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Firefox 55. Is there any discussion on the changes? Prefered methods to use?


cal
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As of firefox 55, mozrepl has stopped working.  This means FF.au3 has stopped working and hence all our scripts based on it..   I have temporarily reverted and frozen firefox to ver 54 as I have a few work related scripts that I need to function properly.  But this freeze can't last forever.  Most of my work related stuff uses direct APIs into work systems and are fine.  But I do have a couple that access data via firefox.  (thank goodness for backups as the upgrade process to 55 messes with the firefox profile.)

Then of course there is a lot of personal stuff using firefox as that is my preferred browser.   I've looked but I don't see any discussion on whats happening with firefox switching to what they call webextentions as it pertains to autoit.   If there is, then great.  point me at it so I can read up on it.  I've only found a couple post from months ago pointing out that changes are coming to firefox but nothing further.   I guess those changes are now here.

I've used FF.au3 for a few years.   What is the current preferred method of accessing and controlling firefox?  If there is an alternate method I should be learning so I can start in on it.  If mozrepl and FF.au3 was still the common method then is anyone aware of planned updates?  I don't think mozrepl  has been touched in years and I'm sure I saw a post saying its no longer being maintained.

Are we in a waiting game?  Should I be learning some other method that works and will continue to work?  Is there a way to access the new webextention api methods or is that only available to an actual extension?

Cal.

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Mozrepl appears to be abandoned. No idea if it can be rewritten as a webextension. Not currently aware of a good replacement that works with AutoIT. I did find UIPath, which is a RPA tool. They have a free community edition, and they supply their own add-in that I believe is compatible with the newer FF. However, I haven't done much with it yet.

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Try this:

 

If I posted any code, assume that code was written using the latest release version unless stated otherwise. Also, if it doesn't work on XP I can't help with that because I don't have access to XP, and I'm not going to.
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I hereby grant any person the right to use any code I post, that I am the original author of, on the autoitscript.com forums, unless I've specifically stated otherwise in the code or the thread post. If you do use my code all I ask, as a courtesy, is to make note of where you got it from.

Back up and restore Windows user files _Array.au3 - Modified array functions that include support for 2D arrays.  -  ColorChooser - An add-on for SciTE that pops up a color dialog so you can select and paste a color code into a script.  -  Customizable Splashscreen GUI w/Progress Bar - Create a custom "splash screen" GUI with a progress bar and custom label.  -  _FileGetProperty - Retrieve the properties of a file  -  SciTE Toolbar - A toolbar demo for use with the SciTE editor  -  GUIRegisterMsg demo - Demo script to show how to use the Windows messages to interact with controls and your GUI.  -   Latin Square password generator

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UIAutomation works excellent with firefox:) and I must say also webdriver concept works nice but I feel UIAutomation is better if you are reasoning from blackbox / enduser perspective. See the FAQ 31 and 40 for details references.

Edited by junkew
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UIAutomation is on my list of things to look into.  I only discovered it existed just before I posted.  At first glance it keeps talking about clicking.   Is that just a bad term not used how I think its being used.  I'm not interested in blind macros where the script cant see whats going on.   Or does it offer direct access to controls, tabs and other firefox api methods and so forth like FF.au3 did.    I've not not yet looked at it.   Perhaps I need to look into this one.

What does " webdriver concept" mean?  Is that part of UIAutomation or something else I should be looking at as well?

Some things I do regularly.  tab control, navigation, bookmark management, form fill, links,  and of course reading various fields and data.

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IUIAutomation is the (new) accessibility standard from Microsoft and on most applications / browsers this is supported.
98% of what you do with FF.AU3 or IE.AU3 or Chrome.AU3 you can handle thru UIAutomation only I am at version 0.65 of my UDF so meaning you have to do a little more yourself (and read the UDF to see what is possible as its there but not fully documented. Study all examples.zip and you will be a master on dealing with all browsers (including Safari ;-))

As its a generic layer (Blackbox I would say as you do not have all native developer properties) you will not have direct access to the HTML DOM model / XML / JavaScript

  • Out of the box you can navigate all HTML controls for clidk, settext, snapshot, ...
  • Getting things like backgroundcolor, foregroundcolor, underlined, css-information you do not get
  • Advanced: Thru addressbar you always can run javascript (search for bookmarklets on the internet) and as such you can deal with these things that are not accessible

WebDriver is another abstraction layer (Whitebox/Greybox) only available primarily for browser(s)

  • search webdriver on the forum or internet to get more information
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12 hours ago, junkew said:

IUIAutomation is the (new) accessibility standard from Microsoft and on most applications / browsers this is supported.
98% of what you do ...

 

Sounds great and exactly what I was hoping for.  Thank you.  Looks like this may be were I need to start learning new methods.  Now that I know this is a good direction I'm happy to start learning it.  I look forward to looking at and learning about it.  Thanks.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
17 hours ago, milos83 said:

IUIAutomation is too complicated.

Is it possible to port FF.au3 UDF to selenium?

That would be a perfect solution!

What is dificult on iuiautomation. Let me know and i will enhance the wrapper. Selenium has limitations as it has only web as technology and you have to install a lot instead of a small exe as you can do with AutoIt. As far as i can see all functionality of ff, chrome,ie udf is also in the uiawrapper.

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16 hours ago, Danp2 said:

IIRC, doesn't it require Firefox to be launched with a special profile or port? If so, then that would make it far from the perfect solution IMO.

The web driver is supposed to handle that... and as far as I know, user data is not effected either.

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