From: Bret Pettichord <bpettichord@...>
Date: 2007-03-30T10:50:06+09:00
Subject: Re: (Fire|)Watir and Selenium - Google SoC

On Mar 29, 9:33 am, "Helder Ribeiro" <hel...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've got a project to come up with a way to record user action in Ruby
> code that can be executed by FireWatir. My idea is to parse the output
> from TestGen4Web or Selenium-IDE. This idea was proposed in the ruby-
> talk mailing list and in the Ruby Central SoC ideas page.
>
> There is one thing though: what makes that different from just using
> Selenium-IDE? Selenium can record, it can output Ruby code, and it can
> then play it back in the browser.
>
> I had read that Selenium had to be installed server-side, but then I
> read that with Selenium-IDE being a Firefox extension it becomes a
> trusted host and can run its own webserver and test any website it
> wants.
>
> So would this idea be redundant? Is there any substantial difference
> between Selenium and (Fire|)Watir that would justify doing this?

Let me make some alternate suggestions for how to you could help
support web testing in Ruby.

1. Help create a Watir-api to selenium. Many people like watir's API,
but prefer Selenium's platform support. Here is a spike of the
concept:
http://awta.wikispaces.com/Common+Driver+for+Selenium+and+Watir

2. Help with the FireWatir port of Watir. We are running into some
inconsistencies between FireWatir and Watir::IE (aka Watir). See the
FireWatir mailing list for details. These are a problem for people who
want to run tests using either browser.

3. Help integrate FireWatir, Watir::IE and SafariWatir. Right now they
are separate tools, but by rights they really should share common
code. We've had some discussion of this, and have agreed on basic
principles, but no one has really had the time to do it.

4. I do think that Modifying Selenium IDE so that it could generate
Watir code would also be a benefit.

5. You should know that the Watir-recorder team recently released
their Watin Recorder -- there may be things to learn there.

All in all, what we really need is not yet another tool, but rather
help in getting these different open-source tools to work together and
interoperate.

It might also simply help to provide up-to-date comparison information
on Watir vs. Selenium. Several have been done, but they are all over a
year old (that i've seen) and all the tools have improved
substantially in that time.

Bret