Interacting with Elements in BAS: Clicks, Drags and Dropdowns

Finding an element is half the job; acting on it is the other half. Beyond locating elements and filling forms, BAS has a rich set of action blocks for clicking, dragging, reading attributes and working dropdowns.

Recording: direct vs non-direct control

When you build by recording, BAS offers control modes. In direct control, your interactions with the browser are captured as actions and added to the scenario. In non-direct control, you can browse and navigate without recording - you control the browser but BAS doesn’t turn clicks and typing into steps. Switch between them so you can set up a page without polluting your flow.

Clicking an element

Two ways to click, with a real trade-off:

• Move mouse and click element - moves the cursor to the element along a human-like path, then clicks. You pick the button (left, right or double-click) and can tune the mouse movement - speed, deviation and attraction. This is the human-looking option.
• Click element - triggers the element instantly via a JavaScript click(), with no mouse movement (this is what “disable mouse emulation” does). Faster, but it produces no behavioral signal - fine on sites that don’t watch, risky on sites that do.

A useful option on move-and-click: hold CTRL to open a link in a new tab (then switch to it).

Clicking by coordinates

When there’s no selector to target - a canvas, an image map - you can click or move the mouse to exact coordinates like (488, 222). It’s brittle (layout changes break it) but sometimes it’s the only way.

Hover, drag and attributes

• Move mouse over element - hover, to trigger menus or lazy content.
• Start dragging / finish dragging - drag an element from one point to another, for sliders and drag-and-drop UIs.
• Get attribute / Set element attribute - read an element’s HTML attribute, or set one. For example, change the id on a <div id="message-old"> to mark or target it.

Dropdowns (comboboxes)

Select boxes have dedicated blocks:

• Set combobox value - choose an option by its value.
• Set combobox index - choose by position.
• Select random combobox element - pick one at random, handy for varied, human-like form filling.

Together these blocks cover everything a hand does on a page beyond typing: click, hover, drag, toggle and select. Pair them with waiting for the element first, and your interactions stay reliable.