Not sure if this should be firebug, selenium IDE or Firefox

[Tony Chamberlain]

I am writing Selenium scripts with Eclipse (only tangentially related).  To find XPATHs I use "view XPATH" which sort of works but what I really need to do is inspect HTML using Firebug, and then run Selenium IDE which has an XPATH "find" command so I can type in what I think is an XPATH, hit find and it will highlight it on the web page.

The problem, this works sometimes.  It would work all the time but my Firefox screen seems to lock up at times and I can't type anything in.  Sometimes I have to reboot, and I may still have the problem.

I noticed once when I clicked on Firebug console that it said "enabling this causes a firefox stop or slowdown or something".  I can't get this warning again.  It is not showing up.  I must have accidentally cleared it.

So my question: is there a problem running firebug, firefox and selenium IDE?  There is for me.  Is it due to this error above or some other reason?  What can I do about it?  I need Selenium IDE only to test XPATHs.  True, Firebug has an xpath tester but it is very unreliable and quite often, testing an xpath does nothing (shows nothing found but also shows no errors and does not say "no matches found").  If there was another way to test XPATHs on a web page I could use that.

Some info

Firefox version: 25.0 (please don't tell me to upgrade, as it won't work with Subbu's Selenium scripts).
Firebug version: 1.12.5
Selenium IDE: 2.4.0

Eclipse: Probably irrelevant but is the latest version  20130919-0819

[Sebastian Zartner]

I noticed once when I clicked on Firebug console that it said "enabling this causes a firefox stop or slowdown or something".  I can't get this warning again.  It is not showing up.  I must have accidentally cleared it.

I assume you're talking about this message:

Warning: Enabling the Script panel causes a Firefox slow-down due to a platform bug. This will be fixed with the next major Firefox and Firebug versions.

So if you don't need the Script panel, just disable it.

Besides that showing strict warnings also can cause some slow-down. To disable displaying strict warnings, you can uncheck the equally named option within the Console panel options.

So my question: is there a problem running firebug, firefox and selenium IDE?  There is for me.  Is it due to this error above or some other reason?  What can I do about it?  I need Selenium IDE only to test XPATHs.  True, Firebug has an xpath tester but it is very unreliable and quite often, testing an xpath does nothing (shows nothing found but also shows no errors and does not say "no matches found").

If you just want to test XPaths, you really don't need Selenium IDE.
In Firebug there are two ways to test XPaths. One is the integrated $x command, which returns different types of results depending on the XPath you are testing. And for advanced testing you can use the extension FirePath, which selects matching elements within an HTML view and inside the page. Results, which don't return elements are shown within its panel. And if there are no matches, there's a hint at the bottom telling you so.
So if you think one of those two functionalities is "very unreliable", please let us (in case of the $x command) or the FirePath authors know what's wrong and provide a little test case, so your problem can be reproduced.

Sebastian

[Simon Lindholm]

As yet another, perhaps more user-friendly, option: in Firebug 1.13 alphas you can find elements that match xpath selectors through the HTML panel search field.

[Sebastian Zartner]

Thanks for the hint, Simon! I totally forgot about that again. Tony, if you want to try it out, you can download the latest alpha here:

https://getfirebug.com/releases/firebug/1.13/

Sebastian

[Tony Chamberlain]

Thanks.  Did not see this until now.  As an alternative I was using the Firebug Firefinder which works for a while but then stops working (clicking Filter doesn't do anything even if I use //* or .//* as xpath).  It seems like a javascript error or something is prohibiting it from working, but restarting does not help.

[Tony Chamberlain]

not compatible with firefox 25 (and unfortunately no I cannot update firefox because then eclipse/selenium will no longer work).

On Tuesday, December 17, 2013 9:19:38 AM UTC-6, Tony Chamberlain wrote:

[dmccunney]

n Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 5:27 PM, Tony Chamberlain

<chamberla...@gmail.com> wrote:
> not compatible with firefox 25 (and unfortunately no I cannot update firefox
> because then eclipse/selenium will no longer work).

Download and install
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/checkcompatibility/ and
see if it helps. It turns off the Firefox version check when
installing extensions. No guarantee the Firebug version will work,
but you can at least install it and try.
______
Dennis