WATIR overview Mike Girenko

Below is the link to an excellent overview of WATIR:
http://watirpodcast.com/

Željko Filipin asks Bret Pettichord about Watir. Bret is a lead developer of WATIR and just recently established his new company, WatirCraft, which will provide commercial support of WATIR.

Couple of notes:
1. Bret explains why WATIR doesn’t have a recorder. I personally used WatirRecorder (http://www.hanselman.com/blog/NewReleaseOfWatirMakerNowWatirRecorder.aspx), but agree with Bret, it is not very useful. I think it is also a part of bigger discussion about using recording, when creating scripts. I found that recording only helps with learning how a tool interacts with an application, but that is about all. It would be a mistake to rely on recording, when planning automated testing.
2. Since WATIR only works with IE, FireWater (which works with FF) is a main point of future development.
3. Bret mentions that WATIR is having issues with handling dialogs. I agree, I had a hard time automating testing of dialogs and pop up screens. There are seems to be workarounds, but I did not have much success.

Mike Girenko

• Posted In Engineering, QA, IT