eValid™ -- Automated Web Quality Solution Browser-Based, Client-Side, Functional Testing & Validation, Load & Performance Tuning, Page Timing, Website Analysis, and Rich Internet Application Monitoring.

Introduction
This page describes how to use eValid in a non-standard way to collect detailed user performance statistics.

Background
In normal operation eValid records state changes in a way that permits those script entries to drive eValid to replicate the state changes. At playback time, eValid collects statistics in the Event Log about how that playback behaved.

In some situations the requirement is the opposite: to collect statistics about the playback activity without having a recording. This note describes how to do this outside the normal eValid operating modes.

Solution Outline
The solution is to use the eValid playback engine with a playback script that does nothing. If you are an experienced eValid user you'll recognize the message eValid gives you in the message bar at the bottom of the browser: "Playback in Progress; do not interact with the browser." This message is there because the eValid browser is "live" during playback, and extra inputs from the user would interfere with the normal browser behavior.

Here is the playback script that is used to allow eValid to collect playback time statistics on what the user does by disregarding the above message.

# Recording by eValid(TM) # Copyright © 2010 by Software Research, Inc. # Recording made on: Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (IE 6.0.2900.2180), HostName "sudan" # ProjectID "Project" GroupID "Group" TestID "test" LogID "AUTO" ScreenSize 1280 1024 FontSize 0 DeleteCache DeleteCookies # This command was edited into the script, to cause a delay # so activity could be recorded... Delay 30000000 # Another way to do this might be to wait until 23:00 hours... WaitHH 23

In playback this script will set the screen size and font size parameters, delete everything in the cache and delete all of the cookies and then process a Delay command. The Delay 30000000 (30,000 seconds) command will cause the eValid playback engine to start ticking off 30,000 seconds.

While it is doing this the eValid browser remains fully active, and any events you feed into it cause updates to the current eValid EventLog. If you have the eValid Detailed Timings option turned on, then detailed timing values will also be revealed in the EventLog.

Additional Notes

• In practice you could launch eValid from a batch script with the above playback file and then even if you press Pause you still will record browser-face information into the Event Log.
• Actually, for ANY playback script for which you press Pause, the same data is added to the EventLog.
• For any playback script, if you interact with the browser those facts affect the Event Log. While eValid could lock out user interaction during playback, by design this was not done because of the risk that the browser would by locked out of user interaction and would have to be killed to regain control.
• The entries in the EventLog are made AFTER the completion of the action indicated. You can see this by loading a big page and noting that the EventLog is updated only after the page is fully rendered.
• You may want to be aware that pages retrieved from the cache will show very short times compared with the original download over the web. It may be good practice to delete the cache before making experiments.
• Because events like this are NOT done with the record/play engine you don't see the total page size (which eValid calculates for you when it reports the end of the page download process), so you may have to add up all of the sizes of the page's components.