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System returns me back to the previous page instead of taking to the next one without even clicking 'Next' or 'Back' button

I have a webpage See WebPage screen shot
Code
WebElement whatAirline = driver.findElement(By.cssSelector(".BaggageFlightDetailsView-airlineField input"));
whatAirline.sendKeys("AeroGal (2K)");
whatAirline.submit(); //This is kind of drop down menu list is the COMBOBOX with no class 'select', just class 'input'
WebElement confirmationCode = driver.findElement(By.cssSelector(".Input-input"));
confirmationCode.sendKeys("test");
whatAirline.submit();
It brings me to the previous page, though 'Next' button on this page becomes enabled!
IMPORTANT:'Next' button is not even a button it just has class -that's all, no other data! `class = ''PagerButtons-button PagerButtons-button--next''
What else i tried? Explicitly wait, click 'Next' as a button (though it is not even a button)
Nothing works ! HELP!

I think you have entered invalid data in any of two fields. So the next button may not be enabled, it automatically clicks enabled back button. Check your inputs.
Use select class for drop down list. Also use explicit Wait to click next button.

Solved!
The problem that i found was:
Combobox was not holding the value selected in drop-down, just typed it.
System was taking me back because 'Back' button was the only one enabled.
That is why submit was taking me back every time.
I added whatAirline.click(); before submit and it worked out!
Please note, that i should have not write button click as on top of everything i had no button at all, just an element that looked like a button.

Where did my pop-up window go to?

The case of the disappearing pop-up window!
I click a link and it is supposed to bring up a little dialog pop-up window where I can change the State (like MA, VA, etc). I then would click OK, the pop-up window would disappear and I'd be back on the main window having fun with wild abandon.
That's what happens when I do it manually. When I do it through my nifty Selenium Java project the link gets clicked a pop-up window briefly appears then poof! It's gone and I mean really gone, not just in the background.
Here's a code sniipet:
WebElement foo4 = driver.findElement(By.linkText("State:"));
String myText;
myText = foo4.getText();
System.out.println("I got: " + myText);
foo4.click();
(do stuff in the pop-up window down here)
I threw a println in there to make absolutely sure that foo4 really is the link to be clicked and it is! Sanity checks help sometimes.
When the click event happens, poof! That pop-up window shows kinda like a ghost for a split second totally blank and then it's gone. I have no idea what's happening. It IS intermittent. 10% of the time the pop-up window does appear but most of the time no dice.
I'm open to ideas here. It's not a matter of cycling through the available windows yet, I only have a main window so that's not even in the picture yet.
Any help appreciated!

Instead of clicking the element, scrape the href or similar attribute that holds the URL, then do driver.get(url); or whatever it looks like in Java.
That way you can navigate to the URL in the main browser window and do what you need to do there.

Is there a definite Selenium solution to modal pop up dialogs in Internet Explorer with Java?

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.
The web application that I am testing has the following characteristics:
It is ONLY supported by Internet Explorer (no way around this)
Main page accepts a userid and password, with a "Login" button
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.
I cannot do anything to the parent window until I dismiss the pop up window
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)
This is what I've tried:
getWindowHandles() always returns 1 for the parent window, so this makes driver.switchTo(handle) not-applicable
It is not an alert, so driver.switchTo().alert() or accept() do not work
findElement(By whatever) will NOT find any elements in the pop up window (like the "OK" button or the checkbox, etc.)
Robot 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...
Here is my issue:
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
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
I tried finding out if the parent window elements are enabled using isEnabled(), but even though items are not manually "clickable" while the modal pop up window is displayed, isEnabled() always returns TRUE--so this does not work--is there a better way to check for this for the "blocked" elements in the background?
My questions:
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)
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)?
Thank you.

You should use WebDriverWait with some expected condition. For example,
WebDriverWait wait = new WebDriverWait(driver, 5); // sets timeout to 5 seconds
wait.until(...); // Use ExpectedCondition to set the condition you need to check for (i.e. element to be clickable, frame to be visible, etc.)
// Do your thing.
The until method will return an object type relative to the function passed. For example, until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(...)); will return a WebElement object you can use to exert an action on (like clicking on it).
Lastly, you should wrap those lines in a try/catch and handle the TimeoutException the wait method will throw if the condition never arises.
To summarize, structurally, your code should look something like this:
// instantiate the WebDriver
...
int timeoutMax = 2; // The maximum number of seconds you wish to wait before timing out (let's assume 2 seconds is reasonable for your case)
try {
By checkboxLocator = By.id("checkboxID"); // Locate element by some criteria (id, css, xpath). Using by ID for illustration purposes only
By buttonLocator = By.id("buttonID"); // same as above
By popupLocator = By.id("frameid"); // same as above
WebDriverWait wait = new WebDriverWait(driver, timeoutMax);
wait.until(ExpectedConditions.frameToBeAvailableAndSwitchToIt(popupLocator)); // assuming it is an iframe
// The next lines will not be executed if the "Don't display this again" and clicking "OK" were clicked before (locating the frame will timeout because it not be visible)
WebElement checkbox = wait.until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(checkboxLocator));
WebElement okBtn = wait.until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(checkboxLocator));
checkbox.click();
okBtn.click();
driver.switchTo().defaultContent(); // Switch back to default window
} catch (TimeoutException exc) {
// Handle exception (i.e. log a warning) - This should be thrown as long as the modal dialog doesn't become visible
// If modal dialog ever becomes visible again, clicking on the checkbox and OK button will be executed again.
}
Something like this should work. Of course, this make some assumptions that might not be true for your case. However, if you use the right locating technique for your modal dialog, you should be able to:
Locate the modal window (use By class to locate it)
Use WebDriverWait to setup your timeout conditions
Tell the driver to switch to it (if this times out, skip steps 3, 4, and 5)
Locate the checkbox and OK buttons
Click the checkbox and the OK button in that order
Tell the driver to switch back to the main window
Continue with your test

Create an If statement in terms of a boolean variable to check for the existence of a modal pop up that does not display 100% of the time.
If the modal is html generated (which it should be, if it holds dynamic content), then try:
driver.switchTo().activeElement();
driver.switchTo().defaultContent();
Also, you may have to insert a wait so that the html has time to generate.
If the modal is a browser alert, then try:
alert.accept();

print dialog does not let next code to be executed in selenium

The code that i'm using is below. First line clicks on 'PrintButton" which opens up "Print" dialog. Once this is open, I expect a console output "Sending Esc key - Start" and then subsequently one of the action like robot, actions, alert dismiss, window switch to happen (based on whichever code is uncommented). But instead, the console does not print anything UNLESS i click on Cancel in print dialog. So, once i click on cancel, the sysout prints the message, performs the action (and nothing useful happens because of those actions) and then prints another console msg.
My Question is two parts. a. Why is the compiler (or program) not moving to next line? b. How can I handle this print dialog? (read all the articles in internet, tried the suggested methods but nothing worked).
driver.findElement(By.id("PrintButton")).click();
System.out.println("Sending Esc key - Start");
/*Robot r = new Robot();
r.delay(10000);
r.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_ESCAPE);
r.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_ESCAPE);
r.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_ESCAPE);
*/
/*Actions a = new Actions(driver).sendKeys(Keys.CANCEL);*/
/*driver.switchTo().alert().dismiss();*/
/*List<String> handles = new ArrayList<>(driver.getWindowHandles());
driver.switchTo().window(handles.get(handles.size()-1));*/
System.out.println("Sending Esc key - done");

I had the same problem on ChromeDriver and found the only way is to click the print button with JavascriptExecutor in a async fashion.
WebElelement print_button = driver.findElement(By.id("PrintButton"));
JavascriptExecutor executor = (JavascriptExecutor) driver;
executor.executeScript("var elem=arguments[0]; setTimeout(function() {elem.click();}, 100)", print_button);
Inspired by this tread

The driver never returns because Selenium uses JavaScript internally to "click" the button. Clicking the button opens a modal dialog which blocks the browser's JavaScript engine (all animations stop as well). This is partly because of the modal dialog (alert() does the same thing) but also because you probably want to print the page as it is - it shouldn't change while you print it.
Workaround: Make sure the element has the focus (using Selenium). Then use Robot to drive the whole process: Send a key press to activate the button (it's very hard to locate the button on the screen). Then the print dialog should show up and it should have the focus. The next key presses in Robot should then drive the dialog.
Note: This is brittle. My suggestion is not to test the print dialog this way. If you need this, then Java+Selenium might not be the correct solution. Look at professional UI testing tools like QF-Test.
Related:
How to handle print dialog in Selenium?

Clicking on Hidden Menu Item in Selenium 2.33 Java

I have a Menu Element that pops down only when clicked and then fades out on losing focus. My task is to click on a hidden sub menu item.
From previous answers to similar situations I used the following code to click on the Sub menu Items.
Actions builder = new Actions(driver);
WebElement mainMenuElement= driver.findElement(By.id("Mainmenu"));
builder.moveToElement(mainMenuElement).build().perform();
mainMenuElement.click();
Thread.sleep(2000);
WebElement mySubMenu=driver.findElement(By.xpath("//a[text()='Kit Components']"));
mySubMenu.click();
But, when I run the code in chrome v 27, once in three times or so the submenu item never gets clicked. The mainmenu opens up and stays still forever. But the submenu.click() is executed everytime without Exceptions and the submenu is also visible.
Is this because of my code? or
Could this be because the Submenu item has a localized region for Click? i.e Manually when I click on the submenu, the click works only on the text and not on remaining blank regions of the element.
Im using selenium 2.33 Java with chrome v 27.
Any advice would be very helpful, thanks.

First off, please, don't use Thread.sleep in your code. Ever. Instead, use the FluentWait or WebDriverWait commands.
Now, to answer your question, it seems as if you have stumbled upon what some people call a "flapper", or a "flakey test". If your test fails one in three times or so, something is really flakey.
I have noticed every once in a while that the click function doesn't always do the actual click (even though every indication in the code says it did). I wonder if you're happening upon this? Usually I do a check to see if the click seems to happen. If it tried clicking in the code but nothing happens, I will let it retry the click. If the retry doesn't work, then something is really up.