In this article, we are going to continue with our series on XModules and we are going to complete our understanding of what UI.Vision's XModules add-on is and also complete the installation process on the macOS operating system.
[Note: Added 20th Feb 2021: The good folks at UI.Vision has just released the latest version of XModule and one of the improvements on the Mac is the introduction of a package installer. Check out this video for an updated approach to install XModules]
Lets end the virus mac os. If you have not read the first part of this series, you can do so by clicking here.
These commands have man pages on Mac OS X. Follow edited Apr 7 '16 at 13:07. Answered Jul 14 '12 at 7:21. Kevin Grant Kevin Grant. 5,005 1 1 gold badge 17 17 silver badges 22 22 bronze badges. That a link is dead now, do you have any idea where I can find the same document today? – flindeberg Feb 29 '16 at 14:06. The first release of the new OS — Mac OS X Server 1.0 — used a modified version of the Mac OS GUI, but all client versions starting with Mac OS X Developer Preview 3 used a new theme known as Aqua. The maximum version of Mac OS X, OS X, or macOS supported by each G3 and later Mac follows. For complete specs on a particular system, click the name of the Mac. For all Macs that are compatible with a specifc maximum supported version of Mac OS X - courtesy of EveryMac.com's Ultimate Mac Sort - click the OS of interest. On OS X 10.2, for example, it's fairly straightforward to open a serial line in /etc/ttys But newer versions of Mac OS X don't use that file the same way. I found that the instructions on this page, Serial console login on OS X, worked for me on Mac OS X 10.5.8. In the Terminal application, type. Mac OS X & macOS names. As you can see from the list above, with the exception of the first OS X beta, all versions of the Mac operating system from 2001 to 2012 were all named after big cats.
In the first part we gave a high level overview about what XModules is and how to install it on macOS. We also showed how we need to 'jump through some security hoops' when setting up on the macOS operating system to allow the File Access sub-module of XModules to work so that we can save our macros and other files on the local file system instead.
But XModules has 2 other sub-modules in addition to File Access and they are…
- Real User Simulation
- Desktop Automation
Together these 3 sub-modules of XModules gives you the ability to automate activities not just in the browser, but also on your local desktop computer, whether that be a Windows or macOS or Linux based computer.
FileAccess XModule
For the sake of completeness, let's do a re-cap on why XModules and understand a little bit more about the FileAccess sub-module.
Essentially, UI.Vision RPA's front-end graphical user interface (GUI) is actually a browser extension that runs inside of Chrome or Firefox browsers.
From a security standpoint, browser extensions are not permitted to access resources beyond the browser and because of that, there is a lot of limitation to what the UI.Vision RPA tool can automate. Basically, it can only automate steps and activities inside the browser.
If you want UI.Vision RPA to read a text document on your PC and take the contents and put it on your website, you are out of luck because whilst UI.Vision RPA can automate steps on your website, it cannot access the text document on your PC.
Similarly, if you have a macro developed on UI.Vision RPA (like the one we built in our first and second mini-tutorials) and you want to save that macro into your local hard disk, you can't do that because browser extensions can only access a very specific area in your browser called a browser storage. You can only save the macro there.
If you delete the browser, that macro is gone. Santas crashing christmas mac os.
Sure, UI.Vision RPA provided you tools to backup all the macros into a zip file that you can then save on your computer, but it would be much better if it can just save the macros into a designated folder on your PC.
These are the problems that the FileAccess XModules solve.
RealUser XModule
Whilst the ability to access the local file system is important, we also need to be able to automate actions outside of the browser. When I say actions, these are essentially the ability to simulate mouse clicks, drags and drops and keyboard entries exactly like a human does it.
Going a little bit technical here… The UI.Vision RPA browser automation capability is based on Selenium which relies on the specific webdrivers that are available for different web browsers. Whilst this is generally good enough to automate the testing of web applications, all the automation actions such as button clicks, data entry into text are all done via exposed APIs provided by the webdriver. https://catering-torrent.mystrikingly.com/blog/high-ware-mac-os. In essence the automation is done at the browser-level.
But a normal user operating on a website using a mouse and keyboard, it doesn't quite work the same way. We operate our mouse and keyboard directly on the operating system level and not on the browser level like webdriver.
In order to be able to automate as if a real user is interacting with the application, we need to go beyond webdriver and onto the operating system level and that is where the RealUser XModule comes in.
Essentially this module provides you with 4 capabilities that can simulate these activities at the operating system level.
- Mouse Clicks (including double clicks)
- Mouse Moves (including mouse up and mouse down events)
- Keyboard Typing (sending keystrokes and modifier keys like Ctrl, Alt, etc)
- Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
If you can think of it this way, the RealUser XModules component provides you with hands and eyes for your automation.
DesktopAutomation XModule
In this article, we are going to continue with our series on XModules and we are going to complete our understanding of what UI.Vision's XModules add-on is and also complete the installation process on the macOS operating system.
[Note: Added 20th Feb 2021: The good folks at UI.Vision has just released the latest version of XModule and one of the improvements on the Mac is the introduction of a package installer. Check out this video for an updated approach to install XModules]
Lets end the virus mac os. If you have not read the first part of this series, you can do so by clicking here.
These commands have man pages on Mac OS X. Follow edited Apr 7 '16 at 13:07. Answered Jul 14 '12 at 7:21. Kevin Grant Kevin Grant. 5,005 1 1 gold badge 17 17 silver badges 22 22 bronze badges. That a link is dead now, do you have any idea where I can find the same document today? – flindeberg Feb 29 '16 at 14:06. The first release of the new OS — Mac OS X Server 1.0 — used a modified version of the Mac OS GUI, but all client versions starting with Mac OS X Developer Preview 3 used a new theme known as Aqua. The maximum version of Mac OS X, OS X, or macOS supported by each G3 and later Mac follows. For complete specs on a particular system, click the name of the Mac. For all Macs that are compatible with a specifc maximum supported version of Mac OS X - courtesy of EveryMac.com's Ultimate Mac Sort - click the OS of interest. On OS X 10.2, for example, it's fairly straightforward to open a serial line in /etc/ttys But newer versions of Mac OS X don't use that file the same way. I found that the instructions on this page, Serial console login on OS X, worked for me on Mac OS X 10.5.8. In the Terminal application, type. Mac OS X & macOS names. As you can see from the list above, with the exception of the first OS X beta, all versions of the Mac operating system from 2001 to 2012 were all named after big cats.
In the first part we gave a high level overview about what XModules is and how to install it on macOS. We also showed how we need to 'jump through some security hoops' when setting up on the macOS operating system to allow the File Access sub-module of XModules to work so that we can save our macros and other files on the local file system instead.
But XModules has 2 other sub-modules in addition to File Access and they are…
- Real User Simulation
- Desktop Automation
Together these 3 sub-modules of XModules gives you the ability to automate activities not just in the browser, but also on your local desktop computer, whether that be a Windows or macOS or Linux based computer.
FileAccess XModule
For the sake of completeness, let's do a re-cap on why XModules and understand a little bit more about the FileAccess sub-module.
Essentially, UI.Vision RPA's front-end graphical user interface (GUI) is actually a browser extension that runs inside of Chrome or Firefox browsers.
From a security standpoint, browser extensions are not permitted to access resources beyond the browser and because of that, there is a lot of limitation to what the UI.Vision RPA tool can automate. Basically, it can only automate steps and activities inside the browser.
If you want UI.Vision RPA to read a text document on your PC and take the contents and put it on your website, you are out of luck because whilst UI.Vision RPA can automate steps on your website, it cannot access the text document on your PC.
Similarly, if you have a macro developed on UI.Vision RPA (like the one we built in our first and second mini-tutorials) and you want to save that macro into your local hard disk, you can't do that because browser extensions can only access a very specific area in your browser called a browser storage. You can only save the macro there.
If you delete the browser, that macro is gone. Santas crashing christmas mac os.
Sure, UI.Vision RPA provided you tools to backup all the macros into a zip file that you can then save on your computer, but it would be much better if it can just save the macros into a designated folder on your PC.
These are the problems that the FileAccess XModules solve.
RealUser XModule
Whilst the ability to access the local file system is important, we also need to be able to automate actions outside of the browser. When I say actions, these are essentially the ability to simulate mouse clicks, drags and drops and keyboard entries exactly like a human does it.
Going a little bit technical here… The UI.Vision RPA browser automation capability is based on Selenium which relies on the specific webdrivers that are available for different web browsers. Whilst this is generally good enough to automate the testing of web applications, all the automation actions such as button clicks, data entry into text are all done via exposed APIs provided by the webdriver. https://catering-torrent.mystrikingly.com/blog/high-ware-mac-os. In essence the automation is done at the browser-level.
But a normal user operating on a website using a mouse and keyboard, it doesn't quite work the same way. We operate our mouse and keyboard directly on the operating system level and not on the browser level like webdriver.
In order to be able to automate as if a real user is interacting with the application, we need to go beyond webdriver and onto the operating system level and that is where the RealUser XModule comes in.
Essentially this module provides you with 4 capabilities that can simulate these activities at the operating system level.
- Mouse Clicks (including double clicks)
- Mouse Moves (including mouse up and mouse down events)
- Keyboard Typing (sending keystrokes and modifier keys like Ctrl, Alt, etc)
- Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
If you can think of it this way, the RealUser XModules component provides you with hands and eyes for your automation.
DesktopAutomation XModule
DesktopAutomation essentially builds on the FileAccess and RealUser XModules to allow automation on the desktop in addition to browser.
What this means is that without DesktopAutomation, all your automation can automate are activities inside the browser.
So in my earlier scenario…. if you want to automate….
- Opening a text file on your local hard disk and then
- copy the text from that file so that you can then
- paste it on a google document in your browser
then DesktopAutomation will allow you to automate steps 1 and 2, while browser automation will allow you to automate step 3.
DesktopAutomation relies on FileAccess and RealUser XModules to achieve its tasks.
Let's Complete the Setup…
Now that we understand these different XModules and their respective tasks, let's continue from the last step we were at to complete the setup of XModules on our macOS computer.
For this part, I have created a video of it and if you prefer watching the video than going through a guide, then just click play on the video below… Otherwise, the blog continues after the video below.
The Non-Video Step-by-Step Guide…
First thing we want to do is to open UI.Vision RPA by clicking on the browser extension button.
On the UI.Vision RPA window that opened, open the UI.Vision Settings by clicking on the little gear icon on the top right as shown below. Attack of the moonman mac os.
When the Settings window open, go to the XModules tab, and inside you will see the 3 sub-modules we talked about earlier. The first is the FileAccess XModule which should show a status of 'Installed'.
The second and the third are the RealUser and DesktopAutomation XModules and they should have a status of 'Not Installed' as shown in the screenshot below.
Setup the RealUser XModule…
To install the RealUser XModule, click on the Test It button for the RealUser XModule.
Once again we will hit the macOS prompt telling us that a program needs to be run but its developer cannot be identified. In this case, the program is called ‘kantu-xy-host'. The prompt should look like below.
We just have to click the ‘Cancel' button here.
Next, we need to go into the macOS System Preferences (you can go there by clicking on the Apple Menu->System Preferences) and under the General tab, you'll see a prompt for you to allow the ‘kantu-xy-host' program to run, as shown below…
Click on the 'Allow Anyway' button and close the Security and Privacy window.
Now, go back to UI.Vision RPA window by clicking the small blue UI.Vision browser extension button.
Open the UI.Vision RPA Settings screen by clicking the little gear icon
You will now see another macOS prompt as shown below…
Bluetooth Module Mac Os
This time, click on 'Open' and you would have completed the setup for the RealUser XModule.
Now, at this stage, I thought it would be good to take a deeper look at the UI.Vision XModules architecture to give some background of what we are doing here… but if you just want to get through the installation, feel free to skip this part and just scroll down to the next section.
Now if we took a look at the files that we extracted when we download UI.Vision XModules, 3 key files standout and they are highlighted in the screenshot below.
As you can probably suspect, each one of these files correspond to each of the XModules.
We saw how when we tried to setup the FileAccess XModule that macOS security prompts us to give access to ‘kantu-file-access-host'.
Now when we are trying to access the RealUser XModule, we are prompted to allow the program ‘kantu-xy-host' to run,.
So when we get to the part of setting up the DesktopAutomation XModule, can you guess which program will macOS prompt us then? That's right, it would be ‘kantu-cv-host'.
Now the reason why we need to take all these extra steps on the macOS is because Apple has a tight security over the software it allows to run, on the macOS and they do this by ensuring that developers who write programs to run, on the macOS are verified by them.
And in this case, the XModules programs are not verified by Apple, hence macOS forces us to make this decision to allow the program to run,.
Setting up the DesktopAutomation XModule…
So, now that we understand what is happening here, we just need to repeat the steps for ‘kantu-cv-host'.
So…
Module Mac Os
- Open up UI.Vision RPA again and go to the Settings screen
- Under the XModule tab, look for the DesktopAutomation XModule and click ‘Test It'.
- You will see a macOS prompt telling you that ‘kantu-cv-host' is not by a verified developer. Click Cancel
- Go to macOS System Preferences->Security and Privacy and look at the General tab.
- You will see a prompt there for ‘kantu-cv-host'. Click ‘Allow Anyway'.
- Close the Security and Privacy window and go back to UI.Vision RPA.
- You will be prompted to allow ‘kantu-cv-host' to run,.
- Click on ‘Open'
And that's it. you would now have completed the setup of the 3 XModules sub-modules.
In my upcoming blogs and videos, we will take a look at how to use these XModules capabilities to go beyond automation on the browser.
As usual, I hope this has been helpful and please do leave a comment below on what you think.
Feature Image Credit: ben o'bro
Steven Wong
I'm a technologist that has been working in IT for more than 20 years. My area of focus is around automation technologies that help optimise the repeatable and mundane freeing up our human capacity for more challenging and interesting tasks.
