From: Bret Pettichord <bret@...>
Date: 2005-08-31T12:56:36+09:00
Subject: Re: Watir attracts Ruby Newbies

At 02:56 PM 8/30/2005, Phil Tomson wrote:
>Why not point people to this list when they have general Ruby questions?

Well, part of the problem is that they don't know what part of their 
question is Ruby and what part is Watir. Often they are mixed up, even 
though the solution is just learning more about Ruby or some other Ruby 
library other than Watir.

Please let me know whether you want these kinds of mixed up questions on 
this list. Remember, testers are used to being beat up by developers, and 
will be reticent. I know this is a polite list, but i guess i want more 
reassurance that this kind of thing would be welcome here.

>Also: my understanding is that Watir works only on IE because it uses
>Win32OLE.  Any thoughts about creating a cross-browser solution (maybe
>kind of like Selenium)?

We've given some thought to eventually being able to generate Selenium 
scripts from Watir scripts, thus allowing for the cross-browser solution. 
This would amount to the moral equivalent of a cross-compiler. You'd 
develop on Windows, but then could create a script that would run on other 
browsers and platforms.

Several people have looked at using Mozilla's XCOM, but not much is really 
hooked up to on Mozilla's side yet, so that is a big project.



_____________________
  Bret Pettichord
  www.pettichord.com