I thought I’d take a breather from working on Form Tools for a few days. It’s been a while, I figured I deserved it.
So instead, I spent the weekend writing a little Google Chrome extension. What it does is let you save your forms to let you pre-fill them at any later date. It’s VERY handy for people testing forms – it can really be a lifesaver.
I’m attending Google I/O in San Francisco next month and thought that swatting up on Chrome was probably a good idea. This was really just a good excuse to tinker. :)
Anyway, click here to download the script. I’ve also documented it a little here. It’s a very simple script – not much to document.
Please post any questions, problems, feature suggestions here.
Enjoy!
Ben, Total Recall seems like JUST what I’ve been looking for to use with Chrome. However, I installed it and tried using it to fill in a form to enter Kim Komando’s weekly giveaway. Simple stuff like name, address, phone# etc. and a checkbox.
I RELOADED Kim’s site, navigated to the entry form and Total Recall didn’t work. I’ve tried X2 to “record” and use the program with no luck.
Any ideas? Can YOU get it to work on her site? Am I not doing something correctly? THANKS!
Ben,
I have Total Recall working. Duh! Just had to follow the directions you gave. I failed to HIGHLIGHT the form I was working with. I understand how TR works now. THANKS! Very handy and DOES work. Just what I wanted.
Rob M.
A few feature requests:
– add the ability to save the forms as bookmarklets
– add a record button that automatically records which fields are changed and which buttons are pressed(!) and works across many pages. Then this “Step 1”, “Step 2”, etc. stuff that I see on your own screenshots will be totally unnecessary.
– I have e drop-down field with a dates/hours which are different every time. Total recall sets it to some undefined value – if the values are different, leave the field unchanged.
– Add the option to save all forms on a page.
And a tip – add the words ‘save’ and ‘fill’ in the description as these will be some of the words that people use to find your extension.
… And when there is a single form in the page – total recall should not be asking to select which form to save.
– The Save form button should be disabled if no form is selected – see the first comment.
Hi,
I’m running TC on Chromium 5.0.375.38 (46659) Ubuntu and the extension keeps crashing and forgetting entrys that have worked before. Would be nice if you could make it stable, it seems like a cool tool.
TR lost all saved forms and can not save new forms anymore
Hi Ben,
I like the idea behind this extension, but unfortunately, it doesn’t work for me either. This is what I did:
– Install the extension
– Open a new browser
– Visit this page
– Enter some data in the comment form here (Form 3)
– Click on TR and select ‘Form 3’ after which this parts is highlighted in green.
– I then enter a name (contact) and click ‘Save Form >>’ after which the green selection disappears.
– Now when I click on TR (even after a reload), there’s still nothing being shown. It seems it didn’t save anything.
I’m using Chrome 5.0.375.99 (Dutch localization) on a Windows XP Pro machine.
Hope this info will help you figuring out what’s going wrong. Drop me a line if you need any more help/testing done.
Best regards,
Bas
Hi Bas,
Thanks for the feedback! One question: are the URLs for the page where you saved the content and the page where you tried to load it completely identical? If they’re different – even slightly – (e.g. one has index.html and one doesn’t, or one has a query string or hashmark) then the script won’t be able to reload the form.
Originally, I thought that this would be a good idea, but in retrospect it just kind of makes it confusing & looks like it’s not saving.
I think I’ll revisit this and make it a little smarter in how it identifies one page from the next.
All the best –
Ben
Hi Ben,
Thanks for your reply. And yes, it is the same page with the same URL (this very page – http://www.benjaminkeen.com/?p=295 ). Where is the saved form data actually stored? I really wonder whether the extension is saving anything at all, so I’d like to check that out.
Regards,
Bas
Hello,
Thank you for the great extension !
As some ppl say, it’s sadly not working with latest Chrome version, because of a change in the database api.
I’ve fixed it, it’s just a matter of changing the opendatabase call like this in the background.html file :
bgNs.db = openDatabase(bgNs.dbName, bgNs.dbVersion, ‘Forms database’, 1024*1024*3);
I’ve also change the dbversion value, but I’m not sure it’s required…
dbVersion: ‘2.0’
Hope it help,
John (From France)
Hi John,
Excellent, thanks for the info! I didn’t know the API had changed. I’ll check it out and release an update today or tomorrow. There’s a couple of small changes I’d like to make, so I’ll include those as well.
Thanks again, John!
– Ben
hey wanted to ask tht is it possible tht total recall nvr saves the url cause when i save the form it also copies the url with it and will activate only if the same url is entered again
cause the url which i access is dynamic and tend to change everytime i refresh the page
pls help
thanks in advance
Doesn’t seem that forms are being saved … using chrome v16 on OSX Lion … ideas?
Sorry Jay, but I just don’t have time to work on this little script at the moment. It’s very possible that a change in the browser has caused an incompatibility. Sorry about that!
– Ben
Fixed problem by changing in background.html:
bgNs.db = openDatabase(bgNs.dbName, bgNs.dbVersion, ‘Total Recall’, 2 * 1024 * 1024);
also changed url getting saved to remove query string params by adding:
.split(“?”)[0] in the right places ….
Nice work!! Thanks for posting the fix.
I am not a technical guy but want to use this form for several different purposes.
Can you guide me how should I make changes in the background.html to make it work.
Your help will be highly appreciated.
Regards,