I have code that opens a new window but I want to be able to edit the same one.
System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("iexplore.exe", "http://www.live.com")
I'm not sure exactly but a good pointer to start off might be to get the handle of the window you're interested in:
http://www.pocketpcdn.com/articles/dotnetcf_hwnd.html
And then separately investigate what interop messages you can send to IE to change the URL in tab X
In order of increasing difficulty and increased control/power:
Send input text to your IE process. Alt-D to focus on the navigation bar, then the URL, then ENTER.
Use MSAA to find the navigation bar and send it text, as above.
Use MSAA to get IHTMLDocument access to the browser, and then programmatically drive the browser with that, and the related interfaces.
I don't know your exact scenario, but if you can host your own instance of MSHTML, or a WebBrowser control, it will make it a lot easier to get the interfaces and do the manipulations mentioned in #3 above; doing that stuff cross-process is fraught with peril.
I just did a web search and turned up a WatiN tool that apparently wraps a lot of this work; perhaps it would be useful for you.
If you are using 2008 there is a feature where you could create a second form and then add a Webbrowser control
the page could then be called by
myForm.show
The page could then be changed with the
Webbrowser1.Url = New Uri("http://www.google.com")
Use the following code:
System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("http://www.live.com")
That is: do not invoke iexplore.exe directly – just let the system figure out which default browser to open.
This may yield two behaviours:
Either it opens a new tab in an existing Internet Explorer window,
or it creates a new window.
The important point is that this depends on a preference that can be controlled within the Internet Explorer application. If a new window opens, then this is the setting chosen by the user – do not try to override it: overriding the user’s preferences is considered bad manners.
If the users don’t want a new window opened, they can simply change that in their Internet Explorer preferences.
Related
This question is mostly just out of curiosity at what's possible. I'm interested to know any ideas at all.
If I'm on a website, is it possible to make a keyboard shortcut for clicking a button on that site? For example, if I'm on google.com, is it possible to write a script somewhere on my own system that will detect that I'm on google.com and make it so that if I press ctrl-g while that site is in focus, it will click Google Search?
If you know for sure that this isn't possible and have an explanation for why, I'd be interested to know that too.
Yes, it's possible.
I'll briefly describe how to do it in C# and Chrome, but it's not language-dependent and could be used in Edge or IE either.
Get the currently focused window by calling GetForegroundWindow API.
Get the process id by calling the GetWindowThreadProcessId API.
Get the process name by process id.
Proceed if it's Chrome.
Get access to UI Automation COM interface.
You will need to consume the COM interface in your language, but in C# it's quite easy: you'll need to add a reference to COM -> UIAutomationClient to your project. This will generate a wrapper for you, so the COM interface will be accessible in the code in a usual OO-style.
In Chrome, the Accessibility options must be enabled first to get access to UIA.
It could be done manually by navigating to chrome://accessibility/, but it's possible to do it programmatically as well.
Use UI Automation to detect the active URL.
You will need to find the Address bar in the UI tree using UIA by its Name or ClassName or another unique identifier.
You could first retrieve the UI Automation element for the Chrome window and then use the FindAll method to find the Address bar in the subtree to get its Value property which should contain the current URL.
Inspect tool will help you to investigate the Chrome UIA element tree and element properties (like Name or ClassName).
Do the same steps to find the Google Search button in the UI tree using UIA.
Call GetClickablePoint method to get its clickable point.
Click on the button programmatically using Win API.
To do this on a global shortcut, you could place a keyboard hook by calling SetWindowsHookEx API. Or use a library.
Here is another way.
That's it, easier than it looks.
I am writing a test that verifies that a warning to the user before the user opens a document. If the user says that they still would like to open the document, the document opens in an external application (pdf or word).
But now I have an external application over the browser window, and it messes up for other tests.
So, what are the best practices around this kind of issue? Rewrite of the appliction to allow for not opening documents in test?
Added description:
The problem is twofold.
1) It starts processes (word and acrobat) that fills the desctop and requires resources from the test-slave
2) The external process seems to interfer with other tests since (guessing here) it is located over the browser window.
what i understood from your post is, the document(word/pdf) is opening in the browser window hence you are not able to proceed with further steps. If so, you can verify the Title to make sure the document is opened in browser window and can navigate back using below snippet.
driver.navigate().back();
Hope this helps.
What I understand from the line
'But now I have an external application over the browser window, and it messes up for other tests.'
is that once user clicks on open button a new window opens up (Window based application) since you have mentioned PDF or Word.
You can use robot class in such cases, below code snippet will close the current active window:
Robot rbt = new Robot();
rbt.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_ALT);
rbt.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_F4);
rbt.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_ALT);
rbt.keyRelease(KeyEvent.VK_F4);
Make sure you deal with sync issues properly so that intended window is closed instead of AUT.
If I use IE I can visit the website I want and click the 'Next' button and life is good. If I open that same website using the webBrowser control and click the 'Next button I get a javascript error message.
I'm not doing anything in the code to manipulate the website. My goal, eventually, is to have some level of automation; but at this point, I get the javascript error and a pop-up and it screws everything else.
I can hide the JS error from popping up; by setting 'WebBrowser1.ScriptErrorsSuppressed = True' but the page isn't working because of the error.
The client script might be assuming a full browser is present and trying to access part of the browser outside the Document Object Model (DOM) of the page. For example, maybe the client script is trying to display something on the browser's status bar, or trying to modify a toolbar which isn't available in the WebBrowserControl. There could be numerous similar reasons.
If you do not have write-access to the web page in question to try fixing it, then play with WebBrowser Control properties such as ScriptErrorsSuppressed and ObjectForScripting
Try setting WebBrowser1 Silent property to true.
Actually, you are receiving this problem because when you run your site in IE8 or IE9 on your normal internet explorer desktop app, you are getting either IE8 or IE( rendering, depending on which you have installed. However, with the webbrowser control, unless you take the effort to change soem settings in the registry, the default rendering engine used by the webbrowser control is IE7 (if u have 7, 8 or 9 installed) and IE4 (if you have 4, 5 or 6 installed).
This is why you are having the problem, if you want help changing the rendering engine version for your webbrowser control, do a google search as there are many examples on SO, and i have provided this answer in some of my previous posts on this tag/topic. feel free to search or ask me.
Let me know how you go.
I am using (a school modified version of) the "Squeak By Example" (SBE) image for a OOP/OOD class. However, my System Browser is missing a few features that appear in SBE. I assume there are some configuration options that can get them back for me, but I can't find them yet.
My questions are:
1) How do I get the buttons back? In the bottom pane there should be a bunch of button (browse, senders, implementors, versions, ..., source). My buttons are missing.
2) How do I get the small workspace area above the buttons to appear? There is supposed to be an area that I can type in, below the top panes, and above the buttons, but it doesn't appear.
Thanks in advance!
Robert
Edit - I did fool around in the Preferences Browser and tried a lot of settings. I managed to make the buttons come back and then later got that small (unknown name) workspace pane back, but I have no idea how. I have tried to systematically turn stuff off again to find out what setting(s) controlled what, but I was unable to determine what controlled either problem. So even though I have it working, I would like some squeak/smalltalk knowledgeable person to let me know how to control these as it might help me learn...
"In the bottom pane there should be a bunch of button (browse, senders, implementors, versions, ..., source). " -- switch on the optionalButtons preference in the preferences browser.
The "area that I can type in, below the top panes, and above the buttons, but it doesn't appear" sounds like the annotation pane - this gives you summary information about the method you're currently viewing, and it's controlled by the annotationPanes preference. Alternatively you may be referring to the Mercury Panel which is used for fast navigation to other classes and methods; this is (of course :-) controlled by the mercuryPanel preference.
If you've been messing around, you may also find that you now have an incorrect system browser selected. Squeak has a choice of browsers which can act as the System Browser. You can choose between them by clicking the menu button on the System Browser and selecting "Choose new default Browser". Open a new browser window to see what effect this has had.
You may also want to try a Pharo image which has everything configured the way you want by default.
Do you have access to the Preferences Browser? It should be in the main system menu. You can alter all sorts of things via this browser, including which buttons appear in teh system browser?
Shell ("explorer.exe www.google.com")
is how I'm currently opening my products ad page after successful install. However I think it would look much nicer if I could do it more like Avira does, or even a popup where there are no address bar links etc. Doing this via an inbrowser link is easy enough
<a href="http://page.com"
onClick="javascript:window.open('http://page.com','windows','width=650,height=350,toolbar=no,menubar=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,location=no,directories=no,status=no'); return false")">Link text</a>
But how would I go about adding this functionality in VB?
If you want it to look professional, you need to use an actual browser component. VB.NET comes with one. If you are using an older version of VB, you'd need to go third party. If you want to stay with a shell open, you would have to individually target the browser command-line and pass arguments to indicate that it should not have toolbars etc.
Speaking as a user, I find castrated popup windows annoying and unproductive.
So my answer is: "don't".