title: Is there a definite Selenium solution to modal pop up dialogs in Internet Explorer with Java?
body: <p>I have searched many, many places for a solution to my problem, but haven't found it.  I figured that by now, Selenium would have provided a straight forward and simple solution to handling modal windows/dialogs from Internet Explorer using Java.</p>
  
  <p>The web application that I am testing has the following characteristics:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>It is ONLY supported by Internet Explorer (no way around this)</li>
  <li>Main page accepts a userid and password, with a "Login" button</li>
  <li>Upon login and on page load, there is a pop up "Welcome - What's new" window with a checkbox to "Don't display this again" and an "OK" button to dismiss the window.</li>
  <li>I cannot do anything to the parent window until I dismiss the pop up window</li>
  <li>Right-click is disabled on the pop-up window (however, I can see the source code by opening the F12 tools before login and window pop-up)</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>This is what I've tried:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><code>getWindowHandles()</code> always returns 1 for the parent window, so this makes <code>driver.switchTo(handle)</code> not-applicable</li>
  <li>It is not an alert, so <code>driver.switchTo().alert()</code> or <code>accept()</code> do not work</li>
  <li><code>findElement(By whatever)</code> will NOT find any elements in the pop up window (like the "OK" button or the checkbox, etc.)</li>
  <li><code>Robot</code> class is the only thing that I have seen work, where I can send keypresses to navigate to the "OK" button and click it to dismiss the window...</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Here is my issue:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Since there is a checkbox to "Don't show this again", there are users for which this modal pop up window will display and some for which it won't.  I need to account for both cases</li>
  <li>I need to find a 100% sure way to know whether the pop up is displayed or not.  If I have this information, I can make use of the Robot class (although "dirty") to perform actions on the pop up if needed</li>
  <li>I tried finding out if the parent window elements are enabled using <code>isEnabled()</code>, but even though items are not manually "clickable" while the modal pop up window is displayed, <code>isEnabled()</code> always returns TRUE--so this does not work--is there a better way to check for this for the "blocked" elements in the background?</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>My questions:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>How do you check for the existence of a modal pop up that does not display 100% of the time? (on Internet Explorer 10, using Selenium with Java)</li>
  <li>Besides using Robot class, how do you interact with the actual Elements in a modal pop-up dialog (for example, dynamic Radio Buttons that don't always display the same options to the user)?</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Thank you.</p>