Question Regarding Browser Plugins

I am interested in capturing user interactions on web pages they are viewing while using my plugin. Lets say a user opens my plugin and selects the action recording option. The user then goes to a website and fills in a form. I would like the plugin to record details about the values that they entered into that form and the names of the objects that they interact with. Is it possible to do this ?

Hello John,

Well. First of all, I publish right now a new release of DecSoft App Builder, with some changes related with the WebExtension development. Between other changes, you can see a new "WebExtension2" sample app, that, once installed as a WebExtension in the modern browsers (I tested it at Firefox, Chrome and Edge), can do the following:

1. Once the user click on the WebExtension browser's toolbar icon, allows the user to check or uncheck a checkbox control, in order to "start to catch" or "stop to catch" the possible HTML forms inside the browser's tabs.
2. After the user check the referred checkbox, our WebExtension catch all the HTML forms in the browser's tabs, and, in fact, prevent the forms to be submitted: instead of this, you can see at the browser's developer console the data of the forms, as an example: you can do whatever you wanted with such forms data.

So, certainly, it's possible to do what you wanted, but, you need to take in consideration various things:

1. As you can see in the WebExtension2 sample app, we only catch HTML forms which are placed in the HTML as... HTML forms... so we can't catch any other kind of "forms" (or HTTP calls that the page can made, for example).
2. If you want any other kind of user interaction knowledge, you must act in a similar way than the WebExtension2 do. Instead of attach an event handler for the HTML forms, you can attach a "click" handler to the browser's tabs body, so you can know when a user click on a browser's tab, for example.
3. Out of the scope of DecSoft App Builder, be very carefull with your users: if you plain to recolect any kind of user's information... you must inform to the user about your plains. So the user can know at any moment what your WebExtension do and for what purposes.

Finally, take a look at the referred WebExtension2 sample; take also a look at the changes in the current release of DecSoft App Builder, and, if you have any question about, just post it here, John.

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Hello to all,

Here is a sample video testing the WebExtension2 sample app:

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