Automating tests in a browser not supported by selenium

Question

I work on a company that have a payment system that runs under a executable kiosk instance of internet explorer 7. when the application is running the process name is not similar with iexplore.exe or something like that.

The name of the windows process is the same as the executable.exe.

We cannot run the system under a local webserver because the executable expect some pages in pure .html to process the data and give the users change. The executable pass information to the .html forms and vice-versa. So we cannot user another browser.

I think selenium will not work with this browser. Any idea how i can automate tests on the interface?

EDIT

Selenium fail trying to start my executable: Exception: Failed to start new browser session: org.openqa.selenium.server.RemoteCommandException: Error while launching browser

I think the executable its not the browser itself. Its just a executable that make some security tasks and after that call a internet explorer instance somehow. But the internet explorer process don ́t appear on the windows process.

• Robert Harvey: According to this: seleniumhq.org/about/platforms.jsp, Selenium should work perfectly fine with your executable, provided you don't need the Selenium IDE.
• crad: Have you found discrepancies between the kiosk instance and IE on other desktops? If not, you could at least get some feedback from automated tests on a desktop. Also, if the other executable has zero impact on rendering in the application just bypass this for testing.
• Laurent Bourgault-Roy: "The executable pass information to the .html forms and vice-versa." Could you clarify? I have no idea what that mean... Does that mean that you have a native application that take direct control of the html page to inject some needed information?
• Renato Prado: The browser is a modified internet explorer built for the system. So the browser expect some inputs on the html, the browser fill the inputs so we can get the information through the inputs. This is really weird, I think weird too.

Answer 1

You could try other automated browser drivers like Watir or Sahi. Selenium is kind of the benchmark for browser automation, but other tools could work better in different circumstances.

That being said, one thing I'd always recommend when it comes to UI testing is good old manual testing of the app. Exploratory techniques might work well here, but usually it's best to start out with a real human being looking at the UI first and then deciding what role automation should play.

• Renato Prado: I think using Watir or Sahi will fail as failed with selenium. We launch a new version of the system more than 2 times a week. And the tests is always the same but take a lot of time.