I have found the Javascript/DOM tests, especially for the simple interactions that you are describing, are not that useful. You’ll testing that things are set up right, and since jQuery is so declarative, your tests look a lot like your code.
My current thinking is that if you are writing larger JS components, it makes sense to pull out a set of interrelated behaviors both into a jQuery plugin and a set of tests for it.
But from the examples you mentioned, it sounds like you’re really looking for a level of protection within your integrated website. A tool like Selenium will probably be more powerful and appropriate for you. In particular, it
- can be automated
- can run against multiple browsers, including IE
- runs within the context of your web app and pages, so drag-n-drop can be tested where it really happens instead of in some test environment.
- AJAX can be tested