Functional testing of web pages in TestComplete does not only mean that TestComplete can simulate mouse clicks and key presses in your Internet browser window, but also can access elements of the page from TestComplete scripts. We call this testing web testing.

Currently, TestComplete can access elements of web pages that are displayed in Microsoft Internet Explorer 5, 6 or 7, Mozilla Firefox 1.5-2.0 or in any browser created on the base of the Microsoft WebBrowser control (that is, your scripts can access web pages displayed in a WebBrowser control embedded into an application’s form). Also, limited support is provided for Netscape Navigator ver. 8.1.2 (access to web page elements is available only if Navigator uses the Internet Explorer rendering engine).

The web testing feature is available in TestComplete Enterprise only.

Web page elements are displayed in the Object Browser (and used in your scripts) via any of the four different object models: DOM, Tag, Tree or Hybrid. The DOM model is similar to the HTML object model used in web scripts. It has the document root element and all other page elements are children of this object. In the Tag model the web page elements are grouped by their tag names. In the Tree model the hierarchy of web objects correspond to the hierarchy of HTML elements on the web page. This model is the fastest of the four object models, as the scripting engine spends less time locating the page element. The Hybrid model is a combination of the Tree and DOM models. It includes objects provided by the Tree model and the document object of the DOM model and can be used to port legacy projects that use the DOM model to a new Tree model.

Web testing interacts with the “client” side of web pages. It does not depend on how the pages were prepared on the “server” side (CGI, ASP, PHP, etc).

TestComplete adds specific methods, properties and events to the browser’s process and windows that display the web pages. These methods and properties allow you to navigate to the desired web page, delay script execution until the page is fully loaded, and so on. For example, you could use the web testing capabilities of TestComplete to do a “smart comparison” of a generated web page or to run data-driven tests of an order input screen.

Since TestComplete provides access to properties of web page elements, you can perform almost any checking and verification actions over the page. TestComplete also includes special features (web checkpoints) that let you easily perform various comparison and verification actions. For instance, you can --

• Compare the entire page, or only its tag structure, or only the contents of some elements against a baseline copy.
• Verify that all links on the page are valid.
• Verify that all IMG elements have the ALT attribute specified.
• Check whether the page contains MAILTO links.
• Check whether the page contains Java applets.
• Plus much more!

The object-oriented testing approach offered by TestComplete lets you create tests that check only the data and are resistant to changes in the page layout. By using TestComplete’s web document object models (see the screenshot for an example), you can directly access specific document elements and evaluate their properties in your test scripts, thus allowing you to just assess the data you want.

By You: Web testing interacts with the “client” side of web pages. It does not depend on how the pages were prepared on the “ http://forum.onestoptesting.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=4782# -