So I was watching some stuff for Windmill which appears to be some
python based automation stuff, for all I know it's webdriver under the
hood.

Slick UI, record and playback (sigh don't get me started.) and a mix
of identifying stuff by 'clean' means like ID, Class, or Name along
with a ton of identification done by xpath (sigh, again don't get me
started)

No abstraction layer as far as I could tell.  bunch of other things
I'd consider shortcomings, but a site rife with good demo videos and
has that sexy appeal that people who've not been through the
automation wringer always fall for.

But with what did get my attention was their drag and drop stuff,
which is becoming more and more in demand.

I think this is the kind of thing that can help someone who wants to
use watir to fight back against someone being seduced by a sexy UI
that creates brittle tests.

To start off with I think we ought to consider supporting two things I
saw them demo  They called their methods "dragDropElem" and
"dragDropElemToElem".  Not enthralled with the names, but like the
functionality

The first was fairly easy  just a drag and drop relative to the
current location,  e.g.  browser.div(:how =>
'what').drag_relative(x,y)
The second was more useful, dragging one element onto another.  e.g.
browser.div(:how => 'what').drag_onto(-an element-)

The question I would have for the second version is how to specify the
target element?  Do you use some format like (:tag => 'div', :id =>
'drag_target')  or something different?

(I dropped 'drop' from the method names since I think it's implied,
once you start dragging what else can you do but drop the thing
someplace.  Not in any way married to those names, just trying to give
us something to work with.

They give some actual useful examples in terms of manipulating slider
controls where this kind of thing becomes pretty useful.  I think this
is the site (or a version of it) they were automating against.
http://yaxu.org/synth/jquery/demos/functional/  it would be
interesting to see if you can easily work those controls with watir
without a drag-drop capability.
_______________________________________________
Wtr-development mailing list
[email protected]
http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/wtr-development

Reply via email to