OttoMate 1.0 with Ajax testing support

Check out OttoMate 1.0.

Okay.. I’m calling this OttoMate release “1.0″. There’s still lots of stuff I’d like to do with/add to OttoMate, but I think this release is reasonably complete from a functionality standpoint.

So… how, exactly, does OttoMate 1.0 “support Ajax”?

Glad you asked.

OttoMate now consists of 6 discreet Automator Actions. The newest addition is called Wait for Condition in Current Webpage. This Action allows you to set a timeout value for waiting for one of many types of conditions to be met in the current frontmost Safari webpage.

AFAICT, this is pretty much everything you need to support testing of Ajax-powered webapps… Ajax will asynchronously update the content of the current webpage at some time in the near future. With the new Wait for Condition in Current Webpage Action, OttoMate can poll the current webpage (for a given timeout value) and continue or stop execution when the condition is or is not met. Pretty powerful stuff.

For version 1.1, I’ll be focusing on adding support for testing in other browsers… specifically, I’m thinking it might be possible to leverage GreaseMonkey to add FireFox support. If OttoMate moves beyond just testing in Safari, I feel like it will become a truly compelling way to test web applications.