[Wtr-general] FireWatir not finding buttons by id

[Bret Pettichord]

Charley Baker wrote:
> It's a curious bug, just saw the same thing. A bug/feature, works more 
> than it should. :) Chris is right we should definitely spend more time 
> with Angrez, Prema and the Firewatir community. I'm getting slammed by 
> requests for multiple browser tests and starting to abstract layers so 
> that it's easier.
This is definitely a bug.

The problem is that all of these select this button in Watir 1.5:

ie.link(:id,'st-login-to-edit-button-link').flash

ie.button(:id,'st-login-to-edit-button-link').flash

ie.text_field(:id,'st-login-to-edit-button-link').flash

ie.radio(:id,'st-login-to-edit-button-link').flash


But this problem only shows up when you select by :id, not if if you 
select by :text. I suspect the same problem shows up for any input 
element when you select by name or id. I say this because we have a 
special performance optimization in Watir 1.5 for this case (input 
elements selected by id or name), and it seems that Watir is actually 
ignoring the type of the element.

We need to get this in Jira. (But it is too late for me to do this tonight.)

What we need to do to pull Firewatir and Watir for IE together is to 
work toward a clear, well-defined spec of expected behavior, rather than 
try to retain fortuitous accidents of implemenation, which is what we 
have here.

Bret