January 11, 2006

Macro Scheduler and the Zebra Fish

Filed under: General — Marcus Tettmar @ 2:25 pm

What has Macro Scheduler got to do with Zebra fish? Well, it seems Macro Scheduler was used to automate some of the experiments written about in this book: The Zebrafish: Cellular and Developmental Biology

Amazing huh? Macro Scheduler has been used for all sorts of incredible things. Unfortunately I’m not always able to get permission to write about them and often I have no idea what people use Macro Scheduler for at all. If you have put Macro Scheduler to some novel uses I’d be thrilled to hear about it. Let me know.

I know that Macro Scheduler is used by Sirius Satellite Radio for automatically inserting audio files into radio broadcasts, and on a similar note the BBC has used it for automatically uploading recently recorded programs onto their website. A well known high street bank in the UK installed Macro Scheduler in their branches to simplify a process for the counter clerks that involved pulling information from one legacy system and typing it into another. Another bank uses Macro Scheduler to automate the production of financial reports every morning. It’s great to know how Macro Scheduler helps so many different kinds of businesses.

I remember learning of a very elaborate experiment at NASA which used Macro Scheduler. Now, Macro Scheduler macros can be made very reliable, but whether or not they went as far as to use Macro Scheduler for the Shuttle’s auto-pilot system I have no idea ….

December 30, 2005

Internet Macros

Filed under: General — Tags: — Marcus Tettmar @ 11:03 am

Ever since Macro Scheduler has supported VBScript it has been possible to control Internet Explorer directly via it’s ActiveX interface. Here are some examples:

http://www.mjtnet.com/usergroup/viewtopic.php?t=1511
http://www.mjtnet.com/usergroup/viewtopic.php?t=1461

However, this approach requires a fair amount of coding and, for complex IE scripting, a good understanding of the Document Object Model. That’s why we developed WebRecorder. WebRecorder is like a tabbed browser. As you surf WebRecorder watches what you click on and monitors form field entries and builds a script as you go. When you’re done you simply run the script in Macro Scheduler and the activity is played back. WebRecorder cuts out any need for coding and also copes better with nested frames where VBScript fails due to site scripting security limitations.

Macro Scheduler has supported VBScript, and therefore the ability to automate IE and do things like wait for pages to finish loading, and click on tags etc, since 1998. WebRecorder was introduced in 2004. As much as I hate to admit it there are other products out there that do similar things. So imagine how shocked I was the other day when I stumbled across a website for another macro product that claimed it had unique internet functionality that no other software had. It claims that it is the only macro product that can wait for a page to finish loading! That’s a pretty bold statement to make, and quite clearly untrue. I’m not even sure if that’s legal. If nothing else it is misleading and unhelpful.

I’ve always done my very best to make sure we can back up any of our marketing material. I do not believe in making claims that can’t be supported. At MJT we try our best to respond to queries as honestly and helpfully as possible and have been known to suggest an alternative product if we think ours isn’t suited to the customer’s needs exactly. So I was quite surprised to see a competitor making such blatently false statements. But I don’t see it doing them any favours. Software buyers are pretty savvy people these days and will see through hype like that. I hope.

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