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We thought one thing Sikuli can not automate is itself, since it hides itself every time when it executes a script. We are proven wrong by Koichi Tamura, who has demonstrated it is possible to run a command-line Sikuli script to click on the buttons of another Sikuli IDE in the foreground in order to run other Sikuli scripts. More interestingly, the process of loading Sikuli scripts into the IDE is automated by yet another automation tool. This tool is a visual programming tool Koichi is currently developing himself. Below is the example demonstrated by Koichi. Two Sikuli scripts are represented as two nodes connected by an arrow. One script opens a “hello world” popup, while the other opens a new tab in a web browser and loads his blog in the tab.

Watch the video in YouTube to see this example in action:

One reason Sikuli is quickly growing in popularity is that people write tweets about it. Some people even use Sikuli to send tweets. This only takes three lines of code: click on the text area, type some message, and click on the update button:

Below are some examples of Sikuli tweets (thanks to Hardmood and Jarod).

Sikuli can also be used to check Twitter updates. This script is created by Mike Damage for checking if his friend Steve has recently sent a new tweet. It sits in a loop to wait for the portrait photo of Steve to appears, and when it does, displays a notification message that Steven has a new tweet!

Below is the Sikuli script for checking tweet updates:

Many people have found Sikuli useful for automating daily maintenance tasks such as clearing the content of the recycle bin and making backups, especially for those people who only know how to perform these tasks by clicking through the UI. Using Sikuli, it is quite easy and intuitive to create a script to automate tedious tasks like these.

The script we would like to showcase today is created by Jon Atkinson. The purpose of this script is to run system clean. The script launches a scanner application, starts scanning, waits for the scanning to complete, and presses the remove button to confirm the removal of unwanted files. The details of the script is shown below:

Sikuli has shown a lot of potential in automating certain tasks in social network sites. This time, the example is about Plurk, a micro-blogging service similar to Twitter. Plurk members accumulate karma points simply by being active (i.e., posting messages). One way to lose karma points is to switch to the vacation mode (-1 karma point). This Sikuli script submitted by Even Wu can be considered as a suicide tool for one’s karma. It repeatedly switches the vacation mode on and off (red and green buttons), which quickly brought karma points down to -100. Since it is rare to see someone on Plurk with negative karma, having -100 karma actually has an unintended effect of making someone even more popular!!

Watch the YouTube video to see how this script operates in action:

Below is the source code. Enjoy!

One interesting use of Sikuli is to write a bot to automatically post Facebook status messages. This example is contributed by Joey Caine. The script opens the Safari web browser, clicks on the Facebook bookmark, waits for the status message input box, types the string I can update my status Siuli, and finally clicks the Share button to post this message to Facebook.

Check out the YouTube video he created:

Below is the source:

While the greatest power of Sikuli is its ability to control UI elements visually using screenshots, we are surprised there are also people who are helped by Sikuli’s basic automation capability. We received an email from Chris, an IT manager, who used Sikuli to help a woman in his company to automate a tedious printing task. Even though many non-visual automation tools already exist on the market, for some reason Chris never was able to find a suitable automation solution using any of these existing tools until he stumbled upon Sikuli. He wrote:

Using Sikuli and a hot key program, every time she has to print she can now hit a simply keyboard shortcut and watch as her preferences quickly get set and the invoice printed in fast draft mode there-by saving a lot of ink. Just today it saved her half an hour. That will undoubtedly add up over time.

Sikuli works on Android! This script was contributed by Erin Yueh from the 0xlab. She uses Sikuli to test various functions of an Android G1 phone. Check out the video she made on YouTube.

Here is the source code.

Why do we start a blog about Sikuli? Since the wide exposure of Sikuli thanks to MIT news and Slashdot, we have received a lot of emails from people telling us how they are able to use Sikuli for various purposes. Some sent us their scripts and wanted to share with others. Therefore, we have decided to start a blog to showcase some of these scripts.

Each day, we will showcase one script that demonstrates a creative, interesting, or practical use of Sikuli. If you have a script you want to share, please send the exported .skl file and a short description to share@sikuli.org.

We will start with a script created by Joseph Chang to play Bejeweled automatically on Facebook. He wrote the script almost immediately after the initial press coverage on Sikuli went public. Here is a Youtube video he made:

Here’s the source of the script: