Ways Available To Identify HTML Element

How?	HTML Example	Watir Example	Comment
:action	<form action="page.htm">	ie.form(:action, /page/).click	Used only for form element, specifies the URL where the form is to be submitted.
:after?	<a>one</a> <a>two</a> <a>one</a>	ie.link(:after?, ie.link(:text, "two")).click	Finds element after some other element.
:alt	<img alt="Continue" />	ie.image(:alt, "Continue").click	Used to find an element that has an alt attribute (img and input).
:class	<a class="header">	ie.link(:class, "header").click	Used for an element that has a class attribute.
:css
:for	<label for="header">	ie.label(:for, "header").click	Used only for label element.
:href	<a href="page.htm">	ie.link(:href, /page/).click	Used to identify a link by it's href attribute.
:html	<a onclick="new Ajax.Request('/data/?id=227')">add a term</a>	ie.link(:html, /id=227/).click	Used to identify a link by it's HTML.
:id	<a id="header">	ie.link(:id, "header").click	Used to find an element that has an id attribute. Since each id should be unique, according to the XHTML specification, this is recommended as the most reliable method to find an object.
:index	<button>	ie.button(:index, 1).click	Used to find the nth element of the specified type on a page. Current versions of Watir use 1-based indexing (starts counting at 1), but future versions will use 0-based indexing (starts counting at 0).
:method	<form method="get">	ie.form(:method, "get").click	Used only for form, the method attribute of a form is either get or post.
:name	<a name="header">	ie.link(:name, "header").click	Used to find an element that has a name attribute. This is useful for older versions of HTML, but name is deprecated in XHTML.
:src	<img src="photo.png">	ie.image(:src, /photo/).click	Used to identify an image by it's URL.
:text	<a>click me</a>	ie.link(:text, "click me").click	Used for link, span, div and other elements that contain text.
:title	<a title="header">	ie.link(:title, "header").click	Used for an element that has a title attribute.
:url	<a href="page.htm">	ie.link(:url, /page/).click	:url is synonym for :href.
:value	<input value="text">	ie.text_field(:value, "text").click	Used to find a text field with a given default value, or a button with a given value.
:xpath	<a href="page.htm">	ie.link(:xpath,"//a[@href='page.htm']").click	Finds the item using XPath query.
Multiple Attributes	<a>click me</a> <a>click me</a>	ie.link(:text => "click me", :index => 2).click	You can combine more ways of finding elements. This example will click the second link with text click me.

:id and :name are the quickest of these to process, and so should be used when possible to speed up scripts.

 

http://wiki.openqa.org/display/WTR/Ways+Available+To+Identify+HTML+Element