Switch to Popup in Script?

tl;dr - how does one switch to a popup window in the webpagetest scripting language?

I’ve been tasked with a thorough evaluation of some of the sites our company delivers and have run into the wondeful practice (/me shakes head) of opening a secondary window for almost every primary user interaction. I’ll work to change that as soon as I’m able. However, I need to interact with those pages. I can use selenium to capture the waterfall and share that, but I’ve found - for many managers - the visual of a blank screen for seconds before the primary content is rendered is of immeasurably greater impact.

So, how does one switch to a popup window in the webpagetest scripting language?

Many thanks!

You can’t. WebPageTest only works for the main browser window and actively blocks any new windows from opening.

Is there any way to get the URL for the new window and navigate to it directly instead of having it open in a new window?

Thanks, Pat! I expected as much.

I’m new to this company, but have been doing web performance for 16 years with the last 4 focused on front-end. I was brought in to help uncover challenges like this.

I think they’re using the popup windows as some form of security through obfuscation. There is no way to get there directly. Thankfully, I can harvest the waterfall through the performance framework I built with Se+Chrome - I just really wanted the video! You’ve done amazing things with the Speed Index and interaction with the page elements, but the video capture is THE killer feature of WPT for convincing management and convicting product owners/developers that they’re delivering something other than what is in the user’s best interest.

Pat, Is this a feature we will get sometime in the future? As of Mar 2019 I still cant seem to get the popup windows performance metrics captured with the video.

Also clickAndWait often does not perform the action when the navigation is supposed to happen to a different url. Any other having the same/similar issues?

No. Popups are blocked from opening and I wouldn’t expect to add support for testing popups any time soon.