of the non-programming user. To even
> understand the limits of a recorder, you have to know something about html
> -- in other words you have to be, in some sense, a programmer. Anyway, my
> point is that if i were to bundle a recorder (any recorder) with Watir,
> people would try it first, learn that it wasn't reliable and then conclude
> that Watir wasn't reliable. In other words, it would reduce the percieved
> reliability of Watir.
>
> If the recorder is a separate tool, that doesn't make any claims about
> allowing non-programmers to create Watir scripts, then i'm cool with it.
>
> Am i being harsh with WebRecorder? The Watir WebRecorder page says
> "WebRecorder is designed to speed up the creation of web testing and web
> automation scripts." I'm cool with that. But commercial WebRecorder it is
> billed as "No Programming Skills Required". I haven't looked at this version
> of the tool, but i'm pretty skeptical about this claim.
>
> Bret
>
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>
>


--
Saud Aziz

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause
and reflect." - Mark Twain
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