Selenium WebDriver: Random Error determining if element is visible - selenium

Question

I'm using Selenium 2.2.
I am trying to click on elements which are not displayed at first, but become visible
during the test. At first sometimes the webdriver seemed to work too fast so the Elements were not visible in time resulting in ElementNotVisibleExceptions. I added WebDriverWait to wait for these elements to become visible/clickable. But now I'm getting this random error when using
WebDriverWait.until(ExpectedConditions.visibilityOfElementLocated(By.id("id")));
same for
WebDriverWait.until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.id("id")));
here is the stacktrace
org.openqa.selenium.WebDriverException: Error determining if element is displayed (WARNING: The server did not provide any stacktrace information)
Command duration or timeout: 219 milliseconds
Build info: version: '2.20.0', revision: '16008', time: '2012-02-27 19:03:59'
System info: os.name: 'Windows XP', os.arch: 'x86', os.version: '5.1 build 2600 Service Pack 3', java.version: '1.6.0'
Driver info: driver.version: RemoteWebDriver
at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.java:44)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.java:27)
at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Constructor.java:516)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.ErrorHandler.createThrowable(ErrorHandler.java:170)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.ErrorHandler.throwIfResponseFailed(ErrorHandler.java:123)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebDriver.execute(RemoteWebDriver.java:438)
at org.openqa.selenium.remote.RemoteWebElement.isDisplayed(RemoteWebElement.java:280)
at org.openqa.selenium.support.ui.ExpectedConditions.elementIfVisible(ExpectedConditions.java:136)
at org.openqa.selenium.support.ui.ExpectedConditions.access$1(ExpectedConditions.java:135)
at org.openqa.selenium.support.ui.ExpectedConditions$4.apply(ExpectedConditions.java:106)
at org.openqa.selenium.support.ui.ExpectedConditions$4.apply(ExpectedConditions.java:1)
at org.openqa.selenium.support.ui.ExpectedConditions$11.apply(ExpectedConditions.java:252)
at org.openqa.selenium.support.ui.ExpectedConditions$11.apply(ExpectedConditions.java:1)
at org.openqa.selenium.support.ui.FluentWait.until(FluentWait.java:201)
at MyTest.myTest(MyTest.java:xx)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:600)
at junit.framework.TestCase.runTest(TestCase.java:168)
at junit.framework.TestCase.runBare(TestCase.java:134)
at junit.framework.TestResult$1.protect(TestResult.java:110)
at junit.framework.TestResult.runProtected(TestResult.java:128)
at junit.framework.TestResult.run(TestResult.java:113)
at junit.framework.TestCase.run(TestCase.java:124)
at junit.framework.TestSuite.runTest(TestSuite.java:243)
at junit.framework.TestSuite.run(TestSuite.java:238)
at junit.framework.TestSuite.runTest(TestSuite.java:243)
at junit.framework.TestSuite.run(TestSuite.java:238)
at org.junit.internal.runners.JUnit38ClassRunner.run(JUnit38ClassRunner.java:83)
at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit4.runner.JUnit4TestReference.run(JUnit4TestReference.java:45)
at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.TestExecution.run(TestExecution.java:38)
at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.runTests(RemoteTestRunner.java:460)
at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.runTests(RemoteTestRunner.java:673)
at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.run(RemoteTestRunner.java:386)
at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.main(RemoteTestRunner.java:196)
This only happens sometimes. Ignoring the WebDriverException might solve this problem, but that doesn't seem like a clean solution. It can't be a timeout issue because i tried setting my timeout limit to a minute and more and it still fails after a couple of milliseconds.
Anybody got a clean solution to that?
Thanks in advance
Edit: btw. I'm using the InternetExplorerDriver

Answer 1

Make sure page has only one modalPanel. Try get visible panel (java):
public WebElement getVisibleModalPanel(){
for (WebElement element : driver.findElements(By.cssSelector('csslocator'))) {
if (element.isDisplayed()) {
return element;
}
}
return null;
}
Implement wait for such thing:
(new WebDriverWait(getDriver(), timeout, 400)).ignoring(StaleElementReferenceException.class).until(
new ExpectedCondition<Boolean>() {
#Override
public Boolean apply(WebDriver driver) {
for (WebElement element : driver.findElements(By.cssSelector(locator))) {
if (element.isDisplayed()) {
return true;
}
}
return false;
}
});