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.

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.

Simply use copy & paste to "upload" the test macro from the iMacros browser-addon into the new transaction monitoring sensor.

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.

Image Size

Alertfox/iMacros uses state-of-the art image recognition algorithms. Still, please remember that the smaller the image to search for, the faster is the detection. For example, use only the image of a button instead of the image of the whole website. The system allows image file uploads up to 200KB in size, which should be more than enough. Typical image sizes are between 0.1KB and 30KB. Often it makes more sense to search for two separate small images than one big one. If you have any questions, just ask our tech support.

Browser Selection

AlertFox is the only real browser monitoring service that allows you to choose in what browser you want to run the transaction tests.

Select which web browser you want to be used for running the test.

• Firefox (Free and PRO): 100% support for monitoring HTML-based websites, such as eBay, Amazon and Google. Supports most AJAX elements except a few such as sliders, use IE for testing these elements-

• Internet Explorer (PRO): 100% support for monitoring HTML-based websites, 100% support for monitoring AJAX elements. Full support 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.

• iMacros Browser (PRO): An all-around web automation browser that uses the IE engine internally. So just as IE, it supports all kinds of websites. Technically it is the same as IE, but we recommend it because it is easier to use than IE. It uses iMacros7.

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.

If you select US or EU or Asia zone the specific sensor is only run in the selected zone, e. g.

• 9AM US
• 10AM US
• 11AM US

If you select "World" the sensor is rotated (randomly) between all zones:

• 9AM US
• 10AM EU
• 11AM Asia

*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.