Troubleshooting Web UI testing

This topic can help you troubleshoot some of the problems that you might encounter in Web UI testing.

Problem Cause Solution

At the start of recording a Web UI test using Microsoft Internet Explorer, the following error message pops up: Error starting Internet Explorer.

The browser is not properly installed on your machine, or you are using a version that is not supported by the Web UI extension, or the Enable Protected Mode option is not properly set.
  • Check if the Microsoft Internet Explorer is properly installed on your machine and you are using a version supported by the Web UI extension.
  • Also, in the browser, go to Tools menu > Internet Options > Security tab and check if the Enable Protected Mode setting is the same for all the security zones.

You are unable to record and playback a Web UI test using Microsoft Internet Explorer. Typically, an object is highlighted in a blue rectangle during recording and in a red rectangle during playback.

The Web UI extension does not support testing web pages that are rendered in Compatibility mode/Quirks mode in Internet Explorer.
Perform the following steps to force websites to open in the standards view:
  1. Open Internet Explorer.
  2. Go to Tools > Compatibility View Settings.
  3. Clear the following checkboxes that force the web pages to be rendered in compatibility view:
    • Include updated website lists from Microsoft
    • Display intranet sites in Compatibilty View
    • Display all websites in Compatibility View

Recording and playback of Web UI tests of a few websites using Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 fail with the following error: Exception thrown: JavaScript error in async script.

The website you are testing is not trusted.
Make sure you add the web sites to be tested to the list of trusted websites as follows:
  1. Open Internet Explorer.
  2. Go to Tools > Internet Options > Security tab.
  3. Click Trusted sites and then click Sites.
  4. Type the complete address of the website in Add this website to the zone and click Add.
  5. Click Close and then click OK.

Playback of Web UI tests fails on Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 and above with the following exception: org.openqa.selenium.StaleElementReferenceException: Error setting arguments for script.

Some websites use cookies to store information on your machine for automatically populating forms. On these sites, test scripts may have difficulty identifying controls based on the content, which results in playback failure.

Ensure that you delete all the cookies before playing back your test scripts.

Uninstalling Rational® Functional Tester after recording/playing back tests with Microsoft Internet Explorer or Chrome does not automatically remove the __SDP_PATH__ and __BRAND_NAME__IMShared folders. Manual removal of the folders also throws an error message.

The application fails to close the browser driver processes that are initiated as part of recording or playback.

Before you uninstallIBM® Rational® Functional Tester, ensure that you manually kill any active driver processes associated with the browsers through the Windows Task Manager.
Playback fails on the submenu actions that are beneath the overlaid control. If an application has a menu with a control overlaid on top and submenus beneath the overlaid control, the recorder might capture the action only on the overlaid control based on the application behavior. In that case, the submenus are not played back automatically. You must manually add the submenus to the test steps for the playback to run successfully.