User Interface automation

When automating UI test cases, there are several challenges that cost time and effort. First of these is that the controls on the winforms may not be named. To find the contol, one may have to walk the document model. Second the controls may not be at the level in the tree as they visually appear on the UI. One may have to use a tool to detect the level and the location of the tree node. Sometimes the tools also don't give the correct information. Further, the properties or attributes used for identifying the control may require a recursive search over the controll hierarchy in the document. Third the contols may not all be consistent across UI panes and their access and usage varies even though they are the same controls. These cause additional code to be written for each such case. Fourth, there are many different ways to implement the same functionality involving different controls or generally different workflow. Code for automation has to deal with all these cases. Fifth, the contols may not always be out of box. They may provide advanced features or they may have additional test cases required. Custom controls have their own test requirements. All these add to the code variations. Fortunately, they can be organized and handled as much as possible.