As you may or may not know, QTP comes with a tool called the Object Spy. The Spy identifies and reveals properties of objects which can be used to interact with those objects. I use this tool all of the time, especially when working descriptively.
However, as noted throughout my blog, I often have to rely on the XMLDOM to get at and interact with some pieces of the page. QTP is either unable, unreliable, or inefficient at doing some things I want to do, especially dynamically. If am writing what I refer to as an “adaptive” script, I often fall back on the XMLDOM solution.
This is sometimes difficult as I try to open the page source and figure out what the OM for that page entails. Not a really tough thing to do, no, but there are more efficient ways to spend my time.
I was recently passed this tool that will add a plug-in to IE to make it simpler to see the XML for a page. Very handy.