Chrome and the Ranorex Plug-in Extension

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Aracknid
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Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Chrome and the Ranorex Plug-in Extension

Post by Aracknid » Tue Jul 29, 2014 9:04 pm

I'm having a very frustrating day.

The last time I ran my automation in Chrome was a long time ago and in a version before the Google extension security changes (so I ran in Chrome 29 or 30)... Everything worked great.

Today I couldn't get things working with what I had on my test client. Ranorex 4.0.6 and Chrome 34 (and to be clear, 34 was recently installed and we never attempted any runs on it before today). I assume that Ranorex 4.0.6 doesn't work with Chrome 34.

So I decided to do a test update on this system. I installed Ranorex 5.1.1 and Chrome 36. I'm in an environment where I don't have Internet access by default for security reasons. But I had it enabled so I could install Chrome and the Ranorex Extension. Everything seemed OK. Then the internet access was removed. Still everything seemed OK. Then after a few tests when I launched Chrome I had a message saying that the preferences profile was corrupt and not loading. So I guess it reverts to a clean slate, and so the Ranorex Extension is gone. Again, I enabled Internet access, managed to get the extension installed again, and again everything seemed OK. Then it happened again.

I'm not really sure why suddenly Chrome is getting a corrupted preferences profile. It 'might' be because when our test fails, we simply kill the chrome process. But that has always been how we run our scripts for all browsers, and never been an issue.

Do you have any ideas?

Is it possible to install the Ranorex extension without Internet access? Do you require Internet access for the extension to continue to work properly?

Aracknid

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testautomator
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Joined: Fri Oct 25, 2013 6:37 am
Location: Bangalore, India

Re: Chrome and the Ranorex Plug-in Extension

Post by testautomator » Wed Jul 30, 2014 9:39 am

Aha..welcome to the Chrome automation world. It sucks. Chrome is acting too smart these days.
Yes you can enable extension manually. Enable Developer mode in chrome extension settings and do it manually. The location will be in Ranorex 5.1 folder as Chrome extension folder. I have done it once.
But I dont know if it needs internet access or not.
Some other gyan on chrome:
You need to make changes to chrome that it does not bother you more. But you might have seen the popup that appears on upper right corner of Chrome. We have written a script to click cancel on that popup. But I just checked on Chrome Version 36.0.1985.125 and now there is no such popup with Rx 5.1.1 version installed. Except that it will ask you to enable the extension for the first time. Tip: Start the chrome in 'InCognito' mode but with caution that your app will not suffer here. The reason is chrome will not remember anything what happened the last time ;)
Now, if you have to use normal chrome then disable all history settings, crash reports. Then try. This also should be done for Firefox also.

And, if Ranorex is listening: Please give us small 'extension enabling' setups for all the browsers so that we dont have to install the entire Rx every time FF and Chrome come up with new version. I think they are trying to out run each other ;) Or another solution is to get FF and Chrome to recognize your extension as legit and trusted so that we dont have to reinstall every time.

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Aracknid
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Joined: Tue Aug 10, 2010 3:23 pm
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Re: Chrome and the Ranorex Plug-in Extension

Post by Aracknid » Wed Jul 30, 2014 7:20 pm

I've been trying to find out if there are any known issues with Chrome and I recently ran across a posting that suggested CCleaner (which I use to clear caches) is causing the preferences corruption issue, and the solution is to:

"Open CCleaner, click on the Applications tab, under Google Chrome remove tick mark for ‘Internet History’ and run CCleaner again, this time Chrome’s preferences won’t be deleted. You can delete Chrome’s internet or browser history using Ctrl+Shift+Del command in the browser."

source: http://techdows.com/2013/11/fix-chrome- ... valid.html

I'll give this a try and post back to let you know if it is working for me.

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Aracknid
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Joined: Tue Aug 10, 2010 3:23 pm
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Re: Chrome and the Ranorex Plug-in Extension

Post by Aracknid » Wed Jul 30, 2014 7:33 pm

So, it is true that CCleaner is causing this issue. However, the fix I mention above didn't work for the in the version I was using, which was 4.06.4324. The latest version I just got is 4.16.4763 and it has resolved the problem. You don't need to uncheck the History either.

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testautomator
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Joined: Fri Oct 25, 2013 6:37 am
Location: Bangalore, India

Re: Chrome and the Ranorex Plug-in Extension

Post by testautomator » Fri Aug 01, 2014 7:55 am

Great!! In our situation we use incognito for chrome. Anyway..nice to see you got it working :)