Foxecute de needanapp.de

Foxecute records what you do on a web page and does it again.

Clicks, text entries and key presses are recorded together with the pauses between
them. On playback you can keep the fixed pauses or switch to automatic – then
Foxecute waits until the page has finished loading and settled, adding only short
random pauses.

Everything stays editable. Every step can be changed, reordered, disabled or added
in the editor: click, type text, press a key, pause, wait for an element, wait until
the page is ready, scroll, open a page – and, as a final step, start over, which
sends the macro back to its first step: a fixed number of runs, until the text snippets
run out, or endlessly until something changes. The editor opens as a panel below the page so
you keep the target page in view – or in a tab of its own.

Snippet lists. Hand over long texts once, as a file or from the clipboard; blank
lines split them into individual snippets. A macro works through them one per run.
Snippet lists live outside the macros, can be named, extended, de-duplicated and
shared between macros. Any list can be saved as a plain text file and read back in
the same form, so any text editor is enough to work on it.

Lists that run for days. A snippet list with a few thousand entries is rarely
worked through in one sitting. Foxecute therefore remembers for good which snippet
playback stopped at – whether you stopped it, closed the browser or hit an error. The
next start continues from there, even days later. How much is left shows on the
toolbar icon; in the editor a line states the progress and resets it on request.

In random order. On request Foxecute draws the order of the text snippets. It draws
without replacement: every snippet is used exactly once, none twice, none left out. The
order belongs to the progress and is stored with it – carry on tomorrow and you get the
remaining snippets, not some arbitrary ones again.

Several runs side by side. Every tab can work through its own macro, in separate
windows too. Several macros may share the same snippet list while each keeps its own
progress. The popup shows what is running in its own tab and says below when something
is working elsewhere.

When the page changes. If an input field is suddenly named differently, Foxecute
finds it again by its characteristics – label, placeholder, position within the form.
If two fields match equally well it does not guess: it asks and offers you the
point-and-click element picker.

Access only where you grant it. Foxecute requests no access to web pages at install
time. Only when you press allow for this site in the popup does Firefox itself ask –
for that one domain. If you prefer, one click switches to all sites. Granted sites
are listed in the popup and can be revoked at any time.

Your data stays with you. Macros, snippet lists and settings live purely locally in
the Firefox profile. Foxecute sends nothing over the network, loads nothing remotely
and contains neither analytics nor crash reporting.

Inside embedded areas, too. If a form sits in an iframe, Foxecute works in there
just the same. Every step remembers which area it runs in and finds it again later by
its place in the nesting. An area from a foreign domain needs its own permission; the
popup shows which ones are missing.

German and English. The interface follows the language of Firefox; there is nothing
to set.

Free software under the GPL v3, source at https://needanapp.de

Note: this release is an alpha. Synthetic clicks are accepted by ordinary web pages,
but not by some bot-protection mechanisms nor by native browser dialogs.