This is our last RC before the final release. WebAii 1.1 final release will coincide with our Automation Design Canvas 1.0 release and will be part of it. If you are wondering why we skipped RC1, it is because RC1 was release part of Automation Design Canvas 1.0 but didn't really have any significant fixes from RC0 but had few fixes specific to the designer so we didn't bother putting it out on our download page to avoid having customers upgrade their RC given that it didn't have any external API changes.
RC2 though does have some significant changes and fixes. Here are some of the main fixes contained in RC2.
Installation Changes/Fixes:
1. IE Blank Window/Wait for browser to connect issues: This was probably one of the major support issues customers were running into. This includes customers that downloaded and installed our ‘Automation Design Canvas' beta. This issue was due to a combination of things that manifested themselves as this error. One part was built in security features in the operating system (discussed below), the other part was installation issues of IE's Explorer bar. After lots of investigation across all Windows platform, we decided to get rid of that bar in lieu of a generic status bar for both IE & Firefox that is separate from the browser itself. This made the registration ultra simple and reliable on all platforms. So now in RC2 , you will no longer see our bottom explorer bar (For IE). Instead you will see a WebAii icon show up in your Windows tray icons to indicate a browser instance driven by IE. If you wish to see the status bar, you can simply click on that icon.
Platform Specific Issues: There are a couple of OS security features that also cause this issue that we decided not to work around given that working around them, will disable a big security feature on customer's machines. Specifically:
[On Vista] : "IE Protection Mode": If you are running with IE Protect Mode: On then you will see the IE Blank issue. To disable this mode, you can follow the instructions here: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/fixtheproblem/ht/protectmodeie7.htm
[On Windows 2003/2008 Server]: "Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration": You need to disable this for automation:
Windows 2003 Server: http://www.visualwin.com/IE-enhanced-security/
Windows 2008 Server: http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/datacenter/?p=255
2. IE Performance Enhancement. With the removal of the Explorer bar, IE now is faster during execution.
3. Abort Execution Button: The new status bar has an "Abort" button that enables you to abort execution of your test. Click on the WebAii icon in your tray and then click abort.
Bug Fixes/Feature enhancements:
4. LINQ search fixes: Fixes in the Find.AllControls, Find.AllElements.
5. HTML Parser fixes: http://community.artoftest.com/forums/p/278/1050.aspx#1050. We now probably parse malformed HTML like non-closed <LI> elements that were giving customers some pain.
6. HtmlSelect:
7. HtmlControl.Click: Now has an overload that takes in a bool whether this click will cause the browser window to close. This is needed for Frames/Popups to avoid having the browser wait after the window is closed. Typically customers have had to set both AutoRefreshDom and AutoWaitUntilReady to false before invoking such a click.
8. HtmlTable.ColumnCount to get the # of columns instead of having to get to the first row and then count cells. [This will only work if the column count is uniform across the table]
9. HtmlImage.IsLoaded: Returns a bool whether an image has actually loaded or it is a broken image, http://community.artoftest.com/forums/t/358.aspx
10. Element. Now has GetPreviousSibiling()/GetNextSibiling
11. Browser:
12. Manager.Desktop.KeyBoard.TypeText(text,speed). Allows you to simulate real text typing with a variable speed.
13. Annotator.Annotate(text,displaytime,location). Allows you to customize how long a specific annotation should be displayed before moving on.
14. AssertStyle() browser agnostic color validation. The assert now performs browser agnostic validation for colors. We all know that computed styles are returned differently between IE & Firefox. Our AssertStyle() now automatically detects colors and will perform the proper validation regardless of the color format.