From: Joe Van Dyk <joevandyk@...>
Date: 2005-06-08T12:52:51+09:00
Subject: Test-Driven Development in GUIs

Hi,

Anyone have any tips for writing GUIs in Ruby (using Tk, for example)
using a TDD approach?

A google search gave me
http://approximity.com/ruby/rubytk.html#testfirst, which claims that
some guy is writing a book on TDD for GUIs, using Ruby/Tk as preferred
language/toolkit.  That section links to
http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?TestFirstUserInterfaces, while informative,
doesn't contain any information that I can see on a book.

Say, for the purposes of this discussion, say that you had a small Tk
application that monitored the status of ten websites.  If the website
was up and was active and performing well, the GUI would display a
"Working!" message and perhaps showed data about the site (latency,
bandwidth, whatever).  The GUI could also display graphs of
uptime/downtime, view history reports, and moderately complex GUI
stuff like that.

How would you go about testing that GUI application?  There's a strong
chance that if I get some good ideas from my head and from this
discussion, that I'd write that application and also write a HOWTO on
TDD with GUIs.

Thanks,
Joe