View System Windows

Ideas for new features & functions

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melb.robmac
Newbie
Posts: 12
Joined: Tue Jun 17, 2008 12:12 am
Location: Melbourne Australia
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View System Windows

Post by melb.robmac » Wed Oct 15, 2008 11:57 pm

On the tool bar in Macro Scheduler Pro there is an option to "View System Windows".
I've had a bit of a play around with this and I can see loads of potential here in helping to identify objects on windows (similar to how the likes of QTP etc work).
Are there any plans to develop this tool further and have specific functions to identify objects etc on windows (whether they be in applications or in browsers) so that Test Regression Suites can be more robust??
Apologies if this has already been posted and / or the functions actually do exist (in which case I haven't found them yet!)
Thanks.
Rob
Melbourne, Australia

gdyvig
Automation Wizard
Posts: 447
Joined: Fri Jun 27, 2008 7:57 pm
Location: Seattle, WA

View System Windows compared to WR GUI Spy

Post by gdyvig » Tue Feb 10, 2009 6:42 pm

When I first looked at View System Windows I thought it was only giving me info about the windows, not the object/controls in them. I come from a WinRunner background. What WinRunner calls objects or window controls, Macro Scheduler calls "child windows". So, the tool is much more powerful than it seemed at first glance.

The WR GUI Spy lets you hover of windows or objects (you must specify which you want) and the object will blink and the Spy will display the properties of that object. But you can only see that one object. Macro Scheduler accomplishes the same thing by giving you a high level view of all the windows and objects and a Find feature to locate the object in the viewer. If you can't find the object, then find the top level window and scroll down the controls and click the Identify button to draw a border around the object whose names do not match their labels in the app.

All of the Macro Scheduler windows commands work with object/controls, so you can use GetWindowPos, GetWindowSize, and GetWindowHandle (together with LibFunc) to get the other object attributes.

The Windows Calculator is a good app to check out object recognition.

Some simple enhancements for the manual:
-Define "child windows" and objects or window controls.
-Explain using View System Windows to locate objects.

Thanks,
Gale

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