Why UI-Element and why not .properties file?

Why UI-Element and why not .properties file? Selenium Notes, Videos, examples by.www.laxmiroy.blogspot.com/

There are many advantages to using the UI-Elements approach

1) Selenium IDE supports UI-Elements. This means IDE will record your scripts and use UI-Elements in place of literal locator values if you provide it with UI-Elements map file for the application that you are recording on. After recording your scripts in IDE the scripts can easily be ported to the Selenium-RC environment in a language of your liking. IDE does not support any other mapping approach.

2) A map file created using UI-Elements approach will be much easier to maintain in the long run because it will mind its integrity on its own. A JavaScript file will not allow duplicate entries or malformed regular expressions. A flat file like a ‘.properties’ file will not have such error checking abilities.