The Big Zenno Wishlist - Please add your thoughts and wishes too

[madsem]

Ok, I was thinking we should create a thread of things we wish Zenno would include, so that it's easier for the devs to keep an overview and that important things don't get lost.
Please add your requests in this thread too, in a nice and easy to read format, maybe a numbered list.

Here are my requests:

1. In the project maker, let us mark multiple items with shift+mouseclick so we can move/copy/paste multiple items and whole structures of branches & web actions
   
2. When items are copied/pasted, only copy the branches/web actions itself without the successful/unsucessful exits, so that we don't have to delete all this stuff after pasting it
   
3. Make it so in project maker when you move item(s) via drag and drop and hit the edge of the scrollable screen, that the canvas scrolls in this direction then, this will make it much easier to move branches from one side to the other, or from the top to bottm etc etc
   
4. When deleting an arrow, don't let the canvas jump back to the upper left corner where the first step is, that is really annoying
   
5. Structure the arrows better, make them more distinct so it's much easier to follow a big template with shit tons of arrows, so we immediately see what goes where etc etc
   
6. Fix the annoying bug that causes web action to leave the saved position and be stuck under the first step of the template
   
7. Make it possible in templates to enter multiple tag types, and also multiple search criteria in one branch, like this: input:submit;input:button;button;input:image and search criteria like: name;id;value and attribute value like: continue;create account;submit etc etc. What this should be doing is: click input:submit else click input:button else click button else click input:image where name="continue" OR name="create account" OR id=continue OR id="create account" etc etc... So basically it would save us tons of branches that way. So it works kinda like in work with mail actions where you can set the timeouts for downloading email messages in secs like: 30;60;120;240 and so on.
   
8. Improve the regexbuilder and improve the interaction between regex builder and zenno poster and debug mode so that regex built in the builder also works in debug and poster
   
9. add more options to the regex builder like: do not match, match OR, match AND and improve matching if you try to match multiple things that are on different lines in a document
   
10. add option to work with email actions: parse as html AND text
    
11. Improve email download if multiple emails are found with identification regex, parse ALL found emails with regular expression for verification link
    
12. Make the project maker a bit faster when scrolling
    
13. Add option to files and directory macros for: Take line from file and save it at the end of file. That would make it much easier to do things like get link for backlinking from file, or get anchor text from file so that it is spread evenly (now it's possible but only with multiple branches etc etc (bit of a pain). So this would make it much easier to let Zenno evenly work it's way through a file and we would only need one branch for it.

 

[msfaria]

Excellent list! I agree with all of them, especially 4, which is REALLY, REALLY annoying. A couple more:
14. Let us paste a web action wherever we want on the template - having to search for the newly pasted web action on a big template is also REALLY annoying.
15. USE FIREFOX, FOR CHRIST'S SAKE!!! IE sucks so much that all pages get loaded but ZP has a delay before recognizing it and moving for the next action. Besides all other bugs. I really imagine using ZP + Greasemonkey on Firefox. Even more powerful, baby!
16. Make it work with Flash, Ajax and such smoothly (like Direct Screen on iMacros).
17. Fix the annoying ZP errors like "no page tab in the instance", "the server couldn't be loaded" (or something like this), etc.

 

[madsem]

18. Make it possible when building templates to specify a certain form where zenno looks for a button/input field/select and so on, enter it like: input:submit:form:thisform, maybe also in combination with the option to seperate multiples via ; so Zenno would look for input:submit in the form:thisform, OR input:button in the form:thisform i.e: input:submit:form:thisform;input:button:form:thisform
19. Add a BACK button to the project maker, so that you can rewind and replay steps over and over again, makes it waaay easier to develop and debug templates.
20. Make it possible to edit branches while debugging to test different settings right in debug mode.

 

[madsem]

21. Implement DOM object in Zenno and make it accessible to javascript, tested some things with document object and it doesn't work (but it really should, important)

 

[madsem]

22. Fix spintax, atm the spin throws macro errors if the spintax has a pipe character followed by a dash or a curly brace preceded by a dash, for example -} ... If you spin huge articles and also a lot of them, it's really annoying to have to do a search and replace before i can add my spintax... this should be fixed by Zenno so that it doesn't recognize text inside spintax macro tag as possible macro...

 

[nau310d]

Amazing suggestions, I agree with all of them!

Also, make it possible to fix broken template much easier. For example if it breaks when you run it in Zenno, you can instantly search for the broken element and fix it WHILE running the template in projectmaker. Right now you first have to find out where the template is broken, then go to the recorder and find the new value for the broken element, copy it to branch builder and replace the broken element. Takes so much time and effort to fix broken templates...

 

[msfaria]

Another one: RELEASE THE NEW VERSION SOON!!! Common' guys, time to get a lot of things fixed!

 

[madsem]

23. Add SHUFFLE macro for txt files... imagine you take your list of backlinks, run them through one of your templates to post them to xy amount of sites, you do that a few times so all your backlinks have 4-5 backlinks to them, if you use the same lists all the time each backlink gets posted to the same site over and over again, if we have a shuffle macro we can wrap that around the macro where it gets a line from a txt file, and every time zenno gets a line from a txt file the list is shuffled first... This will also be very useful for many other things

24. let us create custom macros, like for example regex snippets that you use over and over in templates, with a custom macro all you would need to do is select it from your custom macros and paste it, and not re-create it in regexbuilder first

25. add ability to zenno that we can start templates from inside other templates, we could build much more sophisticated bots that way and re-use components. Much like the OOP princip in coding, we could have one template that checks what kind of captcha a site is using, and re-use it in all of our templates without having to "hardcode it" in every one of our templates. A: this would make templates much smaller and easier to follow, B: it just makes sense and would decrease the time it takes to build templates.

 

[backlinks666]

I agree with all of them!

 

[mark leenheer]

User Input

I'd like to be able to have a popup window where I can enter a value for later use in the template.

And it would be nice to be able to start wherever I want or move around in debugger.

 

[BlackSun]

21. Implement DOM object in Zenno and make it accessible to javascript, tested some things with document object and it doesn't work (but it really should, important)

This already is implemented isn't it?

 

[BlackSun]

22. Fix spintax, atm the spin throws macro errors if the spintax has a pipe character followed by a dash or a curly brace preceded by a dash, for example -} ... If you spin huge articles and also a lot of them, it's really annoying to have to do a search and replace before i can add my spintax... this should be fixed by Zenno so that it doesn't recognize text inside spintax macro tag as possible macro...

Just add a regex macro to your template to automatically check and correct any text that is causing spintax errors.

 

[BlackSun]

User Input

I'd like to be able to have a popup window where I can enter a value for later use in the template.

And it would be nice to be able to start wherever I want or move around in debugger.

Both of these are implemented already aren't they?

 

[jp1]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned that when a template becomes relatively large, as in 50kb in size, both in my desktop Vista and my laptop Win7, projectmaker has the identical reaction of crashing every single time you copy and insert two steps. When I try a third, it always crashes. Making a template with project maker has been a harrowing experience as a result...

 

[jp1]

[*]When deleting an arrow, don't let the canvas jump back to the upper left corner where the first step is, that is really annoying

I am in awe of this bug. It made me drag one huge template across the template from the far right to the left, and now the template has a horrifying center full of red lines. Not only that, I am now sitting in front of a template that whenever I try to add a new web action, I do so, where it belongs, at the bottom... next to the last step... I add a blank step branch so it when I insert the copy of document 1 of the step I want to correct, it'll stay in that web action... and after about 20 seconds of going grey it finally emerges... at the top left hand corner...

 

[mark leenheer]

I'd like an easy way to click at a coordinate on the page.

This would really help with tricky stuff like the issue I have with a jquery slider
in this thread http://zennolab.com/discussion/showthread.php?4572-Zenno-Guru-s-How-can-I-click-this-Jquerry-slider-has-me-stumped&p=25721#post25721

If ZP had a feature like this I'd be running my template right now.

 

[madsem]

26. make Zenno work with txt files more as with a database for ease of use. Check if line already exists in file, check if a line already exists in another file, take out a specific line from a txt file, stop deleting empty txt files, only insert line if it is unique and not already in the txt file (stuff like this comes in handy mostly when scraping and your scraper is supposed to automatically grab new urls to visit, that the scraper didn't visit before... so you could keep one file with already visited urls and another with new urls that are due to be visited)

 

[msfaria]

27: The same wish I have for the last four months: RELEASE THE NEW VERSION SOON!!!

 

[reislet]

28: Search And Highlight function in the project maker for branches. If you are working with a huge templates which are interlinked like a spiderweb it will be cool to have a function where I type in the branch ID and it highlights that element (with Green or something that is not currently used). It will be so easy to find what is linking to what.

 

[reislet]

29: Break point. Just like most programming languages you can execute them to a particular point. This would be helpful if you are testing big templates. And of course you can execute loops really fast.

 

[Boxcutter]

19. Add a BACK button to the project maker, so that you can rewind and replay steps over and over again, makes it waaay easier to develop and debug templates.
20. Make it possible to edit branches while debugging to test different settings right in debug mode.

Yes you are right it would make developing and debugging way easier. Hard to believe you posted this 6 months ago and nothing like this has been added yet. A pretty much identical request for this feature has also been discussed here: http://zennolab.com/discussion/showthread.php?4430-BIG-TIMESAVER!!!-Speed-Up-The-Debug-Process

Even though this is obviously a much needed feature I'm sure countless members have read this request and said 'yeah that would be brilliant' and never left a comment. How else are the developers supposed to know their clients actually want it added unless we all tell them? So I encourage everyone that thinks this needs to be added to go over there and leave a comment in support of it now. Cheers