This is just sort of a shotgun list of features and my opinion on them. It will also appear as a wish-list of sorts, as there are some opportunities they’ve missed in developing the QTP 9 interface. Keep in mind that I’m a big admirer of Spolsky, so what may sound like extreme nitpicking is to me a case of programmer-user disconnect. We who use this product are in the business of criticizing GUIs - we do it for a living… we should hold Mercury to the same standards to which we hold our own programmers.

• Insert breakpoints by clicking in the gutter - great idea, but now it’s very difficult to select a single line of code. In the past, if you clicked in the gutter, it would highlight the line of code you had selected. Now, if you want to select a single line, you have to put your cursor all the way to the left of the editor, but to the right of the gutter, then drag slightly down. Drag too much and you get two lines. Click in the wrong place and you either insert a breakpoint or you miss the first character in the line. I would have preferred this to be a checkbox option in the Editor Options menu.
• New menu bar options - Now, instead of Test and Step in the menu bar, you have Automation and Resources. I don’t know about you, but I got used to typing Alt+T, N for “Run Test” and ALT+S, A for “Action Properties”. Now, it’s ALT+A, N for “Run Test” (which is okay, because I just changed my habit to hit F5), but to go to “Action Properties”, you have to hit ALT+E, I, P. No kidding. Action Properties are now in the Edit menu, under Action, then Action Properties. They’ve inserted a click in here, and it’s a painful one because Action is almost all the way down the menu. That’s another reason to go to functions instead of actions for most everything.

The Automation item is analagous to the Test item in 8.2, and they’ve made one huge change that I consider unnecessary and bothersome. They’ve moved Test Settings under the File menu. That’s probably a more logical place, but here’s the problem: in the past, when you couldn’t remember where to go to change the Row Iterations, or what URL to use to open the browser, or Function Library references, chances were that if you chose Record and Run Settings and didn’t find it, you could be assured that you could just choose “the other one in that menu” and it would be there. Now there are not one, not two, but three different places you have to go, none of them close together, in order to set up Test Run Settings. FileSettings, ToolsOptions, AutomationRecord and Run Settings - each of these menu chunks has the word “Run” in it, and who besides me can’t remember which one has what?

One of my fondest hopes for QTP 9 was the ability to map many more functions to hotkeys. Alas, I’ll have to wait a little longer. With the new clicks further obfuscating their most basic functionality, I’m find a lot of the seconds I’m saving on an improved feature taken away by another. I want to be able to go to Action Properties with a simple hotkey, but I can’t map my own. This makes me sad.

I also can’t change the annoying behavior that causes ALT+Backspace to erase an entire line of code instead of just the previous word. I don’t know what interface precedent told them that was a good idea, but I’d advise them either to follow the Visual Studio interface (let’s face it, the V in VBScript stands for Visual, which means Microsoft), or to give me mappings for every blessed function they provide. It’s driving me nuts!

Ok, so I’ve covered the new menu bar and various niggling annoyances. Next I’ll talk a little about the new window pane behavior, including the new right-click menu options and toolbars.

Tags: QTP 9, QuickTest Pro