IBM’s CoScripter: Greasemonkey for non-geeks

Brian Dillard, Friday, September 7, 2007 @ 11:56 am

Think of all those annoying step-by-step processes you must learn and memorize to go about your daily online business: logging onto your bank site to check the balance on your savings account; filling out a tedious form; ordering prints of your digital photos. The elements of the UI are easy to understand, but the process itself differs wildly from site to site.

Now imagine a Greasemonkey-esque add-on that not only automates those processes, but shares the automations with everyone else. All you have to do is write the instructions in plain English, let your browser record the steps in real time, or search the existing archive for somebody else's previously recorded automation. Sold yet? Good, then meet CoScripter, a new Firefox add-on from IBM.

Alex Faaborg over at Mozilla Labs sums up CoScripter thusly:

What do you get when you mix one part automation, one part natural language interpretation, two parts programming by demonstration, and three parts online collaboration? If you stir all of these research areas together and toss in some XUL, you get one of the most innovative extensions for Firefox: CoScripter.

Jon Udell has kicked off a pretty interesting discussion of CoScripter as a mash-up of social networking and domain-specific languages. But I'm most excited about the technology for its grassroots potential. Like microformats, CoScripter has the potential to evolve into an "accidental standard" that proves the enduring power of the Open Web. I can foresee a future in which site owners coach newbies about their interfaces by releasing CoScripts instead of publishing big chunks of step-by-step instructional text. Of course, the technology's future ecosystem depends on how IBM licenses it. One less-than-promising sign: the onerous registration process and EULA I had to endure before downloading the add-on.

Nevertheless, as of this writing, 190 CoScripts have been submitted. Lots of them seem fairly limited in scope, but I'm sure that will change as the community grows and the technology matures. The add-on's handy Sidebar interface displays the "editor's picks" for most useful scripts. I'm particularly fond of Add your phone number to the national do not call list.

I wrote two of those 190 scripts myself, and my experiences highlight the strengths and weaknesses of CoScripter as it's currently implemented.

First off, I tried to automate the process of logging into popular blogging engine Vox and starting a post. The tutorials
helped me figure out how to parameterize private data such as email
addresses and passwords into a locally stored "personal database." That way, I can write scripts that work for me, then share them with anybody who sets up similar key/value pairs in their datastore.

The plugin did a pretty good job of recording my steps as I interacted with the browser. (Users of the open-source Selenium QA framework will feel right at home.) But the recording engine totally ignored my interactions with Vox's password field. Even after I manually scripted this step - in CoScripter's eminently simple natural-language syntax - I couldn't get the sequence to work. Still, I've saved it (Login to Vox and Compose Post) in the shared repository. Perhaps a smarter Vox user than me could get it running? Here's the source code:

      
       

• go to "http://www.vox.com/"
• enter your "vox login" into the "Member sign in"'s "Email:" textbox
• enter your "vox password" into the "Member sign in"'s "Password:" field
• click the "Sign In" link
• click the "Compose Post" link

      
   

Next, I tackled something much simpler: Read La Dolce Musto. I love this Village Voice column, but I always have to hunt for it on the busy homepage of NYC's alternative weekly. There's no landing page for columnist Michael Musto, and the site's layout changes weekly. My simple, two-step script hits the homepage and activates the first instance of the writer's name as a link. It worked for this week's issue, but I'll have to wait till next Wednesday to make sure it doesn't bomb out once the homepage rolls over.

Again, the source code:

      
       

• go to "http://www.villagevoice.com/"
• click the "Michael Musto" link

      
   

Given how difficult I found it to get a moderately complex script working, and how trivial my actual working example is, I can't say that CoScripter is going to set the world on fire immediately. Password fields seem to be a problem, and there's no ability to use conditional structures. I'd love, for instance, to be able to write a script that goes to Vox, logs me in only if I'm not already authenticated, then begins a post. It would also be great if I could build in timers, such as "wait x seconds," so that Ajax interactions or other slow-moving changes in state could be accommodated. I mentioned Selenium before, and its powerful syntax for writing test scripts seems like a model for future development. If CoScripter's engineers can expand the power of their DSL without losing its simplicity and ease of use, this add-on seems likely to earn a wide and enthusiastic user base.

[Thanks to the awesome Lamda the Ultimate for the original tip.]

Related posts:

1. BJAX With Greasemonkey
2. BJAX With Greasemonkey for Firefox and IE
3. Greasemonkey Tricks for AJAX Debugging
4. Developer’s Notebook: Find computed styles in IE, Firefox, Opera or Safari
5. BJAX: A Quick Hack for Using GWT with Bookmarklets

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1. 

   A good alternative is iMacros for Firefox or Dejaclick. Especially iMacros has been around for a long time, and works well. I am sure it can automate all the websites that you mentioned in your post. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMacros or https://addons.mozilla.org/

   Comment by Stefan, Friday, September 7, 2007 @ 6:24 pm

2. 

   The DejaClick Firefox add-on will definitely grease your monkey if you are looking for ease of use with reliable playback. Besides its one-click script recording and bookmarking, it adapts to changes in page content way better than other recorders out there.

   Comment by Douglas, Friday, September 21, 2007 @ 11:55 pm

3. 

   DejaClick links:
   https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3262/
   http://www.dejaclick.com/

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