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We are working on a large project with a measure of new/modified GUI functionality. We've found in the past that we often introduced new problems in related code when adding new functionality.
We have non-technical users perform testing, but they often miss parts and allow bugs to slip through.
Are there any best practices for organizing the UI testing of a WinForms project? Is there any way to automate it?
There are GUI testing tools that will click buttons and stuff for you but they're pretty fragile in my experience.
The best thing to do is to keep your UI layer as thin as possible. Your event handler classes should optimally be only one or two lines that call out to other more testable classes. That way you can test your business logic in unit tests without having to actually do a button click.
You can automate GUI testing using White framework.
Also consider using TDD friendly design, i.e. use MVP/MVC pattern.
I would highly recommend you to read documentation from Microsoft patterns&practies teams.
Especially have a look at the Composite UI application block and CompositeWPF.
These projects specifically designed to give you best practices in GUI apps development including test driven UI.
Keep the GUI layer as thin as possible. Michael Feathers article, The Humble Dialog Box, is a classic. Also check out Martin Fowler's Passive View. I have also heard that the "automatic button clickers" are fragile, and that it's easy to spend more time maintaining the test than you spend maintaining the code.
In the event that someone finds this useful:
List of GUI testing tools found on Wikipedia.
The following book is an introduction to the subject.
There are as many ways as there are developers out there..
http://pragprog.com/titles/idgtr/scripted-gui-testing-with-ruby
There are many tools and libraries available that can automate WinForms testing, ranging from open source solutions like White to the expensive commercial solutions such as HP QuickTest Pro. There is also the UIAutomation namespace in .NET if you want to roll your own automation framework. But the real cost of automation is in the time and specialised skills it requires to implement. Maintainability is also one of the most important aspects of automated test design; you dont want to expend excessive resource keeping the automation assets current with your application. There are also lots of factors influencing the decision to automate which will be specific to your specific application and organisation.
Your best bet will be to do some more research on the subject and check out some of the specialised testing sites such as http://www.sqaforums.com.
I found this quick and dirty way to test web page layouts in various browsers. It's called browsershots.org. Our client requires support in 5 browsers right now and that takes about a week for full regression testing. This service will deliver screenshots of some 70+ browsers and versions. I print them out and hold up the pages to the light. If they don't line up, there must be a layout problem.
I can't really help with organization or best practices, but an NUnit extension appears to be available for forms testing, NUnitForms.
I used a trial download similar to this product (http://www.tethyssolutions.com/product.htm) and this product (http://www.mjtnet.com/macro_scheduler.htm) years ago and I was happy with the results. These are pretty cheap solutions and some of these macro recorder products can actually be used for automated testing.
A new method available now is using Ruby, via the Ruby gem called win32-autogui. This provides a framework for testing Windows GUI apps. Combine it with Ruby tools RSpec and Cucumber, and it makes for quite a powerful testing framework.
How to organize UI testing depends on how you design the test cases.
Automating Windows Forms application in unit test level can use TDD framework, such as NUnit; or use BDD framework, such as NSpec.
Automating Windows Forms applications in functional testing level can use White, CodedUI, or even directly using Windows Automation API 3.0 (UI Automation and MSAA).
Since all these stuffs mentioned above are technologies rather than solutions, it's better to build some fundamental test automation/scripting frameworks based on these technologies before you start to write automated tests.
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The other day I was showing one of the testers at my company some tests I had written in cucumber (2 features, 5 scenarios).
Then he asked me question that I could not answer:
How is this better than selenium or any other functionality test recording tool?
I understand that cucumber is a different technology and it's placed at a different level of testing, but I can't understand why I should bother to write and maintain Cucumber/Capybara tests.
Can someone give me a reasonable explanation for using Cucumber/Capybara instead of just Selenium?
This question is borderline asking for an opinion. Your question actually reads to me, "What tool is right for me?" I say this because you don't give a reason for why you chose Cucumber and Capybara. I believe to answer that tester's question, you need to answer a couple more questions first:
1.) What stage in the process are you going to be writing these tests?
Cucumber may not be the right choice for unit tests, depending on the language you're using. But it can be used for any level of testing, from unit to integration to end-user.
2.) Who is going to maintaining your tests? You? Other developers? Testers? Business Analysts? Project Managers?
Automated tests must be maintained, and knowing who will be doing that can help you decide on a tool - as some will be too technical for certain users.
3.) Who is going to be defining new tests?
Cucumber is meant to be used collaboratively between development, QA and business owners. It is the perfect tool for leveraging everyone's knowledge into the automated testing process. It requires the development of an ubiquitous language to be effect however. You can read up on that on James Shore's Art of Agile page.
Once you've answered these questions, you're ready to address the tester's question.
However, there are a couple of points to keep in mind when comparing recording tools (such as Selenium IDE, HP Quick Test Pro, IBM Rational Functional Tester) vs. development tools (nUnit, jUnit, RSpec, Selenium webdriver, Capybara) is that they are targeted towards different audiences. They also have different plusses and minuses.
Recording tools are easy for anyone to use, but the scripts they create are fragile. They break easily and require more maintenance. They are great for one-off automated testing, where you need to get it done quickly and have non-technical manpower.
Development tools have a larger learning curve and require programming (or at the least scripting) experience. The scripts are generally more robust, but require more technical knowledge to maintain. They are a good solution when you want repeatability and plan to use tests for a long time.
I strongly suggest you read The Cucumber Book. It will really help you decide if Cucumber is the right choice for you.
Cucumber isn't only a testing tool. Besides testing Cucumber features also take a role of documentation, a mechanism to collaborate with stakeholders and requirements storage (if you write them in declarative style).
You don't have to use Cucumber with Capybara. You can use selenium directly. But Capybara has the same high-level API for all supporting drivers. It's more high-level than Selenium's and allows to write tests a bit faster. You don't have to change code when you switch from one driver to another.
Tests built using test recording tools are generally much worse. Selenium IDE may produce valid programming code but it's not good-looking and thus quiet difficult to maintain.
Cucumber is tool used to make tests readable to business users. It consists of plain English sentences that are matched using regex to your Capybara steps.
Using recording tools won't do you any good in the long run. They were meant for beginners and aren't that powerful so I recommend you go straight to coding.
You can use Selenium alone for your tests, but I would recommend you continue to use Cucumber for documentation purposes, if you find them useful and easy to work with. After all, Cucumber can use Capybara or the Selenium web driver.
Selenium ide is good for testing features that have mostly visual elements (links, text and etc.). But often web apps have features that don't represent itself as visual elements, like sending emails, queueing jobs, communicating with 3rd party services and etc. You could, for example, test if an 'Email has been sent' message is present after submitting a form. But it doesn't really tell you if an email is actually sent and therefore you aren't really testing the whole feature here.
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What are the good automated web UI testing tools?
I want to be able to use it in the .Net world - but it doesn't have to written in .net.
Features such as a record mode, integration into build process\ continuous integration would be nice.
Im going to look at:
Watir
Selenium
Are there any others I should look at?
I definitively recommend Selenium, you can use it from .NET, supports different browsers, works in automatic builds and CI processes (we use it from CCNet). The code is stable. It has a few quirks, but after all they all do.
Whichever tool you choose, I recommend making your own test facade class(es) around it. The facade should be designed to suite your concrete testing needs, without exposing too much the details of the testing tool's API. This will make the test code easier to write and maintain.
UPDATE: if you use ASP.NET view state in your app, you could have problems using a pure HTTP test tool. This is where browser-controllers (like Selenium) are much better.
WatiN
Automates FF and IE
[Test]
public void SearchForWatiNOnGoogle()
{
using (IE ie = new IE("http://www.google.com"))
{
ie.TextField(Find.ByName("q")).TypeText("WatiN");
ie.Button(Find.ByName("btnG")).Click();
Assert.IsTrue(ie.ContainsText("WatiN"));
}
}
http://watin.sourceforge.net/
Watin is pretty unstable to use it in serious projects. It often fails with unexpected reasons like "EI is busy" or something like "Error with COM object".
Selenium is much more stable and it already has a lot of supporting tools. For example Selenium GRID is a solution which allows significantly decrease run time of tests. (Our smoke tests on Watin takes 6 hours to run).
Currently in my job i use QTP and it so far atleast can handle pretty much anything we throw at it both on the UI and it has a special mode for testing non gui services allowing us to check both and help us narrow down where some problems occur when we change the system. It is in my opinion very configurable and the inclusion of vbscript as its language allows integration with lots and lots of things on windows to allow you to do pretty much anything you want! For instance we use it to control the excel com object to make custom excel reports of success and failure so the format of the results is the same wether a test was run manually and also on another project used the adodb object to check that when a page submits information to the database that the database contains the correct data for that record!
As for integration into the build process i have not tried this myself but it is possible to launch qtp and a test from a vbs file so i would assume this should be fairly trvial as ms tools tend to allow you to run vbs files pretty easily from most tools.
I would reccomend it to anyone assuming you can get someone to buy the license!
You can also try VSTT - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/slumley/archive/2009/05/28/vsts-2010-feature-enhancements-for-web-test-playback-ui.aspx
Telerik Test Tools - http://www.telerik.com/automated-testing-tools.aspx
Visual Studio UI Test Extensibility–Scenarios & Guiding Principles - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mathew_aniyan/archive/2011/03/28/visual-studio-ui-test-extensibility-scenarios-amp-guiding-principles.aspx
VSTS Web Test Step-by-Step Primer - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jimmymay/archive/2009/02/23/vsts-web-test-step-by-step-primer-7-minute-video-by-microsoft-a-c-e-performance-engineer-chris-lundquist-with-copious-notes-screen-shots-from-your-humble-correspondent.aspx
you might also be interested in taking a look at what the ASP.NET team cooked up itself: Lightweight Test Automation Framework.
There's also a dedicated forum for it.
Having used several different automated testing solutions (TestComplete, QTP, etc), I have to put a vote in for Telerik + Visual Studio. Telerik has great support forums, and is very compatible with whatever testing framework you come up with. Our Devs put unique IDs into their HTML code so that our scripts don't need to be rewritten even with pretty drastic UI refactors. It's definitely more challenging than record and playback, but once you have your unique IDs in place, the automation code requires little or no maintenance.
Try httpunit
Depend on what you would like to achieve.
You can use web test built in the Visual Studio Tester Edition. It's quite good and easy to automate. You can use external data as a test data source and it integrates nicely with VS.
There is also test tool by Automated QA (forgot the name) which looks good but expensive.
And there is Selenium. That's the one we are using in Symantec. The biggest advantage is that it actually uses a browser you want to test. VS mimic a browser by changing http request parameters only so you may not be able to test your site for cross-browser compatibility. Selenium on the other hand uses browser and automates it so you can actually test your site in IE, Firefox etc. It can be also integrated with VS unit tests so you can see test results in VS.
So I would recommend Selenium or VS.
I've used Selenium. The features were good, and it was usable but it was buggy.
The IDE would often record events incorrectly (so tests would need to be manually changed), and test files occasionally became completely unusable for no apparent reason, which meant they would have to be recreated all over again. Also development on Selenium IDE seems to have stopped; there hasn't been any bug fixes and patches for a while, and bug reports seem to go unnoticed.
Molybdenum is an alternative, built on Selenium that's worth looking into.
http://www.molyb.org/
Just to throw out another option (of which I haven't tried but I do like Telerik) is Telerik's new WebUI Testing Studio. I will also echo Selenium up votes.
I forget one nice tools and can find link on it but find this ... http://weblogs.asp.net/bsimser/archive/2008/02/21/automated-ui-testing-with-project-white.aspx maybe can help.
If you are looking for simple, cross-browser tool with record and playback, multithreaded playback, intergration with build processes, powerful scripting, good reporting and excellent support, go for Sahi. It will be much easier for your testers/devs to learn and maintain.
you might want to take in consideration near Selenium also Rational Functional Tester ! whether you are familiar with coding in .Net or Java and want to just play around with record & replay or want to create more sophisticated programmatic testing I would recommend it.
WebDriver is another possibility: http://code.google.com/p/webdriver
They are working on a .NET wrapper that may be interesting for you.
Try QEngine. It has all the features of QTP.
You may want to look at RIATest for cross-platform cross-browser testing of web applications.
It works on Windows and Mac, supported browsers are Firefox, IE and Chrome. Automated testing scripts written on one platform/browser can be run against all other supported platforms/browsers.
It has the features that you want: user interaction recording mode and integration with CI servers (outputs results in JUnit format which can be consumed by CI servers such as Hudson).
(Disclaimer: I am a RIATest team member).
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I'm facing developing a new web app in the future and I'm wondering how to decide what framework to use. I've settled on Python as my language of choice. But there are still may frameworks to choose from! More generally how do you choose between different similar technologies that are still in the works as the latest round of web frameworks are? I'm curious what your process is for deciding on technologies you've never used.
Recognize that no choice is perfect -- or even very good.
No matter what you choose, someone will have a suggestion that -- they claim -- is better.
No matter what you choose, some part of your tech. stack will fail to live up to your expectations.
The most important thing is "shared nothing" so that the components can be replaced.
After that, the next most important thing is automatically-generated features to reduce or prevent programming.
Look at Django. Lots of automatic admin features make life very pleasant.
There are a number of things you can do:
Download the frameworks and build something similar with them for comparison.
Look for comparisons by other people, but attempt to understand the bias of the reviewer.
Observe the community at work, see what people are building and the issues they run into when using the technology. Forums, blogs, mailing list etc are good places to check out.
Go to conferences and meet like minded developers interested.
You can also take the approach of using stable versions rather than alpha bits. After a while you might move closer the bleeding edge. People associated with the project in question are generally more biased than those approaching from other platforms, be careful who you trust.
Consider the impact of using a bleeding edge framework versus an established one. Sometimes it's important to your customers that you are on one perceived as stable. At other times this doesn't matter. How comfortable are you with fixing the framework itself? Great developers will learn the internals, or at least know enough to keep things moving whilst a bug is sent to the framework mailing list etc.
Consider some general best practices in building abstractions and reusable code on the python platform. You may be able to save yourself some work in moving to another platform. However, don't be a reuse junkie as this can limit the effectiveness of your use of the framework. The 37Signals guys are right when they talk about extracting frameworks from working code rather than building frameworks from scratch.
I know this is an old posting, but I am in a similar situation (again) and I think there are other people who may want to look for different opinions, and hear of (somewhat) successful experiences.
Since baudtack mentioned Python, I will try to answer this along the lines of my experiences using Python. Here is what has been working for me:
determine the scope of your project - outlining what your application is supposed to be able to do without introducing any programming or design notes will clarify your goals greatly
determine how you would like to work with your code, stack and data:
a. what sort of programming paradigm do you want to work with? i.e. object-oriented, functional, etc. do you want to play to your programming style or do you want to follow somebody else's programming style?
b. use semantic web or not? do you want greater control over URIs and their design? (I found web.py great for this by the way - It is my choice to create REST APIs in Python)
c. do you want to be trapped by framework requirements, or do you want a better separation of the application from the web component, i.e. use a framework to utilize your application as a set of modules, for example. My problem with Django was that I ended up not programming Python, but having to learn more Django than I needed to. If that works for you, then that is the way to go.
d. data stores... some sort of SQL vs. non RDBMS (xml databases like eXist-db with full xquery support) vs. OODBMS vs. a combination of the above? how complicated do you need this to be? how much control/separation do you need to have over how data gets stored and recalled in your application?
e. testing: unit tests... thank goodness for python! if your web app has the potential to grow (as they often do), having a sane and coherent testing platform to begin with will help out a lot in the future - I wish I had learned about this earlier on. oh well... better late than never.
f. how much control over the server do you need? hosting considerations? how much control over an Apache instance do you need to have? OS specific needs? I found that using shared hosting providers like Webfaction has been great. I eventually found I needed greater needs for flexibility and bandwidth. In other words, what can you get for your budget? If you have USD50 to spend each month, it may be better to consider a virtual hosting solution like Linode....
Finally, I echo S.Lott's sentiments that no choice for a solution is perfect, and are subject to obsolescence.
Experience trumps hearsay. I've found that prototyping is a huge help. Make a prototype that uses the features you expect to be the most important for various frameworks. This helps route out any features that may not work "as advertised."
In general though, kudos for being willing to look at new technologies.
I have a set of criteria in different categories:
Activity & Documentation
Is there an active user base?
Is there an active development base?
Is the support responsive and information accessible?
Are there user and development guides and reference material?
These are essential, there needs to be traceability of all of these to build confidence in the solution.
Ease of use
Are basic features easy and complex features possible? I typically give a new framework a test drive and try to roll out a set of use cases to see how intuitive the framework is to use.
Is installation intuitive and simple for a local/dev installation and production deployment?
How is it backed up and upgraded?
What is the effort and UX for implementing a "Hello World" type blog post, static page, menu item, and plugin?
How are versions dealt with for the core & plugins?
Example (on the topic of Automated Testing/Continuous Integration solutions)
Several years ago I evaluated several Automated Testing solution. At the time Jenkins and TeamCity were front runners and in the end I chose TeamCity because of the UX, active user & development base and quality of accessible documentation.
Example (CMS for a blog)
This criteria is also why I prefer to use Wordpress over other options. While wordpress has its shortcomings, the user and development base is strong and active which leads to a software architecture with more potential to evolve over time and maintain its relevance and a development community that provides quality plugins and themes to choose from.
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This question isn't about unit-testing. And it is for a desktop product.
This is about testing of the gui and testing that the right stuff is input in the right text box at the right time.
A company I used to work at used WinRunner (different department so I don't know much more that that), but that has now been shutdown by HP but they don't seem that bothered whether you stay with HP or go elsewhere. You can't read about the product until you've signed up which is annoying.
The tool has to work with MFC (non-negotiable) and the ideal tool will also...
be automated.
be scriptable.
work with different screen resolutions automatically.
be able to 'spy' on individual static text boxes, etc.
intuitive enough so non-programmers can create the scripts.
have reporting tools, including email of individual users.
What do other SO users do for automated GUI testing?
We use the SAFS framework for Rational Robot (RRAFS). There are also SAFS implementations for WinRunner (WRAFS) and it looks like they have a new "Image-Based Testing" implementation, which I'm not familiar with.
This framework does a nice job of seperating the UI implementation from the test scripts. I've tested four releases of a web application developed by two different teams (one team using classic ASP, one using ASP.NET) and I only had to change the application map of my UI objects, the tests themselves didn't need to change.
That said, the language of the framework is cumbersome and takes getting used to. It's not very robust, in terms of language constructs, but with some effort you can do anything you need to. It's sort of like "programming" in Windows Batch language, but for tests ;)
To address your individual requirements above:
1) The tool has to work with MFC (non-negotiable).
The SAFS framework uses a 3rd party "record-playback" tool to drive the tests, like Rational Robot or Mercury WinRunner. If that tool can interact with MFC apps, then the framework can. I don't know how the "Image-Based Testing" implementation drives the tests, but I'd guess it can also work with MFC.
2) be automated.
The SAFS framework integrates with the STAF framework, which will allow you to automate the execution of your tests. I have a proof-of-concept test that uses STAF to start a VM image from a pool of images, install the application under test, run the RRAFS test, and put the results on a web server for others to get at.
3) be scriptable.
Yes, but as mentioned, it's not the most robust programming language. I wrote an Excel add-in that our testers use to write their tests that simplifies things a little bit.
4) work with different screen resolutions automatically.
Yes, since it's looking "under the covers" at the UI objects and not the screen. Except for maybe the "Image-based Testing" option...
5) be able to 'spy' on individual static text boxes, etc.
Yes, you can wait for a UI object to appear, disapper, to have a value, for a value to be changed, etc.
6) intuitive enough so non-programmers can create the scripts.
With some training. We've had limited success. Some QA folks can write the tests, some struggle.
7) have reporting tools, including email of individual users.
Yes, using the STAF framework you can post results to a web server, send out emails, etc.
Lots of good answers here, but I wanted to address this goal statement, specifically:
intuitive enough so non-programmers
can create the scripts
I can understand why you'd want this, but it's a lot harder than you might think. While you can find any number of tools out there that'll claim to make writing scripts easy, in practice, you're going to need at least some people on your automation team who understand programming. Writing scripts that are reasonably robust is going to involve one or more of looping, if/then/else, and subroutine calls. Not the kind of thing that non-programmers are going to find intuitive.
Be especially wary of the idea that you can "record" a person using a tool, then play it back for testing. That sort of "automation" is often so brittle that you'll end up modifying or re-recording the script for nearly every change in the software.
Coming from a strong Mercury/HP background, I would highly recommend using QuickTest Professional for your GUI testing. It has a lot of the same functionality as WinRunner, but without a lot of code. Simple GUI checks can be done through the QTP interface with minimal, if any, custom VB code. Checks for text next to boxes can be done with simple compares using the datasheet in QTP.
If you are used to WinRunner, and know VBScript (not so much TSL), then I would definantly look at QTP.
As far as your other requirements, QTP also has the Spy feature, like WinRunner, that will list all properties and actions you can perform on objects. And as for simplicity of use, at my old job, we would have business or system testers create simple smoke scripts, then I would take them and code them for more in-depth testing (multiple data values, error checking, etc). And as for reporting, QTP will do simple reporting of pass/fail/warning on tags that you put in, along with custom data you can input. So you could use a case statement to populate your output values based on your results. It won't do e-mail naitevly, but if you integrate with TestDirector/QualityCenter, you can setup through there, along with automating the kick-off of your scripts, and parameterizing data right from there (which is nice to send back to testers to have populate data without being involved in the script itseld).
Pat
See User Interface Testing.
Desktop or Web apps alike have the same testing pattern here (I've worked in both).
Place as little logic as possible in the UI and test everything below it. So you say, but what if I want to test that such and such happens when a button is clicked? The method that is called when that button is clicked should call out to another class that actually does the thinking.
You might say, but I'm using some static classes/methods that can only exist in my UI, wrap those with an adapter and utilize that interface in order to make your code testable.
The parts of your GUI tests that you want to automate should be automated below the UI. There are parts of your GUI that you can't automate. Checking to make sure things "look right", or testing that you can see certain elements, etc. All of that is what your humans should be doing. Ensuring that events are properly firing, and that values are being appropriately returned from your business objects, that's all unit tests.
I can see from your question that you've already pretty much decided you need an automated GUI tester, but that's not the right tool for this job. If you decide to use that you're trying to find the best way of doing the wrong thing.
If you think that this isn't about unit testing because you're testing GUI interactions, then I can guarantee you're not unit testing close enough to your UI. If you were, you'd feel like most of what you'd be testing was redundant.
If you disagree with me, please post some reasons and we'll hash this out.
There are a lot more (open source) alternatives if you are testing a web product. For a desktop product, some popular general purpose desktop GUI automation tools below (in no particular order). I've worked with all of these personally, and they all get the job done. If you choose to go with a vendor tool, get POCs for the ones you are considering, and make the decision based on what tool is the best fit for the company in general. One tool may be a better fit for a particular application, but there may be other projects/applications to consider.
QuickTest Pro (HP's successor to WinRunner)
Rational Functional Tester (IBM's successor to Robot)
TestPartner
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I have a pretty good knowledge of programming languages like C/C++, Java, Python. But they were all mostly learnt in a college / high school class room setting where the best user interface was a numbered menu. You know, the standard data structures, implementation of various algorithms, file handling and the like.
What I want to do now is to get into GUI programming. I am not sure if I am asking the right way, but I am looking at using the WIMP paradigm (windows icons menus pointers). I want to place buttons and forms. Event driven programming, I believe is the right word, where my application waits till the user clicks something, types something etc.
Given my background, where would be a good place to start? I am looking at the following requirements -
1> Preferably cross platform.
2> Lots of documentations, tutorials, and if possible sample code that I can learn off of
3> A good GUI builder tool, where I can drag / drop stuff the way I want them to be displayed.
Any ideas or suggestions to get me started?
I'l try the book About face: Essential of User Interface Design, its centered on design practices for UI as well as designing taking into account the user goals, that is, what the user wants to acomplish trying to get you away for the "developer GUI design".
It also reviews some history about GUI design from Microsoft, Apple and other companys. Things like defaults for MacOsX (where the accept and cancel buttons are usually located, etc) as well and the whys beneath that.
I'll also look up the Office 2007 UI Design Guidelines for Microsoft as it's probably "gonna be a thing".
Shoes for Ruby is cross platform, very easy, and is a brief introduction to building a window and handling events that happen in it. fun too :)
You're looking for Qt. It's a cross-platform C++ GUI framework, and it includes everything you asked for and more.
It's free for open-source projects to use, provided you're using the GPL.
There is a great deal of language and UI framework specific resources available for people interested in building application UIs. However, before delving into specific technologies, there is much to be learned about Human-Computer Interaction and how it applies to user interface design. Some references to look at:
http://www.useit.com/
The Design of Everyday Things (book)
http://worrydream.com/MagicInk (takes awhile to load but very worthwhile)
After researching what makes a good UI, it is time to explore how:
Mozilla XULRunner
If you decide to use Java Swing, I strongly recommend the relative layout manager
Of course there are many options out there, including QT, Fltk and SWT
I was thinking exactly the same thing recently. Qt seems like a good cross platform GUI framework, and Python seems like a good language to work in.
So PyQt is my (uneducated) suggestion. It does include a drag and drop GUI design tool.
Take a look at Glade and Gtk. Both are really easy to use. Glade is the GUI builder, and Gtk the toolkit. It's both cross platform and cross language. You can load the Glade files in almost any language. Here is a Glade/Gtk tutorial
I would look into C# .NET development and its WinForms API. It's much easier to program GUI desktop apps for Windows with that than with the Win32 API. You can always ease into Win32 API stuff later, if it's still relevant.
For cross-platform solutions, look into Gtk+, perhaps PyGtk. Another good one is WxWidgets.
If you want to get really funky, check out Shoes for Ruby.
Many years ago, I made the quickest progress in this area using Visual Basic. I assume it's still dead easy to pick up and the code/run/debug cycle is insanely productive and you'll learn a lotta useful stuff fast. Tons of documentation, and all the other goodies you want...
Seeing as you already have knowledge of Java you should check out the Swing API here, it provides a pretty powerful set of packages that can be used to create complex GUI's. Moreover, its cross platform, there's tons of documentation and it can be used with the Netbeans IDE.
Java's Swing API is cross platform and relatively simple, and NetBeans is a good GUI builder.
Netbeans is cross platform, and while it is centered towards Java developers, you can easily install addons to work with C/C++, Ruby, etc. I use it for developing Swing GUI programs because it has a very simple interface for simple drag and drop GUI creation. There is a lot of good documentation on developing with Java Swing, and I'm sure there is plenty of documentation on using Netbeans also.