Add support of web element identification using complex CSS and XPath expressions

[bruce.liu]

Request to have CSS and XPath support added to all browser spying mode, so that element identification (or highlighting) can be achieved using any complex CSS or XPath selector.  

CSS is widely used in web development and is often the way how modern websites use to implement many UI features via JavaScript. Often a web element can be identified uniquely by the use of a single expression without the use of any other attributes. It can be a much faster way in narrowing down to an element on a very large web page with thousands of elements. It may also bring benefits to pages that are dynamic in nature, e.g. an element may not always appear in the same PATH hierarchy.

I am aware that a user may specify XPath expressions against "Web Path" attribute when using Google Chrome and Firefox plugins. XPath however is not being supported by the IE mode.

[_Amlansahoo]

Without this Blue Prism will always behind UI Path. It is must need feature.

[robert.nicklin]

At the moment we currently have no plans to provide CSS and XPath support for the IE HTML spy mode. As always, we’d be interested in seeing the prominence of this enhancement request in the community and would be happy to include this in reviews of our future roadmap if it becomes apparent that there is a need for this functionality to complete automations that cannot be achieved with our other browser extensions.

[_Amlansahoo]

@robert.nicklin Do you think now Blue Prism is fully Compatible to other browser so that we can prefer chrome for all automation. Are you going to make it as effective as IE for easy automation. Then now on ward we can completely shift to other browser.

[Anonymous]

My experience is that current IE Path is really hard to customize, I've never really managed to get wildcards working in it. On the other end, multiple criterias can be embedded directly in xpath. Chrome web debugger that a Copy XPath feature. Web automation framework are utilizing Xpath or css selectors so migrating web developers to Blue Prism development would be a breeze.