September 06, 2007
IBM Alphaworks Launches CoScripter Web Automation Tool
John Dorsey
Firefox add-on allows users to record and share scripts for web-based processes
IBM Alphaworks has launched a browser automation scripting add-on for Firefox called CoScripter along with a community site for developers to write and collaborate on automation scripts: services.alphaworks.ibm.com/coscripter/. After registering with the site and installing the CoScripter add-on in Firefox, users can run scripts posted by other members, such as "Check American Airlines Flight Arrival Time and Status" or generate their own scripts. CoScripter records actions performed in the browser as editable text and saves them to the CoScripter web site. You can mark a script as private; otherwise it is available to all other members of the site.
Here are example script commands:
* go to "http://www.ddj.com/"
* click the "NEWSLETTERS" link
* enter "Dr." into the "First Name" textbox
* enter "Dobb's" into the "Last Name" textbox
* turn on the "Dr. Dobb's Report" checkbox
Users can also store frequently used variables such as email address and phone numbers in a personal database. Tutorials on using the site are available as scripts, including Getting started with CoScripter, and
Getting started with the personal database. CoScripter can't yet automate every browser based activity. It can't record mouseover events or actions within applet-based UIs, such as Flash, Java applets, and so on. Also there are latency issues with some AJAX UIs, for example where lists of data take longer than expected to finish loading. Nevertheless, CoScripter is my new best friend.
