Our company is currently writing a GUI automation testing tool for compact framework applications. We have initially searched many tools but none of them was right for us.
By using the tool you can record test-cases and group them together to test-suites. For every test-suite there is generated an application, which launches the application-under-test and simulates user-input.
In general the tool works fine, but as we are using window handles for simulation user input, you can't do very many things. For example it is impossible for us to get the name of a control (we just get the caption).
Another problem using window handles is checking for a change. At the moment we simulate a click on a control and depending on the result we know if the application has gone to the next step.
Is there any other (simpler) way for doing such things (for example the message queue or anything else)?
If the Automated GUI testing tool has knowledge about the framework the application is written in it could use that information to make better or more advanced scripts. TestComplete for example knows about Borland's VCL and WinForms. If you test applications build using Windows Presentation Foundation has advanced support for this build in.