Dejaclick - The web recorder
Dejaclick is a web recorder utility by Alertsite. It is available as an extension for Firefox. I had used it back when Spreadfirefox was holding the Add-ons review contest, but uninstalled it at that time because I found it to be too much of a hassle. Now, I decided to give it a try again.
OK, what is Dejaclick?
Here is their own description for Dejaclick from their site :
DéjàClick by AlertSite is a web recorder and free super bookmark utility designed exclusively for Firefox. DéjàClick by AlertSite is easy and fast. Install it, and in seconds you can bookmark a multi-step recording. Then, with just one click, navigate to your pre-determined web page. Got a package or an order you want to track? Have a favorite category at an online auction site? Tired of going through the steps to log into your e-mail? Use DéjàClick by AlertSite to automatically access any final URL.
Here is my review of it : Dejaclick is good, but it needs to be better. What it does is basically this : Say you want to login to your Yahoo! Mail account. What you would do is this -
- Open mail.yahoo.com
- Enter your username and password
- Wait for it to load
- Finally, read the mail
If you use Dejaclick, you can “record” this, so you don’t have to do all this again every time you want to read your e-mail.
How does this work?
If you are ready to give it a try, go to the Dejaclick site and download it. Alternatively, here is the link to the official download from addons.mozilla.org
Now…here is how it would work : Restart Firefox after installing it. Now you would see a Dejaclick toolbar. It is a bit too big for my liking, but oh well. Then, click on the little power icon to turn it on. Now you would see some of the other buttons activated. Click on the red(record) button to start recording. Done? Now, let’s start(for the purpose, I decided to record logging in to my Wordpress admin account of this blog, so I will explain on those lines, but you essentially have to do everything along those lines)
- Visit the starting URL - http://www.saratsweb.frih.net (At the bottom of the screen, a little toolbar will be there, saying “Recording…1 item recorded”)
- Click on the “login” link on the sidebar (Recording…2 items recorded)
- The Wordpress login screen should come up. Now I enter my username and password. (Don’t even try to guess…:-) )
- The Wordpress dashboard should come up
- Click on the visit site on the top. My blog loads again.
- After the blog is fully loaded, click on the “stop” button.
- Click on the “Save” button, save the script with some appropriate name.
- Now, click on the star button. It should add a new bookmark. Give it some appropriate name too, and for convenience’s sake, place it on the Bookmarks toolbar.
Now, I have to go back to my Wordpress dashboard and log out, or it would really mess things up. Then, I open a new tab, and click on the bookmark I just saved. If everything went OK, it should work! No need to do anything myself. First my blog opens, then the login page, then the Wordpress dashboard, and then the blog again.
Doesn’t that seem good?
Yes, it does! Then why do you say it needs to be better?
OK, I will tell you why. It does have its problems. Nothing is perfect. Sometimes, you can not just record something correctly. Sometimes, you get a window saying - “The action has stopped. Click ‘Skip to next step’” or something like that. Sometimes it says, the recording has been adjusted. Please replay.
So, Dejaclick is good, but only upto a certain extent. It can certainly speed up your online routines, but there might be some bugs on the way, too.
Here is the link to the site, if you missed it before.
Thanks for a good review. You should try iMacros from https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/3863/
I find iMacros _much_ more powerful than Dejaclick, and it seems to have less bugs
Hi Sarah,
Thanks for visiting the blog. I visited the link, and so far, it seems worth it. I have not downloaded and installed it yet, but will do so soon.
Thanks for the useful link!
Visit again,
Sarat
Here’s a few things you may not be aware of:
1. You don’t need to use the DejaClick toolbar to record and replay scripts. Its mostly a ‘power user’ thing for doing stuff like pausing the script or single-stepping through them, and what not. If you don’t need it, just right-click any button on the toolbar and uncheck “DejaClick Toolbar” and its gone. For normal DejaClick recording and bookmarking, just use the SuperBookmark button on the top-right of the browser.. one click starts the recording, another click stops the recording and automatically generates a new Firefox bookmark for the script. Simple.
2. That dialog you mention which sometimes appears asking whether to “Stop, Continue waiting, or Skip to next step” is actually an advanced wizard known as the “Replay Advisor”. Its a wonderful little feature that is actually able to fix up scripts that other recorders would normally choke on by making automatic script property adjustments for you (such as ignoring streaming media, updating the number of expected URL changes, extending timeouts, etc). So, its not a “bug”, its a (very) “Good Thing”.
3. One reader’s comment suggesting that iMacros is “_much_ more powerful than Dejaclick” is completely bogus. The iMacros tool requires programmatic scripting to get around dynamic content (DHTML, AJAX, etc) because it doesn’t know what the browser is actually doing. Its scripts contain only simple commands like “load this url”, “wait 2 seconds”, “click this link”, etc. Using DejaClick, on the other hand, is completely automatic. It uses very sophisticated heuristics under its covers for element matching and it is intimately familiar with everything Firefox is doing. For example, it automatically knows how long to wait for server-side processing before replaying the next event, it knows which menu rollovers are important to the recording and which are not, its knows about windows & tabs and changing tab focus, and much more.
So, I hope some of this helps to clear the confusion.
Hi TimeGuardian,
First of all, welcome to the blog, and thanks for visiting.
As for the things you said,
1. I was not aware of this feature, and would like to thank you for pointing it out. Yes, that button is handy.
2. As for the “bug” I pointed out, or the “good feature’ as you say, I am not too familiar with the workings of such extensions. I only wanted to give a honest review, from my knowledge. Dejaclick is a good extension, and it can speed things up, as I said. That doesn’t help when, on almost every replay, small dialog boxes appear. However helpful they might be, people download this to make things easier, not confuse themselves. It may have been better to do the login etc., myself.
3. As for the other extension you mentioned, I will have to let that wait, and try Dejaclick for now.
Your comment was excellent, covered all the points, a BIG thank you for that.
I hope I did not appear too rude.
Thanks,
Sarat
Oh, no offense taken. As for point #2, I think there may be confusion about the Replay Advisor in general, as its not really documented anywhere. The idea tho, is that it generally appears on the first replay to “clean things up” if needed, after which you should re-save the script (as it instructs via the toolbar) and those issues should be fixed. Sometimes the Replay Advisor may appear multiple times in a row or again after the next run (since one fix could spawn another issue), but as long as you click ‘Skip to next event’ and re-save the script, it should take care of most issues.
Thank you for the explanations. I guess all is well that ends well..:-)
Exellent site, ept.
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science…
Oooo! This is a point mentioned. I like when everything in place while it is understandable to mere mortals.