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Programs for Filling In Web Forms?

Posted by Cliff on from the for-those-who-find-typing-painful dept.

cafebabe asks: "My mother has severe arthritis and must do a lot of her shopping online since it is painful for her to walk. Since she also has trouble typing, she needs a program to help her fill out all of the data entry fields on web sites. When I was home over Thanksgiving, I saw that my mother had Gator on her computer. I uninstalled it, explained spyware to her, and installed RoboForm, which I had heard good things about. RoboForm ended up causing her computer to crash so my father uninstalled it. Is RoboForm really the best thing out there or do any of you know of something better?"

7 of 22 comments (clear)

  1. ummm...... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Both Internet Explorer and Mozilla have automagic form completetion. IE has it on by default, Moz the opposite. I would not be surprised if Netscape has it too.

    Also, ensure you actually removed all of Gator's excess baggage. Spyware tends to have ways of having the sinister stuff stick around after being uninstalled.

    1. Re:ummm...... by King+of+the+World · · Score: 2, Informative
      Opera has the best system I have seen. In the preferences you can set a series of strings (name, email address, postal address, cc#) and then right click any form field and select the value to have it printed in.

      The main problem for these is poorly designed forms that, for example, have the phone number as two input boxes (international + local number). Designing forms in such a way makes it difficult to paste preset variables.

      --
      --Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
    2. Re:ummm...... by GigsVT · · Score: 2, Informative

      You forgot the obligitory link to Adaware for all 10 people who do not know about it yet. :)

      --
      I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
  2. Mozilla by davincile0 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Mozilla has a form manager which remembers data that you've entered in forms previously and fills in predicted data for forms you've never filled before. It does that by remembering the personal data you fill in the form manager (e.g. "last name", "phone", etc.) and looking at field names in new forms. It also supports optionally encrypting the saved data, and/or autofilling forms (or only filling them when you select "fill in this form" from a menu). It's a good way to go.

    IE has some form data-remembering feature as well, but I don't trust MS with the data much further than I do gator.

  3. Mozilla has it by DeadMeat+(TM) · · Score: 5, Informative
    Mozilla/Netscape 7 has form management features built-in, but most people don't know about it because it's stupidly buried under the Tools menu.

    If the prospect of using a program called Mozilla terrifies her and you don't want all the extra crap that comes standard with Netscape, use SillyDog's steamlined Netscape. Then add the mother-friendly pop-up blocking feature back and she should be good to go.

    1. Re:Mozilla has it by rehannan · · Score: 3, Informative

      Mozilla/Netscape 7 has form management features built-in, but most people don't know about it because it's stupidly buried under the Tools menu.

      It's under "Preferences -> Privacy & Security -> Forms" as well as the "Tools -> Form Manager" menu in Mozilla 1.2.1 on both Win2k and OS X.

  4. Mozilla by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative
    Give Mozilla's Form Manager a try.

    If you don't want to give up the look of IE, try the IE skin.