I have very recently answered to the question about Creating TreeView with nodes and checkboxes.
While I was pondering how to properly process the case when treeview's node is checked when user pressing spacebar I ran into TVN_KEYDOWN notification.
My solution was tested in a dialog box and in a window procedure and both seem to work flawlessly.
Still, I have a dilemma of what should be my returned result. Here is the relevant excerpt from the documentation for TVN_KEYDOWN:
Return value
If the wVKey member of lParam is a character key code, the character
will be used as part of an incremental search. Return nonzero to
exclude the character from the incremental search, or zero to include
the character in the search. For all other keys, the return value is
ignored.
I have tried returning both results when testing if spacebar is pressed and haven't noticed any difference.
So I ask you the following questions:
Can someone explain me what is the incremental search ?
What is the difference when I include or exclude the tested character (spacebar) from incremental search ?
EDIT:
It seems that I have found an answer to first question. I have found an article on Wikipedia that explains what incremental search is.
It leaves only the second question to be answered.
END OF EDIT
Thank you.
Best regards.
It is most visible in a giant TreeView. The best example of one is the left panel in Regedit.exe. Expand HKCR and start typing to see the effect.
The implementation has changed across Windows versions, it used to be a lot less usable in XP. It is a UI blooper, there isn't any good way for the user to see that he mistyped a letter, to correct a typing mistake or to see that a search starts from scratch. Current versions of Windows use a timeout, automatically resetting the partially typed search phrase when you don't hit a key for a couple of seconds. Which is about as practical as it gets. It is certainly useful, just not very usable.
The only sane thing to do with TVN_KEYDOWN is nothing. Never add more ways to make it less predictable than it already is. Intentionally swallowing a keystroke of course makes it a lot less usable if it is a key the user really wanted to use. You certainly don't want to swallow a space, that's of course a valid character in tree node text. If the tree happens to not have any nodes with text that contains a space then you still don't want to swallow it, the control itself already does.
The notification would have been a lot more useful if it also passed the incremental search string that was collected or give a way to reset it. It just doesn't so that's water under the bridge. Consider handling it if you've created some kind of usability trap, very hard to come up with a practical example of one. You know it when you see it.
The only real use is to completely replace the search function. You'd then make your own rules and select a node yourself. And of course always return a non-zero value.
You want only answer to the second question, so this is:
If you exclude spacebar from incremental search, you dont find trewview item with spacebar.
Note: You must disable TVS_CHECKBOXES style, because treeview wndproc handle spacebar different with this style set.
Related
I'm trying to get a text from a textfield with Get Text, but in some cases this field is optional and the robot crashes because it doesn't have anything in the field.
You have multiple options. It's hard to say which one fits best you so here is a pool of possible solutions:
when NOT using the Modern Design, you can easily use the Element exists activity, self explaining
if you use the Modern Design and miss old activities like Element exists, go to the filter dropdown and select Show Classic, this way you are now also able to choose Element exists
you could also wrap such failing activities into a Try Catch, then your process wont fail, but a Try Catch should always be the last way out
when using the Modern Design, you can try Find Element, if the returned object is empty you know that it was not found, make sure to set a proper Timeout here, otherwise you wait for 30 seconds
but on your case it could be better to use an Image exists or Find Image Matches as you said you are looking for text in a textfield, just inverse it and look for an empty textfield, and if you have no matches all is fine
But to be honest, I would go for the Element exists. Give this a try, but be aware that in the future this activity might be replaced by something else and your process will need a little bit of rework.
GetDllDirectory produces an ambiguous value. When the string this call produces is empty, it means one of the following:
nobody has called SetDllDirectory
somebody passed NULL to SetDllDirectory
somebody passed an empty string to SetDllDirectory
The first two cases are equivalent for my purposes, but the third case is a problem. If I want to write save/restore code (call GetDllDirectory to save the "old" value, SetDllDirectory to set a "new" value temporarily, and later SetDllDirectory again to restore the "old" value), I run the risk of reversing some other programmer's intent.
If the other programmer intended for the current working directory to be in the DLL search order (in other words, one of the first two bullets is true), and I pass an empty string to SetDllDirectory, I will be taking the current working directory out of the DLL search order, reversing the other programmer's intent.
Can anyone suggest an approach to eliminate or work around this ambiguity?
P.S. I know having the current working directory in the DLL search order could be interpreted as a security hole. Nevertheless, it is the default behavior, and my code is not in a position to undo that; my code needs to be compatible with the expectations of all potential callers, many of which are large and old and beyond my control.
No fix for this. Between a rock and a hard place, you ought to assume that NULL was passed. There is already a way to enable safe searching with a registry setting.
In general how does one test a various parts of a GUI? What are good practices? (Yes I am being overly general here).
Let take for Notepad's Find dialog box:
Notepad's Find dialog box http://img697.imageshack.us/img697/5483/imgp.png
What are some things that can be tested? How does one know its working correctly? What are edge cases to look out for? Stress tests?
Here.
I doubt any good generalization can be made about this - it always depends on the situation.
When someone asks for tests for GUI I always assume that that mean 'this part of application that is accessible via this GUI'. Otherwise it would mean testing the only the GUI without any logic hooked. Dunno why no one never actually asked for testing if the events are fired when button is pressed or is displayed window acquiring focus.
Anyway back to the question. First of all find out about equivalence classes, boundary conditions other testing techniques. Than try to apply it for given problem. Than try to be creative.
All those should be applied when creating following tests:
1) happy path tests - application acts right when given input is good
2) negative tests - application acts right when given input is bad
3) psychotic user behavior (I saw someone use this term, and I find it to be great) - that one user that has nothing better to do than break your application or is to stupid to actually know how bad and horrible things he is doing with your app.
After all this if all tests are passing and you can't figure out other, than you don't know is it working properly, but you can say that it passed all tests and it seems to be working correctly.
As for given GUI example.
1)
Is the application finding string that is in opened file?
Is the application finding character that is in opened file?
How is it reacting to reaching end of file during search?
Is it finding other appearances of given string/character or just one, when there are many of those appearances ?
Is it handling special search characters like * or ? correctly?
Is it searching in desired direction?
Is it 'Mach case ' option working properly?
When opening find setting some criteria, canceling search and launching it again - are search criteria back to default values? Or are they set as you left them when clicking Cancel?
2)
Is it informing user that no mach was found when trying to search for data that is not in opened file?
Is it reacting properly when trying to search down form end of file?
Is it reacting properly when trying to search up form beginning of file?
How search feature is reacting when no file is loaded? (in MS notepad it can be done, but in other editors you can launch editor without opening a file hence this test)
Can I mark both Up and Downs search direction?
3)
Is it working properly on 4GB file?
Can I load 4 GB string in 'Find What:' field and search for it?
Can I provide as input special characters by providing ASCII codes? (it was done like pressing Alt and number of character... or something like that)
Can I search for empty character (there was something like that in character table).
Can I search for characters like end of line or CarretReturn?
Will it search for characters form different languages? (Chinese, or other non-english alphabet characters)
Can I inject something like ') DROP ALL TABLES; (if that would be web based search).
Will I be able to launch proper event twice by really fast double click on search button? (easier on web apps)
With reasonable test suite you know it seems to work correctly.
I think it is better to separate out functional aspects and the usability aspects for the GUI testing.
Let us say in the above example take the use case of user entering some text and hitting the Find button. From the functional aspect I would say your tests should check whether this user action (event) calls the appropriate event handler methods. These can be automated if your code has good separation between the GUI display code and the
functional part.
Testing of usability aspect would involve checking things like whether the display occurs correctly in multiple platforms. I think this needs to be verified manually. But I think there are some tools that automate this kind of GUI testing as well but I've no experience with them.
It's difficult and error-prone to test finished UIs.
But if you are more interested form the programmer's perspective, please have a read of the paper The Humble Dialog. It presents an architecture for creating UIs whose functionality can be tested in code using standard testing frameworks.
First of all, I finally made this a wiki, but I believe a "simple," straightforward answer is highly desirable, especially since the result would define a unified IDE behavior for everyone. More on the simple later.
In the past, I've blogged about what it means to have a well-behaved member selection drop down. If you haven't read it, do so now. :)
Visual Studio 2010 adds new features to the IntelliSense selection process that makes things ... not so easy. I believe there's great power we can harness from these features, but without a clean set of governing rules it's going to be very difficult.
Before you answer, remember this: The rules should allow someone "in tune" with the system to take advantage of the IntelliSense power with fewer keystrokes and less time than other solutions provide. This is not just about what you're used to - If you use a system as long and frequently as I do, relearning the patterns is trivial next to the time it saves to have a great algorithm behind it.
Here are the controllable axes:
Filtering: A "full" list contains every identifier or keyword allowed at the current location, without regard for the partially typed text the cursor is within.
Sorting: We (at least Visual Studio users) are used to the member selection drop down being sorted in alphabetical order. Other possibilities are partial sorting by some notion "relevance," etc.
Selection: Based on the currently typed text, we have the ability to select one item as the "best match." Selection states are:
No item selected
Passive selection: one item outlined, but pressing ., <space> or similar won't fill it in without using an arrow key to make it:
Active selection: one item selected, and unless Esc or an arrow key is pressed, a . or <space>, etc will auto-complete the item.
My previous set of rules restricted the manipulation to the selection axis. They took into account:
Characters typed as matched against list items with a StartsWith operation (prefix matching), with variants for whether the match was case-sensitive.
Previous completions that started with the same set of characters.
The following are additionally available and potentially useful, but not all have to be used:
CamelCase matches or underscore_separation ("us"): Long, expressive identifiers? Not a problem.
Substring matches: long prefixes hindering your selection speed? Not a problem.
Information available in the summary text, where available: I lean against this but I must admit it's come in handy in the Firefox address bar, so you never know.
The rules you write should address the axes (in bold above) in order. In my previous posts on the subject, the rules were very simple, but the additional considerations will likely make this a bit more complicated.
Filtering
Sorting
Selection
Just one addition or remark ...
IntelliSense should adapt to the context. In the case of Visual Studio, places where only subtypes of a specific type or interface may be used, the dropdown list should filter by these.
IList list = new (Drop down all the types implementing IList) - not all possible types!
Very simple question: should a dropdown list be used to populate state abbreviations? From my experience, I think most e-commerce sites do this so I would expect that it's acceptable. However, Jakob Nielsen has something to say about this.
I think I disagree; I use the tab key then type the first letter of my state. Heck, even if it wasn't the first entry, I've done this enough times, I would hit the letter repeatedly and get to what I need. I never need the scroll wheel or mouse.
Is there any additional concrete guidance out there on this particular question?
I think this will become less of an issue now that most modern browsers scroll the drop down lists based on each consecutive letter you type, not just reading the first letter as they once did. So, If you type N-Y, the drop down list will scroll directly to NY and you do not have to hit N a bunch of times.
Since a state is a two letter abbreviation, I wouldn't put a drop downlist, I would put a textbox, but I would validate it using AJAX or Javascript to warn the user about an error, right after he entered something wrong.
DropDown / Auto-completion (in my opinion) is useful when the data to enter is longer / more error-prone.
If you insist on using auto-completion or dropdown, you should put long state names, not just the abbrev.
I don't know about concrete guidance, but one alternative I would consider is using an autocomplete text box that forces you to choose from one of the available choices. I agree that a 50-item drop down list is too long and using autocomplete with enforced choice accomplishes the same purpose -- consistent data -- and has the advantage that it is much easier for the user to navigate. If you don't want to limit the choices to just US states you could drop the enforced choice and just let the autocomplete work as a suggestion with the user being able to enter free-form input.
EDIT: As #Martin suggests, I would probably have the autocomplete show the full state name, even if it only entered the abbreviation. This would solve issues of people getting the abbreviation wrong as well, though you could do the same thing in a drop down -- display the name with the abbreviation as the value.
I was going to post NYSystemsAnalyst's answer, but he beat me. I will instead add a caveat... If you use a dropdown list, it must be complete. Do not forget the obvious DC, or the less common but plausible PR or AE/AA/AP, or the rather improbable but still valid AS, FM, MH, MP, PW, and VI.
The official list
I think it depends on if you are asking a user to enter their own address or someone else's address (ship to address). Everyone knows their own state abbreviation, but may know all the state abbreviations.
So for entering your own address a textbox is the quickest and easiest way, but if you are asking the user to potentially enter someone else's address a drop down is probably best.
Of course, if you site has a combination of both types of address, you want your UI to be consistent and use the drop down for both. Also, if you are using a drop down, I would suggest using the state abbreviation and name (AZ - Arizona) when the drop down is expanded (but just show the abbreviation when it is collapsed).
I'm willing to bet that half the users of online e-commerce sites don't know the abbreviations for the states. Think if you're shipping a gift to someone and you can't remember whether its MS, MO or MI. Dropdowns are fine.
I've never had an issue with state drop down boxes (and this is from someone routinely at the bottom in West Virginia). I've gotten into the habit of just tabbing and pressing W and then it will either recognize the "E" and give me the correct state, or it will not recognize the "E" and then I have to hit the down key once or twice (depending on sort order) to get the proper state.
So all in all I am looking at 5 key presses max to get to my state. I don't think it's that bad.
How about a textbox with validation, and a drop-down list if the state abbreviation is invalid?