The renewal maintenance has officially ended for Progress iMacros effective November 30, 2023.
This Wiki site will also no longer be moderated from the Progress side.
Thank you again for your business and support.
Sincerely, The Progress Team
Version 2021 Release Notes
iMacros 2021.0 is built on the open source CEF (Chromium Embedded Framework) and aims to provide the same level of automation as iMacros 12.6 and additional capability to automate websites which work only on Modern Web Browsers.
Download
Customers can download the latest iMacros 2021.0 release from their Progress account.
Evaluation copies can be obtained at https://www.progress.com/imacros/download on or about May 18th, 2021.
System Requirements
- Windows (x64), version 10
- Windows Server (x64),2016, 2019
Note: The user needs to have administrator permissions to install iMacros.
New Features
- New: Friendly rich user interface.
- New: Comprehensive logging and Integrated macro editor.
- New: XPath recording mode
- New: !LOG_EXTRACTED_DATA. Set this variable to change the behavior of whether to log the extracted data or not from the website
- New: PRINTPDF to print the current page to a PDF file.
- New: !IGNORE_ELEMENTNOTFOUND. Set this variable to YES to ignore Element Not Found errors. Playback will stop on timeout, or other errors.
- New: !IGNORE_TIMEOUT Set this variable to YES to ignore timeout errors. Playback will stop on element not found, or other errors.
- New: PROXY Setting available at application level
- Modified: Relative Positioning in iMacros 2021 works the same as with iMacros for Chrome and Firefox.
- Improved: File Access is now bundled with the same installer and is activated for Personal, Professional, and Enterprise Edition customers automatically.
- Demo Macros and example scripts are currently available in the iMacros installer they can also be downloaded as a zip from here and are listed individually in the wiki.
Please see the Version History for comparison with previous releases.
Important Notes
- There are no significant changes to the iMacros Scripting Interface with this release. The command line to open the iMacros 2021.0 browser is iimOpen(“-ng”).
- The user configuration is a json file located in %HOMEPATH%\.imacros.
- Demo macros and example scripts are shipped with the iMacros installer starting with the HotFix v14.2.2 release
- iMacros 2021 can be installed alongside iMacros “classic” (v12.6 and older). It is not necessary to uninstall your existing version of iMacros before installing iMacros 2021. This way you can continue using iMacros classic to automate any legacy websites, e.g. sites that use IE specific features like web page dialogs, or sites that use embedded Java, Silverlight, or Flash applications.
- Please note that after uninstalling v12.x (or iMacros 2021) you need to re-register the scripting interface DLLs.
- This release does not include an option for deactivating or activating a license post-installation. Please see this FAQ for the steps to do this manually.
Commands and features no longer supported in iMacros 2021
- FILTER
- Other removed commands, mainly used to handle dialogs, which are either not present in a Chromium browser or are shown as a normal web page:
- ONERRORDIALOG
- ONINSECURECONNECTION
- ONSECURITYDIALOG
- ONWEBPAGEDIALOG
- ONSCRIPTERROR
- Variables no longer supported:
- !DATASOURCE_COLUMNS
- !ENDOFPAGE
- All !X_... variables
- -var_varname syntax for passing variables to a macro from the command line or via iimSet. This was deprecated in 12.6 and is removed in iMacros 2021. Use -variables to pass variables from the command line. For iimSet, you only need to specify the variable name as it is defined in the macro, for example: iimSet(“count”, i) instead of iimSet(“-var_count”, i).
For the complete list of available commands please refer to the Command Reference.
Features and commands not yet implemented
- Direct Screen recording is not yet supported, but playback of DS commands will work.
- Command-line parameters that are not yet supported:
- -logfile, -log
- -silent, -hidden, -s
- -tray, -tr
- -kioskmode, -kiosk, -k
- -profiler
- -simpleui
- PROXY at macro level is not supported, however it can be set for the current browser instance in the browser settings
- USERAGENT is not yet supported
- Limited support for CONTENT=EVENT… playback (only SAVEITEM and FAIL_IF_FOUND), not yet implemented:
- SAVE_ELEMENT_SCREENSHOT
- SAVETARGETAS
- SAVEAS TYPE=CPL|MHT is not supported
- PRINT and ONPRINT aren't available yet
- Extraction wizard is not available. Use manual creation instead.
- The ability to encrypt whole macros, or to playback encrypted macro files is not yet supported.
- Pop-ups are always blocked by default, rather than opening the window in a new tab. There is not yet an option to enable/disable pop-ups blocking.
Known Issues
As this is a complete rewrite of the application on a new framework these are some issues that we’re still working on and their corresponding workarounds if you may encounter any of these.
- Error: "-1910: InvalidTargetWindow" or No browser exists for current tab, cannot evaluate JavaScript
Workaround: This happens when there is a URL redirect from https to http and the issue can be resolved by using the appropriate protocol directly. If that doesn’t resolve the issue then users can add the following lines before URL GOTO:TAB OPEN
TAB T=2
TAB CLOSEALLOTHERS
- For some websites, recording using the normal TAG command in Automatic mode may sometimes record commands partially.
Workaround: Use CSS or XPATH selectors Mode to record such websites. - IMAGECLICK on elements present out of the screen (view port) may sometimes not work as expected.
- Some elements might not be captured by the image recognition commands (they are invisible to IMAGESEARCH|CLICK).
The solution for this in previous versions was to use SET !X_V7_SCREENSHOT_METHOD GDI. However, this variable is not supported in 2021 and no other workaround currently exists. We will continue to investigate a solution. - The recording of elements within frames is sometimes inconsistent and the recorded macro may not play back correctly.
- If you use the PROMPT command at the very beginning of a macro and launch the browser via the command-line or scripting interface, the macro will hang and cannot be stopped with the Stop button.
Workaround: Add a small delay using the WAIT command prior to the PROMPT command. - Referencing an uninitialized user-defined macro variable results in error -1200
Normally, uninitialized macro variables should default to an empty string and it should be valid to reference them without generating a macro error. - Error -1000 is returned to the scripting interface instead of -1230 when a file does not exist, e.g. when a specified !DATASOURCE file or a FILE referenced in an IMAGESEARCH|CLICK command does not exist.
- The base part of the URL containing the domain is not extracted when extracting the HREF of a hyperlink that is relative to the current domain.
- A browser crash may occur when two or more instances are open concurrently.
- Fixed: (HotFix 14.2.2) Variable references are not resolved in STOPWATCH LABEL/ID, for example:
SET firstID PageLoad
STOPWATCH ID={{firstID}}
URL GOTO=imacros.net
STOPWATCH ID={{firstID}}
- results in the literal value {{firstID}} being written to the output as the stopwatch ID rather than PageLoad as expected.
- Fixed: (HotFix 14.2.2) Error -1000: Unspecified, "Blocked a frame with origin ... from accessing a cross-origin frame." is occurring during playback on some sites. There is no current workaround for the iMacros 2021 browser; use iMacros for Chrome or iMacros 12.6 for these sites.
- Fixed: (HotFix 14.2.2) The ATTR parameter is sometimes not recorded for a TAG command, resulting in '-1100: LoadFailed' Syntax error: Invalid command or argument provided.
Workaround: Manually add ATTR=* to the TAG command (after the TYPE parameter), or use an alternate recording mode such as CSS selectors, XPATH, or Expert mode. - Fixed: (HotFix 14.2.2) SAVEAS TYPE=HTM saves an empty file with no content
Please report any new issues by opening a support case or posting in the iMacros Community.