I’ve been examining various types of software test automation using Windows PowerShell (the new command shell and scripting language). My long-term goal is to determine if PowerShell makes sense as a base for a Microsoft software testing certification specialty. Last week I experimented with the Microsoft UI Automation (MUIA) library. The MUIA library is a set of DLLs that ship with the 3.0 version of the .NET Framework and essentially provide you with a uniform way to manipulate and examine UI elements on all types of Windows application programs, including Win32 apps, Form-based apps, and WPF/XAML based apps. The bottom line is that because PowerShell supports direct calls into the .NET Framework, you can call the MUIA library from PowerShell. Conceptually the technique is easy but I ran into quite a few technical problems that caused me some grief. I’ll update this topic as I learn more.