Error with a modal window

[Carlo]

I have downloaded and tried Vapir because it promises support for
modal windows.
First the good news: all my Watir scripts work great with Vapir
without changes.
Then I tried with a modal window, and this was the result:

*** My code ***
if browser.modal_dialog.exists?
puts "Modal dialog found"
end
browser.modal_dialog.click_button('Cancel')
#sleep 3

*** Result ***
C:/Program Files/Ruby192/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/vapir-firefox-1.7.2/
lib/vapir-firefox/modal_dialog.rb:52:in `click_button': Could not find
anonymous nodes on which to look for buttons (RuntimeError)
from I:/Vapir/siamtoatlas.rb:42:in `<main>'

The modal window contains a file upload requester (with a Browse...
button) and two buttons, Upload and Cancel.
I tried the easiest thing, the Cancel button, and still it fails.
Can anyone help?

[Ethan]

What operating system, and what version of firefox? 

Also - is this a HTML document opened in a modal window? What javascript function was called to spawn the window? This is one of:

- alert()

- prompt()

- confirm()

- showModalDialog()

Another possibility is javascript open(), in which case #modal_dialog isn't the correct method to be using - these sorts of popups aren't window-modal, and the normal Browser.attach and related methods can be used to interact with them. 

[Carlo]

Windows 7 64-bit, FireFox 3.6.13
The modal window opens when I click on an image, that links like this:

<a
href="javascript:submitAction_win0(document.win0,'FILEUPLD_ATTACHADD');">

I looked at the JavaScript code, it is hard to follow, but I think it
uses open(), since there is a call to window.open, but the other names
do not appear in the "View Source" file

[Ethan]

If it's a window.open-type popup, you should use Browser.attach to get and interact with it, and not #modal_dialog. A simple test is whether you can interact (manually) with the page that opened the popup - if you cannot, then the window is modal; if you can, it's not modal. (though terminology seems to be misused and abused a lot in this area, so it's hard to define things precisely.) 

[Carlo]

The page is divided in 2 frames.
I click on the link (actually, an image) inside the right frame and
the little (modal?) window, that I would like to automate, appears.
Now the right frame is grayed out, and I cannot interact with it, but
I can still interact with the left frame.
Is it a modal window then?

[Ethan]

It sounds like it isn't truly modal, it has some javascript to make it behave that way. Since it seems like it uses window.open, it isn't modal.