Issue with losing focus of "hover" command when the mouse is outside of the active window

Question

If I automate mouse actions using Selenium2/Webdriver in combination with Firefox 12, I can easily get the "mouse" to move to and hover over a context menu so the sub-menus are seen. However, if I have the real mouse resting outside of the active window running the test, there's a 99% chance when the hover action occurs, the context menu will flash quickly and disappear as if the mouse had moved. This causes the next step in the test to fail since the web element is no longer visible.

Once in a blue moon the test will run fine if the mouse is outside of the window. That's definitely a rare instance. If the real mouse is resting anywhere inside of the active window running the test, the hover action and test will run without issue 100% of the time.

Has anyone experienced this behavior or is it a known issue of Selenium2/Webdriver and Firefox? If you have experienced this, although it doesn't seem likely there could be a workaround, have you found a way to counteract this behavior?

It's a pain to have to wait for a test to run if it contains a hover command instead of letting it go in the background while I continue working on something else.

Answer 1

I edit the firefox profile to disable native events. Also maximize window and it works fine

FirefoxProfile p = new FirefoxProfile();
p.setEnableNativeEvents(false);
WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(p);    
driver.get("url");
driver.manage().window().maximize();

Answer 2

I did notice this behavior, but only while debugging. When I executed the tests normally I never saw the issue. Have you tried that?

Answer 3

Here is a workaround. Use Javascript to hover the mouse.

public static void mouseHoverJScript(WebElement HoverElement) {
            try {
                if (isElementPresent(HoverElement)) {

                    String mouseOverScript = "if(document.createEvent){var evObj = document.createEvent('MouseEvents');evObj.initEvent('mouseover',true, false); arguments[0].dispatchEvent(evObj);} else if(document.createEventObject) { arguments[0].fireEvent('onmouseover');}";
                    ((JavascriptExecutor) Selenium.webDriver).executeScript(mouseOverScript,HoverElement);

            } else {
                System.out.println("Element was not visible to hover " + "\n");

            }
        } catch (StaleElementReferenceException e) {
            System.out.println("Element with " + HoverElement
                    + "is not attached to the page document"
                    + e.getStackTrace());
        } catch (NoSuchElementException e) {
            System.out.println("Element " + HoverElement + " was not found in DOM"
                    + e.getStackTrace());
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
            System.out.println("Error occurred while hovering"
                    + e.getStackTrace());
        }
    }

    public static boolean isElementPresent(WebElement element) {
        boolean flag = false;
        try {
            if (element.isDisplayed()
                    || element.isEnabled())
                flag = true;
        } catch (NoSuchElementException e) {
            flag = false;
        } catch (StaleElementReferenceException e) {
            flag = false;
        }
        return flag;
    }