Sean's GUI Inspector

[seangriffin]

This is a simple tool that helps AutoIT scripters in identifying and finding controls/elements/objects in GUIs.

It is a work-in-progress, but I've decided to publish it here in the forums. Mostly because I like publishing stuff . But also because I dislike keeping my work in one place, in case it gets damaged, deleted or lost (dread the thought).

There are probably many similar tools already in the forums, but I couldn't be bothered looking for one to use

I decided to write this tool after years of writing small adhoc scrap pieces of script to interrogate IE and it's DOM elements. I've reached the point where I can't handle doing this anymore, and would prefer to always have a tool there to do this work.

When I began using AutoIT in 2008 I started my own toolkit of IE functions called "Toolkit.au3". I've been using this toolkit ever since, building and adapting it slowly to cope with the automation of new and different applications. The toolkit is far from complete, but it suits my needs at any point in time. My new GUI Inspector compliments the toolkit, using it's functions where possible, and eventually I hope to have it output lines of script that can be pasted into other scripts to help in automation. It's got a long way to go.

I haven't decided yet whether to version control this. For the moment I'm simply attaching the script below, with a brief explanation on how it works if anyone's interested in trying it out.

Toolkit.au3

GUI Inspector.au3

Copy the two attachments above to a folder of your choice, and run "GUI Inspector.au3". A GUI will be displayed. By default the GUI will be setup to query the Google search page.

There are 4 main panels / sections to the GUI:

• the Attach section
• the Querying (tabbed) section
• the Output section
• other buttons at the bottom

You operate the tool in a "top-down" fashion. Starting at the top, you specify what window you want to "attach" to for the purposes of querying. Next, click on the appropriate tab for the type of object you want to investigate. For instance, "IE Tables" to analyse the HTML tables within the page. Next, click a button within the selected tab to query something. For instance, clicking "Get All Table Cells" will grab every cell across every table within the page. The results of the query are presented in the Output section. Depending on the nature of the results, they may get presented as free text (ie. in the case of "Get Doc HTML") or as a listview (ie. in the case of "Get All Table Cells").

Future enhancements will include:

• Search facilities
• Multiple Output tabs will compare facilities to highlight difference between similar web pages
• Script output facilities, to generate the script necessary to access the same objects within your own scripts

Edited June 14, 2010 by seangriffin

[taurus905]

Hello seangriffin,

Thank you for sharing all your hard work on this tool.

I'm amazed that others haven't commented. And I'm even more amazed this tool still works after over 20 months of being posted.

I'd be grateful to see any updates or improvements you've made.

Thanks again,

taurus905

[outdated]

I'm amazed that others haven't commented. And I'm even more amazed this tool still works after over 20 months of being posted.

dunno

im prefer firefox+ plugin/extensionfirebug

also title in this thread Gui inspector

nothing about IE

its should named IE inspector with gui

or something

lol why its should dont work;s

some examples work from 2004 year

without any fix/update

and about GUI script

need set title window IE manually its lame

its should start IE

or atleast parse all IEFrame class opened windows

where u can select window

anyway pretty big size code gjxD

Edited March 9, 2012 by macwcodvs