In article <5.1.0.14.2.20050830004040.02df47e8 / 127.0.0.1>,
Bret Pettichord  <bret / pettichord.com> wrote:
>Watir is rapidly attracting users. (We pronounce it 'water'.)
>
>Many of our users are new to Ruby and even new to object-oriented languages.
>
>In fact, they can't tell where Watir ends and Ruby begins. Thus, they end 
>up asking lots of questions to the Watir mailing list 
>(wtr-general / rubyforge.org) that are really just Ruby questions.
>
>I gave a presentation of Watir's precursor at the Ruby Conference 2003 in 
>Austin. At that time, i said that we were using Ruby as our scripting 
>language because it was intuitive and easy to learn for non-programmers.
>
>But now they are wanting to read data from spreadsheets or csv files or 
>initialization files. Or they want to create libraries. Or they want help 
>with Test::Unit.
>
>I consider myself middling in my Ruby skills. I've heard meta-classes 
>explained at least three times and still don't understand them. But i'm one 
>of the more knowledgable people on the list.
>
>We could use your help. If you are interested in helping new users learn 
>how to use Ruby, please consider joining our mailing list. (Or you could 
>just help Brian with his book.)
>
>Oh, and BTW, we now have a gem for Watir ('gem install watir'). It has unit 
>tests and rdoc. And yes, Watir only works on Windows and only with Internet 
>Explorer. I offer apologies to the OSS gods.
>
>http://wtr.rubyforge.org/
>

Bret,

I guess this is a good problem to have ;-)  

Why not point people to this list when they have general Ruby questions?

Also: my understanding is that Watir works only on IE because it uses 
Win32OLE.  Any thoughts about creating a cross-browser solution (maybe 
kind of like Selenium)?  I also wonder if maybe something like the new 
MouseHole proxy could be used to capture communication between browser and 
server and then 'play back' the interactions somehow.

Phil