iMacros Sensor
From AlertFox Website Monitoring
AlertFox's transaction monitoring is based on the well-known iMacros browser automation tool. For a general description of the great iMacros for Firefox add-on, please go here. For more information about the iMacros PRO Edition, please refer to the Flash Recording via DirectScreen and Image Recognition chapter of the iMacros Wiki.
The following text describes the setup page for the iMacros sensor in AlertFox.
Contents |
Settings
General settings (valid for all sensor types) are described in Sensor Settings. This page focuses on iMacros-specific settings.
Editor
Enter and edit your transaction macros here. Technically, this is the same editor as used in iMacros for Firefox, including syntax highlighting.
Image Recognition
To test non-HTML web page elements such as Flash- or Silverlight applets, you can use the iMacros image recognition features. This will search for the test images you create and use them to either click on this image, fill text into a (Flash/Silverlight) input box or use the image to indicate that the applet is working correctly. Use the Image Upload function of AlertFox to upload images into the system.
Browser Selection
Select which web browser you want to be used for running the test.
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Firefox (Free and PRO): Recommend for monitoring HTML-based websites, such as eBay, Amazon and Google.
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Internet Explorer (PRO): Required for testing Flash, Flex, Java and Silverlight applets (e.g., YouTube Flash Video Player, Lego.com). Recommended as a second opinion for your Firefox tests, as some bugs might appear in only one browser type. See this example of an IE-only bug.
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iMacros Browser (PRO): An all-around web automation browser that uses the IE engine internally. Technically it is the same as IE, but we recommend it because it is easier to use than IE. iMacros7 is supported.
Zone Selection
Nowadays, geographic location does not matter when accessing a website. There is no functional difference and almost no speed difference between accessing a website from New York, Denver or San Francisco.
That is why AlertFox conducts all transaction monitoring stations in only three zones: the US, the EU and Asia*. Within each zone, the test scripts are distributed between several test machines. In doing so, we share the same concept used by most large Internet companies, such as Amazon, for their own server farms.
*The Asia Zone is not yet available for transaction monitoring. If you want to run your transaction tests from within Asia, please email support and you can participate in the current private beta program for this zone.
