Upcoming new Ui.Vision sidebar (Mockup. Comments welcome)

New Ui.Vision sidebar

Why? Many of you suggested, and we agree, that for simply replaying macros the main Ui.Vision IDE is often too large. So a new, smaller sidebar window is needed. The macro tree view and the log tab will move to the new sidebar:

You can resize the sidebar, too

Main Ui.Vision IDE window changes a bit, too

Work in progress, comments welcome :slight_smile:

As you can see, the key idea is that the sidebar will be used for organizing and replaying macros.

For recording, building and debugging the macros, you can enlarge the sidebar to the full window (“Expand” button).

Also, in the main window, the tab row on the bottom half will move:

  • Log tab moves to sidebar (so you can watch the macro replay)
  • Other tabs move to main window top tab row. We have much more place there.

It will take a while before the first beta is ready. Meanwhile, please let us know if you have any suggestions or comments on the design.

3 Likes

Looks encouraging!

In Firefox, I hope that the new “Ui.Vison sidebar” will be shown inside Firefox’s sidebar, and not just docked to the left of the browser?

Could we have a record tab in the sidebar as well (like in iMacros)?

For the " Main Ui.Vision IDE window" it may not be practical to show it inside Firefox’s sidebar. Can we have an option to dock it to the left of the Firefox browser (like the latest iMacros)?

Thanks for the good feedback:

  1. The first release will be for Chrome and Edge. But once we make the Firefox version, we plan to make it a real sidebar - it is great that the Firefox extension API offers this option!

  2. Recording - classic HTML recording is an option. The challenge are the computer vision commands like XClick - these need for example the “Select” button to take screenshots (of buttons etc). We have yet to come up with a good sidebar GUI for this. Suggestions welcome.

  3. Dock main IDE window to browser - Is this really a help? Because it is quite big, on most screens you will need some kind of overlap between browser and IDE window.

Yeah, my concern is if it was within the browser’s window it might change a web-page’s dimensions which might trigger changes to its DOM.

I am a former user of imacros, in the past I was used to the imacros sidebar which reduced the size of the browser, today it is normal for me to use the ui vision window and I am happy with it because it goes behind the browser and therefore the size does not matter has.

I had suggested the possibility with a menu/setting of enabling a reduced ui vision gui window but in my opinion hooking it to the browser can cause more problems than benefits also because if there are already other sidebars in the browser the browser will become more confused.

I ask the @admin to leave the possibility of maintaining the same gui as now in the window because it is convenient having all the commands and goes behind the browser without disturbing

@TheWhippinpost - yes, we do not want to mess with the web page inside the browser, that brings all kinds of strange side effects.

@newuserkantu - thanks for this feedback. The current main IDE window will not go away. Ui.Vision has too many features (e. g. all the visual commands) that have no place on a sidebar. The new sidebar is an experiment to see if a sidebar mode is more convenient for replaying macros.

2 Likes

If you still needed confirmation as to whether a sidebar in old-fashioned iMacros-style for macro playback is useful or not… well… DAMN, IT IS!! :sweat_smile:
Oh man… you can’t even imagine how much appreciated it would be: especially if it would be integrated in the Firefox sidebar, that would be a miracle! :innocent:

1 Like

I’ve used iMacros since 2008. I looked at a lot of tools and Ui.Vision seems to meet my needs better than the rest I tested. I REALLY like the sidebar, and hope it comes sooner rather than later. I have used the nodisplay flag from the command line, and store nodisplay in macros - but it still starts up, then goes away. I use 2 monitors when I am developing, and only 1 in production. Also, my vision is bad, so the size of text, etc. is 200% on my development box. Anyway, the sidebar will take care of a lot of my problems.

—Monte—

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Thanks again to everyone for the helpful feedback. The first beta release of the sidebar is maybe only a week away :slight_smile:

We will update this post once a beta version is available for testing.

As often, development took a bit more time than estimated, but the first sidebar beta version is finally available:

:point_up_2: For feedback please use the new forum post linked above.

:point_right: You can can install this beta and the regular Ui.Vision at the same time, as they both have different extension IDs.