Fake is an app I’ve been fantasizing about either writing or using for going on 5 years. I always thought the basic idea was pretty simple, and that someone would beat me to it. But I guess not. Yay for me.
Feels great to finally see it in front of me (mostly) working.
The app is obviously inspired by Apple’s Automator.app, and also by Selenium. Most of the app is based on my open-source, WebKit-based browser project Fluidium.
But, I built Fluidium with a Cocoa plug-in API that can enhance the UI of the basic browser. All of Fake’s automation features, including the Workflow side pane and the Action Library, are part of a Cocoa Fluidium plug-in which is closed source.
Fake is thoroughly Mac OS X-native. All of Fake’s automation features are based on AppleScript – OS X’s native automation tool/environment. Anything you can do graphically using Fake Actions and Workflows can be done directly in AppleScript. Like:
tell application "Fake"
tell selected tab of browser window 1
load URL "google.com"
click link with text "News"
go back
submit form with name "f" with values {q:"fluid"}
assert title equals "fluid - Google Search"
end tell
end tell
Or as a shortcut, you can remove the specifier of the selected tab, and it will be targeted by default:
tell application "Fake"
load URL "google.com"
click link with text "News"
end tell
Note that the current version of Fake available (Version 0.2) is a time-limited demo that will expire on August 1st. I may do a few more time-limited demos like this until the app is ready for sale.
Anyhow, lots more details about Fake to come. I’m working on a few more convenience features and also setting up a user license/store/payment system now. I hope to have that worked out in about a month. Stay tuned. :)
