Question

usually selenium does not identify elements on a browser toolbar. But this is for pre-build browser toolbars. Can a browser toolbar ( for FF, IE & Chrome ) be developed in such a way that selenium can be used to identify elements on the toolbar and then perform control actions on it , like clicking on a radio button on the toolbar.

Answer 1

Because Selenium can only control things that JavaScript can control, you need to find out whether JavaScript can control the toolbar. JavaScript has 3 main features. I controls the JavaScript processing, the DOM (document object model) and the BOM (browser object model). There might have been more control given to JavaScript when HTML 5 and CS3 came out, but this is my knowledge of it.

I think you may need to use a cross-browser extension to make your sidebar/toolbar. google-gears/silverlight/adobe-air/jnext. You might need to make the UI using the DOM. I’m not sure. You will need to research.. never done this before.

If the toolbar is part of the BOM (and/or DOM), then you can. Just create a custom command, called Selenium.prototype.doControlToolbar or something and put your JavaScript logic inside of that function (similar to what I have below). Good luck!

Option #1 – if using Selenium IDE:

Specify the user-extensions.js file under Selenium IDE > Options (menu) > Options (menu option) > General Tab, then browse to your file under “Selenium Core Extensions”.

Option #2 – if using Selenium RC Server:

If you’re not using the IDE and using Selenium RC server with a client driver (like JUnit for example), you must specify the path of the *.js file with the -userExtensions parameter when you start the Selenium RC Server on the command line. But you said you just wanted to use the IDE, so I’d ignore this. It takes quite a bit of other setup to use the Selenium RC server.

java -jar selenium-server.jar -userExtensions user-extensions.js

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I made the following custom command (JavaScript function) in my custom user-extensions.js file.. I had to exit and restart the IDE before it found it. Type everything after the “do” in the “Command” field in the IDE to find the custom command. It looks like it also added a “customAlertAndWait” to the IDE as well.

Code in user-extensions.js file:

Selenium.prototype.doCustomAlert = function(sTarget, sValue) { alert(‘Target: ‘ + sTarget + ‘ … Value: ‘ + sValue); };

Selenium IDE command details:

Command: customAlert
Target: custom alert target
Value: custom alert value