Does webdriver change the appearance of popups in Firefox?

Question

I'm currently working on adding popup support to Selenium Builder. While doing so, I've noticed a discrepancy in how alert() popups work between normal use of Firefox and Firefox driven using Webdriver (via Selenium server). In normal use, alert() popups display as a small centered window, with the rest of the document window partially faded out: (full size)

When I navigate to the same page using Webdriver/Selenium, I get a standard Mac OS windowing toolkit popup: (full size)

Does Webdriver do something to tell Firefox to use the more standard style of popup instead of the "pretty fadeout" one used normally? If yes, is this so that it can correctly capture the presence of the popup window for alert handling?

I'm trying to get alert handling working in an embedded copy of webdriver that's being run by Builder, but none of the fxdriver.modals functions work. Instead of finding the popup window, they only find the parent document window, and I'm thinking this discrepancy could be the cause of that?

Answer 1

I suggest in the used profile, the property for the displaying of alerts is different. Firefox 4: Changed alert behaviour?

When the webdriver-instance is open look at: about:config --> prompts.tab_modal.enabled.

With loading/setting the profile from outside you may change the behavior to your preferred settings.