Few of our web applications were migrated to Silverlight technology. I was looking tools for Silverlight Automation. Still many of the leading automation tools have partial support. Few tools like Silktest do not have any support for Silverlight components. Even Microsoft's codedUI test didn't have support upto October 2010. So far, I have seen WebUI Test (Telerik's product) and QALiber (open source) have better support for Silverlight components.
Interestingly all of these UI tools are using MS UIA to identify and interact with Silverlight components. UIA is the successor technology to MSAA (Microsoft Active Accessibility). It is freely available from DotNet Framework. Recent Microsoft Operating Systems (Windows 7, Windows 2008 R2) have better support for UIA.
Microsoft UI Automation provides a single, generalized interface that automation clients can use to examine or operate the user interfaces of a variety of platforms and frameworks. UI Automation enables both accessibility applications such as screen readers and quality-assurance (test) code to examine user-interface elements and simulate user interaction with them from other code.
UIA Supporting Applications
- Silverlight Applications
- WPF Applications
- .NET Windows Forms applications
- Win32 Applications
Few References:
MS UIA (UI Automation)
Microsoft Documentation - Silverlight Accessibility Overview
UI Automation of a Silverlight Custom Control
WebUI Test tool - Commercial
QALiber tool - Open Source
WHITE tool - Open Source
Wishing you and your family a very happy, healthy and prosperous new year. Have a wonderful year ahead!!!
