Slashdot Mirror
Programs for Filling In Web Forms?
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?"
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.
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.
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.