Keynote's KITE 3.0 soars higher than ever

Published 17th September 2009

KITE (KEYNOTE INTERNET TESTING ENVIRONMENT) 3.0 Soars Higher Than Ever

New version of powerful FREE tool for real time QA testing, diagnosing and troubleshooting of Web performance issues from the desktop and the internet cloud just got better

Keynote Systems, the global leader in on-demand mobile and Internet test & measurement solutions for continuously improving the online experience, today announced Version 3.0 of KITE (Keynote Internet Testing Environment). KITE 3.0 is Keynote’s free desktop tool for real time testing, diagnosing and troubleshooting of Web performance issues from the end user perspective. KITE 3.0 makes it easy for all Web teams, especially QA testers, Web developers and IT operations teams, to optimise Web site performance from the end user perspective. And KITE 3.0 arrives just in time for online retailers preparing their sites for the upcoming 2009 holiday shopping season. For more information about KITE 3.0, please visit: http://kite.keynote.com/whats_new.php

“KITE 3.0 sets a new standard for features and functionality included in a Web performance testing tool – let alone a free one. The tool now offers more powerful diagnostics, faster triage and better usability,” said Vik Chaudhary, vice president of product management and corporate development at Keynote. “And all of this great new powerful diagnostic capability, better triage and increased usability included within KITE 3.0 is enhanced and supported by the unsurpassed power of Keynote’s world leading global test & measurement network.”

KITE 3.0’s new features

KITE 3.0 for powerful web performance diagnostics:
Screen Sensing Technology to capture interaction with Flash and Silverlight: With KITE 3.0, Keynote brings Web operations, Web developers and QA professionals visibility ‘inside the black box’ of Flash and Silverlight objects. KITE 3.0 records detailed interactions, including mouse-clicks, hover-overs, text entry and system-key navigation such as tab, enter or function keys. When a script plays, the Flash or Silverlight application is actually exercised, not just downloaded. Other solutions just run a stopwatch, while the initial Flash or Silverlight file is downloaded, but KITE 3.0 allows a QA tester to perform detailed interactions and capture all the network activity generated as the Flash or Silverlight application responds to scripted user input.

Track and monitor third-party content with virtual pages:
Web pages often contain data from a variety of sources, some of which need a more watchful eye than others. Often times a QA tester or developer must focus on advertising third-party content or CDN-served page elements. A user may want to view response times for content separately from third-party content. KITE 3.0 adds new features that allow for the focus to be on page elements that matter, and to eliminate the ones that do not using filters and virtual pages.

Support for Internet Explorer 8 on the desktop:
KITE 3.0 supports use of KITE with IE8 for local recording and playback. Users with IE8 will now be able to use KITE for triage and local on-demand testing.

Create deep diagnostic probes with automated custom components:
KITE 3.0 makes it easy for QA testers and Web developers to create deep diagnostic probes to capture data needed for monitoring and troubleshooting. KITE 3.0 allows a user to add calculated or custom extracted data to their monitoring results easily with the new 'add automated custom components' feature.

KITE 3.0 For faster Web performance triage:
The Page Snapshot Pane: visual help for issue triage and script development:
Immediately after playing a script in KITE 3.0, the Page Snapshot Pane shows what was displayed in the browser as the script ran. Each step is clearly labeled at the top of the Page Snapshot Pane, avoiding confusion about what happened during each step of the script. Navigation arrows in the Page Snapshot Pane allow a user to step through the script one action at a time or to simply click on an action name in the Script Viewer and display that action’s snapshot.

Group by multiple (nested) groups in performance details:
Allows for viewing of performance details grouped by multiple columns at the same time. This feature is similar to arranging e-mail by conversation in Outlook. Now at a glance a QA tester or Web developer can see what domains contribute content to each page.

Script Report:
Share the details of your script quickly: When developing scripts, or triaging issues, Web operations and QA testers need to quickly share or document the details of the script. With KITE 3.0’s Script Report feature a user is just one click away from a well-formatted report in KITE or on MyKeynote.

KITE 3.0 with better usability:
Enhanced Transaction Perspective and Application Perspective recording windows: KITE 3.0’s recording window has a clean new look and a valuable new feature: an address bar where a user can enter a new URL in the middle of the transaction. This often requested direct navigation feature provides greater control and flexibility in the recording window.

About KITE
Download KITE 3.0 for free at http://kite.keynote.com/download-center.php