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T-Plan Robot Enterprise 2.3.5 Doc Collection
GUI Reference
11/07/12

T-Plan Robot Enterprise 2.3.5 Desktop Viewer

Contents:
1. Desktop Viewer Overview
2. Connecting And Disconnecting
3. Refresh Daemon


1. Desktop Viewer Overview

Desktop Viewer is a GUI component which displays image of the currently connected remote desktop. The word "remote" here merely indicates that it must be other desktop than the one that currently displays the viewer itself (further on called "local desktop").  In this mode the viewer acts as a consumer of input mouse and keyboard events. It becomes active whenever you move your mouse pointer into the component bounds and it takes advantage of the underlying desktop client to send all mouse moves, clicks and drags as well as the keys you press or type on the keyboard to the desktop. Note that the viewer can handle just one desktop connection at a time and there is no support of tabbed connections at the moment.

If the Component Capture Component Capture Icon mode is on, the viewer freezes the desktop image for component capturing purposes. See the Component Capture help topic for details.

When a local desktop is connected (for example through the Java client), the viewer intentionally doesn't display the desktop image because it would lead to an infinite mirroring effect. The viewer in such a case behaves as if there was no connection at all ("off line mode") and the viewer displays the default content with links to documentation and development resources as is shown on the following picture.

Desktop Viewer (offline and connected)

Figure 1-1: T-Plan Robot Enterprise with disconnected and connected desktop viewer


The viewer is also able to operate in the read-only mode when no user input is transferred to the remote desktop. To switch this mode on or off use the Read Only menu item or tool bar button. It is useful when more users share the same desktop or when you want just to view it without interacting with it.

The read only mode may be also toggled through the Ctrl+F10 shortcut key (configurable in the Desktop Viewer panel of the Preferences window). This works even if the desktop is active and the key is filtered out from the communication between Robot and the desktop server. This is handy when one needs to take a screenshot of or create a template image from a desktop which displays an application driven by mouse moves, such as for example the Windows Start menu. The short cut key in this case toggles on the read only mode and stops the viewer immediately from sending the mouse events to the server.

The viewer also automatically switches to read-only mode when a script execution is started to prevent users from unintentional interference with the test environment. This behavior is configurable in the Desktop Viewer panel of the Preferences window and it works as follows:
The viewer plays an important role in the main GUI. It allows to interact visually with the remote system under test in order to record and design test scripts or to watch progress of an automated testing process. Script Recorder and Script Editor are other two major GUI components which cooperate closely with the viewer to produce automated testing scripts. The Script Recorder is able to attach to the viewer's input event queue and record user interaction into the active script editor. The Script Editor then allows to execute the script or its part on the connected desktop.


2. Connecting And Disconnecting

The viewer may connect to a desktop in three ways: To disconnect from a desktop select Disconnect Desktop in the File menu. You can also disconnect by execution of a Disconnect command. Connecting to another desktop while there's already an active connection will also disconnect the original desktop.


3. Refresh Daemon

Refresh daemon is a background process which keeps your desktop session alive. If you don't move your mouse or type a key for a long time, the remote server usually runs a screen saver or locks up the desktop after a certain time. Some desktop servers are also known to close the connection after a period of idle time.

Refresh daemon prevents these situations. It watches the time since your last interaction and when it exceeds a certain value, it moves your mouse by one or two pixels and back. This makes your desktop server think that you are still active and keeps the connection alive.

This feature is by default on and the timeout is set to 5 minutes. To configure it go to Preferences and select the Tools -> Desktop Viewer tree node. Note that the Refresh Daemon doesn't run while a script is being executed. This is intended to prevent unwanted interference into the script execution. There's a flag in the preferences allowing to change this behavior and run the daemon even during automation.