I originally found it when I needed to automate a Customer Test, this was for a simple app that just found documents on a Customer's harddrive and uploaded them to a server; which the Customer could then distribute. But since the issue dealt with doing this repeatedly I started looking at this tool to handle it, you can make your script based on screen positioning or by the use of tabs in an application. I opted for tabs since I don't like screen positioning. It worked well and did a fairly good job, though I ended up using Perl to generate the file upload list for the application, and used AutoIt to run the Perl Script, then start the application which made things easier! Then with our actual Web Application I used it to make small scripts that would do Customer functions on the web site, again using tabs since I liked that - which as usual needed maintenance when the Developers changed the pages. Still it worked well, and as the team grew others used it as part of their testing, one member of my staff was using it to generate Customers by having it run on the Customer Creation pages over and over - which made it easier to generate needed accounts the same each time; and check for changes in the Customer Admin pages. It really fit a small niche.
For a free tool I have gotten some good use from, its been great.
As was noted when this was originally posted - the right tool is the smallest tool.
Pros:
- Scripting Language is Basic-like, so its fairly simple and easy to read
- Can do Tab (keystroke) movement or Mouse positioning
- Has a lot of add-ons with an active development community
- A good community of support, both on the Web and on Yahoo
- Scripts can be converted to EXE's
Cons:
- Windows based, if you want multiplatform its not that useful
- Syntax was sometimes not that clear, but this seems to be solved in the latest version
- Web Scripts can work differently on Multiple Browser types, I never was able to make a generic script (but that may just be me)
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