Use of Advanced Page Properties

Question

Hi,
I like to know what is the use of the Advanced Page Properties(Right click a Page> Select properties>Click on Advanced).
There are 5 items there:
1) A2 Playback
2) No Merge
3) Send to Extension Server
4) Skip in e-Tester
5) Treat as Direct Navigation
The last 2 items seams pretty straight forward, but I can't figure out the others. There is no documentation about it in the e-Tester Help.
If you provide examples would be great.
Thanks

Answer 1

Hi Aether,
Hope this is the kind of info you are looking for. I think this info is in the knowledge base. I had copied it a long time back.
Explanation of Advanced Options
Question
What are the Advanced Page Properties?
Answer
A2 PlayBack
Directs e-Tester to perform an A2 style navigation for this page during script playback. A2 and transforms are how e-Load executes script navigations. e-Tester records and plays back scripts by recording at the browsers object level and capturing all of the events that the user performed to navigate from one page to the next. This may include things like clicks on links, images, buttons, other form elements, etc. You can see these events or actions by looking in the Properties of the Address node for each script page. At the same time, e-Tester records a Transform (using A2 technology) to construct navigations to be used when running the script in e-Load. e-Load Thin Client cannot use object based navigations since it is not instantiating actual browsers the browser object model does not exist.
In cases where your script does not playback in e-Tester, because the events to perform the navigation were not recorded properly, sometimes we may need to direct e-Tester to use e-Load style A2 navigations instead. We do this by setting A2 playback for the page we would like to do that on and that will force an e-Load A2 type navigation rather than using the recorded actions to navigate. It is best not to just set A2 navigations to try to resolve an e-Tester playback problem. You first need to try to understand the navigation that is being performed and determine why it was not recorded/played back properly by e-Tester. Understanding the problem is critical because their may be real problems that need to be resolved. A2 should be only used as a last resort when all other options have been exhausted.
No Merge
Instructs e-Tester not to merge new page content retrieved on playback with the existing recorded baseline pages in the visual script. When this is set you will see that the Visual Script will not update on playback even if there is different content retrieved (no flags or updated content will be shown in the page nodes). The example where this setting is used most is to avoid updates to the recorded items in the Parameters node as follows.
When you record a script, e-Tester automatically captures, in the Parameters node of a page, all of the user-input form fields and data submitted from the preceding page. On playback, if that first page had additional form fields that were not there during recording, these new form fields will be merged in and added to the Parameters node of the next page.
You can see this in the FMStocks demo. The login page has 2 fields (login and password) which will be captured in the Parameters node of page 2 of your script (if you just record a 2 page login script). If you switch to Build B of FMStocks, you will see a Customer ID field added to the login page and when you play the script back that you had originally recorded, the Customer ID field will be added to the Parameters node of page 2. If you had set "No Merge" on page 2, then this additional form field would not have been added to the page 2 Parameters node.
There are some cases where you need to use No Merge. For example, when the form fields on a page have dynamic names which causes e-Tester to constantly keep adding Parameters every time the script plays back.
For example lets say the Login and Password fields were called "login123" and "password123". Then you play the script back and the content of the login page is dynamically updated and the fields are now called "login456" and "password456". This would cause e-Tester to add another login and password field to the Parameters node of page 2 because it sees these as new fields (since the names are different). In this case they are actually the same fields, just with new names. Therefore you would want to set No Merge to avoid this situation so e-Tester handles it properly.
Send to Extension Server
Used to mark a page in your script to be sent to Extension Server when running the script in e-Load. e-Load once again uses Transforms and A2 navigations to play the script when running in Thin Client. Sometimes e-Load Thin Client will not be able to process the page to perform the navigation properly using the Transform or you may have failures during script playback in e-Load (Failed to Find/Failed to Match). When Extension Server is enabled, e-Load switches from a Thin Client to a full browser for the page that its enabled on. This allows e-Load to process that page as a full browser would. This may be required, for example, if there is some client side script that needs to be executed for the navigation to perform properly. Once again, you should not resort to Extension Server until you have understood the problem at hand. In most cases, the A2 Transforms should be able to perform the navigations in e-Load Thin Client, without the need for Extension Server. Also, enabling Extension Server is a scalability hit because a full browser must be instantiated for the page which requires much more resources than just using the Thin agent. If there are no other options, then Extension Server should be enabled.
Treat as Direct Navigation
Instructs e-Tester to perform a page navigation as a direct navigation to the recorded URL for that page. Once again, e-Tester normally performs script navigations by executing the recorded actions that the user performed to get from one page to the next. However, if e-Tester cannot perform the navigation in this manner because it couldnt record or playback the events proprerly, a direct navigation may need to be used instead. You would use Treat as Direction navigation if you are performing a static navigation that does not require A2. If the navigation to the next page is dynamic due to URL session variables etc. then you will need to set A2 playback instead. As in the case of using A2 playback, you should never automatically just set Treat as Direct Navigation to try to resolve an e-Tester playback problem. You first need to try to understand the navigation that is being performed and determine why it was not recorded/played back properly by e-Tester. Understanding the problem is critical because their may be real problems that need to be resolved. Treat as Direct Navigation should be only used as a last resort when all other options have been exhausted.