How do I test modal dialogs with Selenium?

Question

I\'m getting started with Selenium IDE and trying to test a webapp that\'s full of modal dialogs (window.showModalDialog).

Recording the test seems to w

Answer 1

From the Selenium FAQ, Selenium apparently works with some types of dialogs but not others:

I can't interact with a popup dialog. My test stops in its tracks!

You can, but only if the dialog is an alert or confirmation dialog. Other special dialogs can't be dismissed by javascript, and thus currently cannot be interacted with. These include the "Save File", "Remember this Password" (Firefox), and modal (IE) dialogs. When they appear, Selenium can only wring its hands in despair.

To solve this issue, you may use a workaround (if one exists); otherwise you may have to exclude the test from your automated corpus. For the "Save File" dialog in Firefox, a custom template may be specified when running via the RC that will always cause the file to be downloaded to a specified location, without querying the user (see http://forums.openqa.org/thread.jspa?messageID=31350). The "Remember this Password" dialog should not appear again after you've chosen to remember it. Currently there is not much that can be done about IE modal dialogs.

I seem to remember someone working around this with an AutoHotKey script that dismissed the dialog.