Compuware Corporation (CPWR), the technology performance company, today announced Compuware APM AJAX Edition 4, the industry’s most advanced cross-browser diagnostics tool. This new version enables developers to test and diagnose performance issues across all recent and legacy browser versions in Internet Explorer and Firefox. To date, nearly 100,000 development and testing experts have downloaded AJAX Edition and rely on it to solve the most challenging client-side performance problems. This new tool is free and can be downloaded here.

View the “Getting Started with AJAX Edition” video here.

With more application logic sitting in the web browser than ever before, it has never been more important to measure and optimize the performance of web 2.0 pages and applications. Additionally, in a world where the competition is only a click away, highly interactive web experiences with dynamic web 2.0 pages and applications have become crucial to keeping customers loyal and attracting new ones. This often means introducing AJAX actions that do not trigger a complete page reload in order to deliver a world-class end-user experience.

AJAX Edition 4 was built to deliver root-cause analysis of performance issues that this increased complexity often creates. It empowers developers to pinpoint problems and immediately make front-end web performance improvements on their website and Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) web applications.

“AJAX Edition 4 gives us tremendous insight into client-side performance with our web applications running on Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.6. With AJAX Edition 4, we are able to understand exactly what is happening in the browser and can monitor browser-version specific performance with our dynamic pages within our web-applications,” said Tracia Chen, senior software engineer at Kenexa.

New features and capabilities in Compuware APM AJAX Edition 4 include:
• Unparalleled Support for Firefox and Cross-Browser Diagnostics: AJAX Edition 4 supports the two latest versions of Firefox (17&18). This enables users to profile, debug and trace across all relevant versions of Firefox and Internet Explorer and to test browser performance where degradation is most likely to occur when running complex applications.
• Added Support for Legacy Browser Versions: Until now, there has been limited means to get insight into application performance on older browser versions. AJAX Edition 4 supports legacy Internet Explorer and Firefox versions (IE 6+ and FF3.6+) to help developers and testers get to the root of browser version specific problems.
• Tight integration with SpeedoftheWeb.com: AJAX Edition 4 enables immediate performance optimization based on test sessions that can be created from the desktop. They can be run for free using SpeedoftheWeb.com, which tests any site’s performance from locations around the world, and provides a comparison of performance across multiple locations. Developers can then import test sessions into an insistence of AJAX Edition 4 for diagnostics and to further optimize performance.

“Poor performance directly impacts loyalty, brand and sales, and the advanced action-based analytics that AJAX Edition 4 provides are great benefits for the advanced developer community,” said Steve Tack, Vice President of Product Management for Compuware’s APM business unit. “The increased complexity that comes with today’s websites necessitates a tool for developers and testers to analyze forensics on all activities within dynamic page components while they load. They also need a total view of the spectrum of moving parts triggered by user actions across all browsers. AJAX Edition 4 addresses this by providing the most advanced browser diagnostic tool in the market.”

AJAX Edition 4 captures information within the browser to analyze problems like long running JavaScript code, excessive DOM calls, slow AJAX invocations or problems with rendering. The solution helps developers and testers understand and resolve performance problems, even if they are not part of their own code but are related to complex frameworks that are otherwise a black box to developers. Ultimately, it helps them master the complexity of frameworks.

To download AJAX Edition 4, click here.