Form recovery for Chrome (Lazarus is useless)

[Jim Hoyle]

I find it incredible that there is no proper way to recover your lost form input in Google Chrome. As many know, Textarea Cache on Firefox has much wider form support than Lazarus.

Lazarus has been very quirky from day one. Lazarus 3.0.6 is currently the official version in Chrome Web Store, but you might be able to also download 3.2 beta from http://getlazarus.com/download and then drag it to Chrome Extensions ( chrome://extensions/ ). However, 3.2 doesn't seem to work any better than 3.0.6 so maybe only 50% of sites are supported.

So, how is it possible that there is no better alternative for Chrome? A good recovery would be save probably millions or billions of hours of time globally per year.

Is there some problem in Chrome that makes it really difficult to create a working form recovery extension?

[Jim Hoyle]

Is it difficult to develop an extension that would save all form inputs in Chrome (form recovery)? Perhaps I'll program it myself unless there are some big obstacles on the way.

On Saturday, March 21, 2015 at 6:19:47 PM UTC+2, Daniel F wrote:

This is a group for discussing the development of extensions.

[Daniel F]

Inject a content script that attaches a function to the onchange handler of all fields that accept input and send a message to it's main script with an identifier for the field and it's new content. The main script records this in chrome's synced storage, and when you visit a page it send the content script all the saved data for that page to fill in.

[Jim Hoyle]

That sounds relatively very simple. I have a feeling there will be obstacles though. Otherwise Lazarus https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lazarus-form-recovery/loljledaigphbcpfhfmgopdkppkifgno/reviews?hl=en or Simple Form Recovery https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/simple-form-recovery/cieifohdikchafcbdjbcmkdiabggalhp/reviews?hl=en would work but they don't.

[Daniel F]

I made a quick version of this, and so far it seems to work. If you could use it and tell me where the problem is, that would be great. One thing is that you have to deselect the text field or press enter for the stored value to update. The code isn't commented at all, but if you are interested that could be done. 

You can download a zip from google drive:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6TYQ3tN3I4vMks3NXowSmQ1eTA/view?usp=sharing

[Jim Hoyle]

Highly interesting, but I couldn't get it working. Can you tell me how to try it for example on this page: http://www.w3schools.com/html/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_form_radio

Console says "Failed to save: undefined because we could not find an id or name" when I deselect the text field.

[Daniel F]

The extension needs something to save the value under. Almost all real text fields will have a name or value, because the programmer will want to be able to access the value client side (an id) or server side on a submitted form (a name). However, this was a hurriedly code extension, so I am sure that it doesn't work very well. Possibly, it could generate it's own ID's for fields based on their position in the DOM.

[Jim Hoyle]

I am very interested and thankfully your code is very short, at least for now. Did you try it with the simple page I pasted?

By the way, I am wondering, have you never had a problem loosing all your textarea input due to whatever problem (connection problem, inactivity timeout, bugs on the web page..)? Never lost a forum message you wrote, for example?

On Saturday, March 28, 2015 at 9:49:44 PM UTC+2, Daniel F wrote:

Nevermind. That should work. How interested are you in this? Is it worth my time to comment and debug the code?

On Friday, March 20, 2015 at 1:38:26 PM UTC-7, Jim Hoyle wrote:

[Chris Hoffman]

I am also very interested in this.  I would absolutely love to see a high quality extension for this purpose.  I would be willing to pay a reasonable amount too.

[Chris Hoffman]

BTW, I followed poor Jim's posts all over the internet while trying to find a solution myself.  Every place he posted someone said to go somewhere else.  :/

[Daniel F]

Yes, I have experienced that problem. I don't know why that page doesn't work. I hastily coded that extension, because I never felt a need for it, so I didn't know if it would be actually used. If you people are interested, I will put more work into it.

On Friday, March 20, 2015 at 1:38:26 PM UTC-7, Jim Hoyle wrote:

[Daniel F]

There are multiple different options.

For saving:

1: Click a button by the field to save

2: Click an extension to save

3: Save text with a length greater than something

4: Always save

5: Some combination

Once you set it to save, it could automatically do so in the future

For recovering:

1: Click a button by the field to recover

2: Click an extension to recover

3: Always recover

4: Some combination

Always for both can be annoying because it will remember everything, even search terms.

Which would you people prefer?

[Jim Hoyle]

I have to say once again that I'm pretty sure this would be one of the most useful Chrome extensions ever.

Saving: always and frequently save every possible input field. Especially forum posts, company forms (for contacting, sending some applications and whatnot), but also short input fields like phone number. Then main use is to recover your long writings, without having to remember to save. Is there a problem with accumulating too much data? What are the max data limits? I don't care whether there is a risk of storing confidential information - you can just disable the whole plugin if you want to be safe. Of course the best is if there is a good interface where you can disable certain input fields and sites and where you can delete parts of history. But definitely the most important thing is to save everything, even in a total mess of input history, as long as you actually can retrieve your writing.

This is the Lazarus approach: http://screenshots.en.sftcdn.net/en/scrn/3334000/3334947/lazarus-form-recovery-chrome-03-700x178.jpg

And this is Firefox Textarea Cache approach: http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/save-text-comments.png and http://cnet2.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/2011/12/12/5742e1ff-fdc4-11e2-8c7c-d4ae52e62bcc/a92e4bdddf9e5aa7ad5c19dc09d47c89/12_13_11TextareaCache6.png

For recovering, the best is to press right button inside the field and then you have the options to get your history for the field. The Lazarus icon is on the way often and it's not necessary. The best is if you can rest assured that every time you press the right button you will see your history there, maybe 5 last posts for the field like so:

"Bla bla bla... : 3:33 PM 2015-03-01"

"Blu blu blu... : 4:44 PM 2015-03-05"

"Blo blo blo... : 1:11 PM 2015-03-11"

"Ble ble ble... : 12:22 PM 2015-03-13"

"Bli bli bli... : 7:25 PM 2015-03-31"

And then you could look at your whole history too, that'd be nice. Depends how the synced storage works and what limitations it has?

[Daniel F]

[Daniel F]

Nevermind. That should work. How interested are you in this? Is it worth my time to comment and debug the code?

On Friday, March 20, 2015 at 1:38:26 PM UTC-7, Jim Hoyle wrote:

[Ory Z]

Has there been any resolution to this? I almost really miss Lazarus!!!

[Yoav Moran]

It seems still missing... :(

[Marco Büttinghausen]

Came here because I lost some long-winded mail again today.

1) Remembered and missed the text area cache from firefox

2) found Lazarus and noticed it was useless. So were other similar form saving extensions.

3) Found a post by Jim Hoyle and followed the breadcrumb here :-)

Since there wasn't any movement on this for a year now, I assume it has lost traction again.

Just wanted to throw my support behind this, this would definitely be worth some money for me, writing something and then having to write it again, is one of the most frustrating things that can happen. I work with several ticketing systems that are web-based, so any accidental press on F5, or power outage (someone tripped a breaker today) means loss of data. I don't want to be forced to write everything in Word beforehand (where this problem was solved years ago) and then copy it over in the web-forms.

So any developer who thinks he can tackle this, please do, I'll send you money, cake or beer (whatever you prefer) but please please save our text areas and our sanity!

[Chuck Baker]

Since it has been over a year since any progress has been made, I guess we can assume that the new project has been abandoned.  I think I'll have a go at it.

I've been developing Firefox extensions for over a decade and am not new to the process.  However, all the Fx extensions I've developed were with the soon-to-be deprecated XUL/XPCOM framework in favor of WebExtensions.  I've already written three or four Chrome extensions with WebExtensions and have found it severely limiting compared to XPCOM.  Nonetheless, I was able to re-write one of my extensions (Paste Email Plus) to work with Chrome (Paste Email Plus for Chrome).  That extension has some similarities to what is being discussed here.  Paste Email Plus parses the DOM for all input fields and allows users to paste a predefined text string from a dropdown list.  A form fill recovery extension would also have to parse the DOM for input fields, but would save the field's value in a nonvolatile database.

One potential problem would be the limitations WebExtensions sets on storage.  Chrome extensions can only store 102,400 bytes in the cloud and 5,242,880 bytes locally. This includes the database overhead so the actual number of characters is less.  The database would have to store the URL of the page, the ID of the field, and the text content of that field.  Fields that have no ID cannot be stored.  Ideally, the database would be saved each time a field's value is changed, but this may impact performance.  Also, storage is done asynchronously so no guarantees on how quickly it is done. A browser crash or power outage would almost certainly corrupt the database, so some sort of backup mechanism should be employed.

At some point, I would require beta testers to help debug the extension.  Would anyone here be willing to help?

[PhistucK]

On Wed, Jun 8, 2016 at 11:08 PM, Chuck Baker <cbak...@gmail.com> wrote:

Chrome extensions can only store 102,400 bytes in the cloud and 5,242,880 bytes locally

​Hm, you can locally store much more than that. It depends on your storage method, there are a lot of those, unfortunately. Also, there is an "unlimitedStorage" permission that grants you more than that (not for localStorage, I believe, but for other ways).

☆PhistucK

[Chuck Baker]

On Wednesday, June 8, 2016 at 1:19:33 PM UTC-7, PhistucK wrote:

​Hm, you can locally store much more than that. It depends on your storage method, there are a lot of those, unfortunately. Also, there is an "unlimitedStorage" permission that grants you more than that (not for localStorage, I believe, but for other ways).

☆PhistucK

Ok ... I'll have to research that.  It's been my experience so far that writing anything to a user's local drive (other than chrome.storage) requires user intervention.  They have to manually specify the location as the extension cannot make that decision for them. For instance, I'm currently writing a Chrome bookmark validator/backup extension and I've found no way to automatically store the backup without the user having to point to the backup destination directory each time.  Do you have any links to alternate storage methods? 

[PhistucK]

I mean storage methods such as Indexed DB, Web SQL Databases and the FileSystem API.

Yes, you will not get access to actual files (without said user intervention), but you will be able to store much more than 5 MB.

☆PhistucK

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[Antony Sargent]

You might want to have a look at IndexedDB (this made it into a web standard, so is most likely to be well tested and have long term support). Other alternative storage technologies that chrome supports are WebSQLDB and HTML5 filesystem, but both of those failed to become web standards so while there's no plan I'm aware of to deprecate them, over the long term they have a little more of a chance to develop bugs or become candidates for eventual deprecation. 

 

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[Marco Büttinghausen]

On Wednesday, June 8, 2016 at 10:08:52 PM UTC+2, Chuck Baker wrote:

At some point, I would require beta testers to help debug the extension.  Would anyone here be willing to help?

Oh absolutely, I can't code but I can certainly test. 

[Ory Z]

I can code (have never done extensions or anything like this though) and can definitely help set requriements and test.

Potentially we can set up a donation PayPal for people to be able to chip in and open source the code (so others can pick it up/maintain it if it gets abandoned again). 

Re:only using IDs, unfortunately due to the way the web works today that would seriously limit the extension. I have a feeling we will have to hunt around for a good algorithm that can come up with the best XPath/CSS Selector falling down on the full XPath is needed. From using Lazarus for years, it always saves everything regardless of what the fields look like. In any case in most situations where you need form recovery the webpage is going to be reloaded exactly the same for the form to be completed.

Ory

[Chuck Baker]

I'm thinking document.getElementsByTagName() would be the way to go.  I'm assuming (though I don't see it in the documentation) that the live HTMLCollection would always be created in the same order each time the page is loaded.  If it is, then the ordinal number of the element could be used instead of the ID.

[werehamster]

Hi Chuck, I'm one of the original developers of Lazarus (and yes, we built it because we had a terrible version of trac that would keep logging you out when you submitted a new ticket, thus loosing half an hours work in an instant).

Lazarus was owned by the business I worked for. When I left I gave full ownership of Lazarus to the other partner and agreed that I would to not make a competing product. I had hoped that the other partner would have maintained the addons but he's had other hardships which have resulted in the addon never being updated since I left. I'm really disappointed that it has been left to die a slow death, but I understand why this has occurred.

Anyhow, enough history. Whilst I cannot build a replacement for it, I can certainly help you out with info about how we solved various problems. And some of the other issues that you'll face when building this. So here's some questions for you.

1 - decide very early on if you're going to save just individual textareas (easy) or whole forms (significantly more difficult).

2 - are you going to encrypt the data? If yes, that makes it a lot better privacy-wise, but it also makes the database a lot harder to search.

3 - if you choose not to encrypt the data, then you'll have to make sure you don't save sensitive information like credit card details and passwords and such.

Some things to note:

1 - the addon will get used by jealous people to spy on their significant others. We deliberately added the Lazarus icon to every field that was being saved so that it was significantly more difficult to use Lazarus for that purpose, but still many people asked for the feature.

2 - we used an SQLite database with unlimited space to store the data. You should have no trouble using either that or IndexDB instead.

3 - people will want all of their data saved forever. They'll want to be able to search it and export it to other programs (again, also for spying on people, or for use in court). And they'll get angry if you can't or won't do that for them.

There's heaps more I could talk about here, but it's 3am and I should probably get some sleep.
If you're serious about making this an open source program, and actually getting it to work properly, then I'm sure I can help out a bit. Contractually I can't contribute to the code, but I can help out with my knowledge.

Karl

[Chuck Baker]

Hi Karl,

To be honest, I am not familiar with all the abilities of Lazarus.  I do, however, use Textarea Cache with Firefox and am thinking that any resurrection of Lazarus that I would develop would be an expansion of that other extension.

1 - decide very early on if you're going to save just individual textareas (easy) or whole forms (significantly more difficult).

I envision (at least initially) that I would store only the value of

<input>

and

<textarea>

elements.

2 - are you going to encrypt the data? If yes, that makes it a lot better privacy-wise, but it also makes the database a lot harder to search.

Encrypt? No.  Encode? Yes.  Stored character strings might contain quote-marks, backslashes and other characters that must be included without being misinterpreted.  I was thinking along the lines of encodeURI(), Base64 encoding (atob() and btoa()) or maybe some type of utf-8 character replacement.

1  - the addon will get used by jealous people to spy on their significant others. We deliberately added the Lazarus icon to every field that was being saved so that it was significantly more difficult to use Lazarus for that purpose, but still many people asked for the feature.

Developers cannot be held responsible for the actions of unscrupulous users.  Should a manufacturer of hammers be held accountable for carpenters that go around smashing other people's fingers?  No. All extensions are merely tools that, when used for the purpose they were designed, benefit the majority of users.  Users are expected research the intended purpose and limitations of any extension they install.  Developers should make this information available to users before the installation.

2 - we used an SQLite database with unlimited space to store the data. You should have no trouble using either that or IndexDB instead.

Using IndexedDB or some other SQL solution seems to be overkill for what I had in mind.  I was planning on saving only the URL and the text input values of a page in the database.  I have used TaffyDB for database storage in previous extensions.  It is a simple, low-overhead API that has suited me fine.  The only problem is that it is a volatile, in-memory only db but it can easily be saved in local storage.

3 - people will want all of their data saved forever. They'll want to be able to search it and export it to other programs (again, also for spying on people, or for use in court). And they'll get angry if you can't or won't do that for them.

The ability for users to search and export data is beyond the scope of what I have in mind.  I can, in theory, save the data forever but only for internal use by the extension itself.

The working title I'm using for this project is TIRE (Text Input Recovery Extension).  I don't think of it as a feature-for-feature replacement for Lazarus, but a more generalized, simple tool for remembering specific text field entries on a page.  Additional features could, of course, be implemented as development advances.

[werehamster]

It sounds like you have a pretty good idea of what you want to create. I'd recommend avoiding base64 encoding because it will fail with Unicode characters.
We also decided to save forms by domain name rather than url. Because often a url will change from one session to the next (think about composing an email in gmail).

You can use onchange events to detect content changes inside the text boxes. It'll catch cut and pasted and other non-keyboard changes. We ended up just using a timer to check all text boxes on each page (it ended up being easier in the long run when we needed to expand it to save WYSIWYG editors)

I get what you mean by saying the creator of a tool should not be held responsible, I was just gutted when I found out how some people were using it and thought I'd do something to make that harder.

You sound like you have pretty reasonable plans in place.
If there's anything I can help with don't hesitate to contact me.

Best of luck,
Karl

[Ory Z]

Great to have you on board Karl! 

A few thoughts:

1. if the data is not going to be encrypted then a solution will need to be provided for sensitive fields. Otherwise it will be relatively easy for malware to piggyback on the extension in order to steal user data.

2. While what users do with a piece of software is not the responsibility of a developer, I believe it is the responsibility of the developer (as the knowledgeable side) to make sure a software is adequately secure and keeps people's data private

3. I agree that saving by domain (and not URL) will be the way to go

4. I strongly believe the user should have the option to set the length of time for data retention. 

Chuck - are you on board with open sourcing this add on?

[Chuck Baker]

1. if the data is not going to be encrypted then a solution will need to be provided for sensitive fields. Otherwise it will be relatively easy for malware to piggyback on the extension in order to steal user data.

After thinking about it a little more, I do believe you're correct.  In another extension I mentioned (Paste Email Plus), I do have the ability to encrypt pastetext.  So I've already got the routines tested in a live extension and it would be a simple matter to encrypt all data (sensitive or not) in this new extension.  It's not AES256 NSA worthy encryption, but it keeps casual eyes from prying.

3. I agree that saving by domain (and not URL) will be the way to go

This has got me confused.  How do we save text input values bases solely on the domain name?  Suppose we have two pages that we want to save the data from:

http://example.com/page1.html
http://example.com/page2.html

How do I identify the data from the individual pages of the domain example.com without indexing it by URL?

4. I strongly believe the user should have the option to set the length of time for data retention.

Agreed. Perhaps an option to Purge data that is over XX days old.  The age would be determined by the last change date.  The purge routine could be run at startup.

Chuck - are you on board with open sourcing this add on?

Absolutely.  Except for a small number of private addons I've written for clients, all my extensions have been open source released under the Mozilla Public License (MPL)

[Chuck Baker]

BTW, is there a way to edit a post?  I really hate seeing typos in my post, but can't seem to edit them after I click the 'Post' button.

[Chuck Baker]

Just a quick note to anyone following this thread.

After some initial delays, I am making good progress on the TIRE (Text Input Recovery Extension) project.  I should have something to test sometime next week.  I'm hoping any beta testers will still be available.

Chuck

[Chuck Baker]

The TIRE extension is now available for beta testing on the Chrome Web Store.  Instructions on how to use it are located on the TIRE Homepage.

Any and all help debugging and testing is greatly appreciated.  Please leave feedback in this thread.

[Alex K.]

Why does it ask for my email?

пʼятниця, 15 липня 2016 р. 01:14:19 UTC+3 користувач Chuck Baker написав:

[Chuck Baker]

 TIRE does not need to know your email.  I used a prior extension's manifest.json that requested "identity.email" permissions as a template for this extension.  I will fix it.

[Joy of Fishes]

Test from gmail to see whether my response posts to the group 

~ Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. ~

On Fri, Jul 15, 2016 at 3:16 PM, Chuck Baker <cbak...@gmail.com> wrote:

The lower the "check interval time", the more often the database is updated.  The more often the database is updated, the higher the overhead and less efficient the process is. 

The "delete data over n days old" idea makes sense.  Let's see what other potential uses have to say about it.

I am not an admin for the group, in fact I didn't even start the thread - I only replied to a post in it.  Perhaps that is the trigger that subscribes you to the group.  Maybe if you post directly within the group (by going to the Chromium-Extensions-Announce - Form recovery for Chrome (Lazarus is useless) thread that would do the trick.  I know you have to be logged in to the group to post, so that may also prevent email replies from being posted automatically.

On Fri, Jul 15, 2016 at 12:12 PM, Joy of Fishes <joy.of...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello Chuck, Thank you for your response.  

Keep in mind I am not a techie.  Does "increase the overhead" mean reduce responsiveness - I have noticed a bit of lag but that could be any number of things.  Or does it mean the size of the text table?

I likely don't know enough to know what I want  ;)  What I think I want is save close to real time and clear everything out that is more than a couple days old.  

I think it did save every page, but only the pages that I had entered stuff had clickable urls. I'll check this again after surfing a bit.

No idea about the forum .... I am receiving email notifications of new comments so I know something took when I tried to sign up, but my reply to all at 11:47 central generated an error message.  Perhaps you can decipher this:

We're writing to let you know that the group you tried to contact (chromium-extensions) may not exist, or you may not have permission to post messages to the group. A few more details on why you weren't able to post:

 * You might have spelled or formatted the group name incorrectly.
 * The owner of the group may have removed this group.
 * You may need to join the group before receiving permission to post.
 * This group may not be open to posting.

​If you are admin for the forum, there might be an option at your end to add me at the list.  Otherwise, feel free to forward my message(s) -- after all, I had intended to reply to the group.  

JoF

~ Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. ~

On Fri, Jul 15, 2016 at 12:55 PM, Chuck Baker <cbak...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi JoF,

I have not tested this project on Firefox or Opera - only Chrome.

TIRE uses an in-memory, low overhead database to store the data so I'm hoping the size will not grow exponentially as other databases are wont to do.

Actually, lowering the save time will increase the overhead.  I set the default to 5 seconds so it would be easier to debug but will likely change it before the first stable release.  Eventually, I'm thinking that a 30 second interval would probably be more efficient in the long run.  A one hundred character benchmark would be a good place to start.  How long does it take for the average person to type 100 characters?  Whatever that number is should be what the save time is save as.

Remember also that TIRE does not save a database entry for every page visited ... only those with input fields in which data has been entered. And the only data saved is the page URL, page title, field id and field text value.

Chuck

BTW, I'm curious why your post did not appear in the Chrome-extensions Google Group forum.  I got it as a personal email.  Perhaps if you subscribe and post to that thread, others may see and respond to your posts.

On Fri, Jul 15, 2016 at 9:47 AM, Joy of Fishes <joy.of...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello Chuck, 

I really liked Lazarus and made use of it frequently, so I am greatly looking forward to having a good replacement for it.  Thank you so much for your work on this.

I am likely the non-geekiest person following your project.  TIRE is sort of working on Opera Developer, not that I understand how it is supposed to work, and I can see its potential usefulness.  I haven't tried it yet on Opera or Firefox.  

I reduced the save time to 3000, & might bump it lower yet -- or patience, grasshopper, & learn to wait until the hover over my field shows that TIRE has picked up everything I typed. But with tracking every page I visit and saving text every 3-5 seconds I suspect the saved content could become very large, so I suggest some kind of auto-delete feature for older stuff -- everything after x days, for example. 

BTW,  I have been using the Editor History tab on the Form History Control extension for Firefox to restore text, and it does work, just not as elegantly as Lazarus did.

JoF

~ Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. ~

On Fri, Jul 15, 2016 at 11:05 AM, Chuck Baker <cbak...@gmail.com> wrote:

 TIRE does not need to know your email.  I used a prior extension's manifest.json that requested "identity.email" permissions as a template for this extension.  I will fix it.

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[Joy]

Thank you, Chuck.  As noted in our email exchange, I am very interested in your project.  I have installed TIRE but am very much still in the How Does This Work stage.

For initial feedback. I suggest an option to delete info over N days old.  

[Chuck Baker]

For a synopsis of how the extension works (albeit a little heavy on the technical side), see the TIRE homepage.

[Marco Büttinghausen]

On Friday, July 15, 2016 at 12:14:19 AM UTC+2, Chuck Baker wrote:

The TIRE extension is now available for beta testing on the Chrome Web Store.  Instructions on how to use it are located on the TIRE Homepage.

Hello Chuck,

first of all, thank you for doing this, this is greatly appreciated.

 

What I would suggest on the TIRE homepage, would be a section with features yet to be implemented and known bugs. Should/If this extension grows beyond this group, it will help so that people don't repeat the same 3 requests/bugs over and over again.

As for the extension itself, I have installed it and will test it, but currently I think it's not working for me, it picked up the first two edits I encountered (sadly with my password), but it was already mentioned that these might need some further protection in the future. However deleting the storage, seems not to work as intended, if I click show storage after that, it shows a clear storage, but after the next capture the storage shows the password again, although I have left that domain and wasn't there since.

Maybe I already broke it already, but I would be hoping that it picks up this very comment I'm writing right now, but that doesn't seem to be the case, but no worries, it's super early in development, I'll keep testing.

Two more things, adding the version number on the options screen would help me to see if a new version is there, but I can find that in the list of my extensions of course, so add this only if it's no trouble (and maybe a link to the TIRE homepage)

The second thing is, and this was discussed before, Lazarus showed an icon in input fields for various reasons. This would help to prevent people from using TIRE as a sort of Keylogger on other peoples machine, but it would also help with the testing phase, so you could easily see which fields are recognised by TIRE and which aren't, without the need to check the storage each time.

Thats it for now, again, thank you for doing this. 

[Chuck Baker]

What I would suggest on the TIRE homepage, would be a section with features yet to be implemented and known bugs. Should/If this extension grows beyond this group, it will help so that people don't repeat the same 3 requests/bugs over and over again.

 

Done.  I've also decided it would be best to move this entire thread to my own support forum. That way individual bug reports and feature requests will exist in their own threads and be easier to manage.  The support forum does require admin approval upon registration, but I will keep a close eye on registration requests and push them through quickly.

I've modified the TIRE homepage to include outstanding issues and the current version number.  I've also added links to the support forum and homepage to the TIRE options page (version 0.0.0.4 which is still pending publishing at the time of this writing).

Lazarus showed an icon in input fields for various reasons. This would help to prevent people from using TIRE as a sort of Keylogger on other peoples machine ...

I've addressed this on the homepage.  I'm a little reluctant to modify a page in such a way as to drastically change the appearance and/or the styling of the page.  For ethical reasons, I believe no extension should interfere with the original page designer's work.  That being said, I think I can add some unobtrusive styling to indicate which fields TIRE is processing.  Perhaps changing the background color of the element would work.

I'm curious as to how you think people could use TIRE as a keylogger.  Could you explain this?

Maybe I already broke it already, but I would be hoping that it picks up this very comment I'm writing right now, but that doesn't seem to be the case, but no worries, it's super early in development, I'll keep testing.

It appears to be working for me - mostly.  As I'm writing this, the TIRE database is dutifully recording my updated text.  I have noticed, however, that links and other styling (like quoting) are not appearing in the saved text.  I'll have to check into that. 

[Chuck Baker]

I've just published TIRE v0.0.0.5 and it is available for testing.  Please report issues in the TIRE support forum.

[Daniel Persson]

I think it's fantastic that somebody took the time to develop this. I'm a little worried about the "keylogger aspect" as someone mentioned above. but I'm not a programmer, so I can't understand if this is possible. I guess the code reveals this for those who understand how to analyze it. So I would, of course, like to hear from the developer on this topic, but more important from an impartial source. Don't get me wrong, I don't think you're out to scam people, but if this is going to be popular after the NSA scandal, well, it must be crystal clear.  

[Ory Z]

Great head start there chuck! 

Unfortunately I can't register on the forum - it won't let me use my absolutely correct Gmail, see here:

http://screencast.com/t/ZulmVTQoT

I tried using a generated email address (By Blur) but it wouldn't accept that either.

What I was going to post is as follows-

Test Case 1:

- Tick "Highlight Save-able fields" and "Show TIRE button"

- Go to http://www.arb.com.au/found-bug/
Verify:

  - All input fields are highlighted

  - TIRE extension button does not show fill

  - No button is displayed in fields

- Fill in all fields

- Refresh site

Verify:

  - All input fields are highlighted

  - TIRE extension button shows fill

  - Buttons are displayed in all save-able fields

Results:

After filling the fields:

  - TIRE extension button does NOT show fill 

  - Buttons are NOT displayed in all save-able fields

However clicking the button does work and fields get filled 

Test Case 2:

- repeat above test for Gmail compose form

Result-

Extension does not seem to work in Gmail for me at all at the moment, the button does show "fill" but does nothing when clicked

Suggestions:

- Add Select tag to save-able fields

- Show an indication that fields are saved

- On the above example site (arb.com.au), text color changes when field gains focus. It might be a good idea to set both background color and text color to save-able fields to make sure the text is not invisible or hard to read when fields are highlighted.

Hope you find this helpful

Happy to help with coding too

AW

[Chuck Baker]

A 'keylogger' as defined by Kaspersky (https://usa.kaspersky.com/internet-security-center/definitions/keylogger#.V7T-16351EA) is:

Keystroke logging is an act of tracking and recording every keystroke entry made on a computer, often without the permission or knowledge of the user. A keylogger may be either hardware- or software-based, and has its uses as a legitimate personal or professional IT monitoring tool. However, keystroke logging can also be used for criminal purposes. More commonly, keystroke logging is malicious spyware that is used to capture sensitive information, like passwords or financial information, which is then sent to third parties for criminal exploitation.

'Keylogging' in its most common use is a disparaging term to denote malicious intent or subterfuge. But the act of keylogging is, in itself, used in nearly every aspect of computing.  Whenever an email is composed or a document written in a word processor, the user's typewritten characters are stored (at least temporarily, but usually indefinitely) somewhere, someplace that can be retrieved at a later time.  So, in its broadest meaning, any program that stores a user's keystrokes can be used for nefarious reasons.

I would imagine that most keylogging programs are used surreptitiously without the user's consent or knowledge for iniquitous and criminal purposes.

My TIRE extension clearly states that user-entered text will be saved for later retrieval.  That is its primary purpose.  The data is saved locally (and/or may be saved in the Chrome cloud in the future, depending on user feedback) and, while not easily obtained by the casual user, is accessible to any competent coder.  Even if I encrypt the stored data, the encryption routines are readily available by examining the code.  Chrome extensions are not allowed to contain obfuscated or minified code, so I cannot attempt to hide the encryption routines.

So, to summarize, TIRE could be used as a keylogger (only with webpages) but this is plainly obvious and the user has been made aware.

[Chuck Baker]

On Wednesday, August 17, 2016 at 9:09:39 PM UTC-7, Ory Zaidenvorm wrote:

Unfortunately I can't register on the forum - it won't let me use my absolutely correct Gmail, see here:

http://screencast.com/t/ZulmVTQoT

I tried using a generated email address (By Blur) but it wouldn't accept that either.

Thanks for the link.  I hope to test it this weekend.

As for not being able to register in the forum with you gmail address, please see this post for an explanation.

 

[Mike Hodson]

Hi Chuck,

Out of curiosity, and because i don't really want to register for your forum yet to try and find out on my own, can ones email address be changed after registering? I often use my whole first.m.last as it looks nicer; do you really want to read firstmlast? no. it looks horrible.  I use mystica@ for most google things, but often use the more professional looking email for anything of importance. 

Also, have you looked into perhaps just finding the email comparison function in the software and making it a regex that compares the address after stripping periods?

Thanks,

Mike

[Chuck Baker]

Yes, you can change your email address after your registration is activated.  Just go to User Control Panel > Profile > Edit account settings.

I really don't want to modify the forum software.  I use phpBB, which is a very popular forum program, and have been using it for over a decade with very little problems.  If I made any changes to the code, I would have to remake the changes after every update.

I'm curious as to why you are hesitant to use your gmail address (without the periods) to register.  It doesn't require you to create a new gmail address and all mail sent to a gmail account (with or without periods) always ends up in the same mailbox.  You can verify this by sending an email to yourself (with and without periods) and see it in your normal gmail mailbox.  Once you register on my forum, you only need to login with your username and password (no email address).  So unless your username is your gmail address (doesn't have to be), you needn't have to worry about remembering a slightly different gmail address.

[John Berry]

I want to thank werehamster for the original Lazarus and his assistance in helping it rise from the dead in the form of TIRE.

I want to thank Chuck for making Tire!

The main advantage that Lazarus has over Tire is that Lazarus could save multiple different compositions for a given domain/url.

This is important because sometimes i might want to restore something other than my latest attempt, I might have multiple tabs oven to the same page with different versions, and if a page closes I might start to type, remember i have TIRE, try and recover the previous draft only to find it's been replaced by my new word or 2 of text.

One way to do this is to do this like Lazarus did with a drop down box with a line for each one (as shown above in Jim Hoyle's post blah blah).

It is crazy that the most popular browser in the world has not had this since Lazarus became broken, nothing more frustrating than losing an epic composition. 

[Chuck Baker]

On Friday, August 26, 2016 at 5:36:01 AM UTC-7, John Berry wrote:

The main advantage that Lazarus has over Tire is that Lazarus could save multiple different compositions for a given domain/url.

...

 

One way to do this is to do this like Lazarus did with a drop down box with a line for each one (as shown above in Jim Hoyle's post blah blah).

If it is feasible, I would like to include that functionality.  But it would have to be included a version or two down the road.  Right now, I'm trying to figure out a consistent way to parse nested iframes that have injected content created with javascript) .  It's a little tricky, but I believe I'm getting close.  If you would like to follow the progress, please consider registering on my support forum.  It's easier for me to keep track of requests and bug reports there.

[Chuck Baker]

On Monday, June 13, 2016 at 8:08:08 AM UTC-7, werehamster wrote:

If you're serious about making this an open source program, and actually getting it to work properly, then I'm sure I can help out a bit. Contractually I can't contribute to the code, but I can help out with my knowledge.

Karl

Hi Karl,

I'd like to take you up on your offer to help.  I'm having a problem getting the DOM of a particular type of iframe.  User Troik has a page that includes an iframe whose contentDocument is injected through javascript.  For some reason, the iframe does not fire a load event when loaded (which apparently is not immediate, but several microseconds after the main page loads) and I can't seem to find a way to grab the contents of the iframe to parse.  Did you run into similar problems with Lazarus?

For more information and a link to the problem is in this thread on my support forum.  My current TIRE source code is here.

[daniel santos]

No dia 3 de Ago de 2015 01:34, "Ory Z" <ory...@gmail.com> escreveu:

Has there been any resolution to this? I almost really miss Lazarus!!!

On Monday, March 30, 2015 at 4:14:54 PM UTC+8, Jim Hoyle wrote:

I have to say once again that I'm pretty sure this would be one of the most useful Chrome extensions ever.

Saving: always and frequently save every possible input field. Especially forum posts, company forms (for contacting, sending some applications and whatnot), but also short input fields like phone number. Then main use is to recover your long writings, without having to remember to save. Is there a problem with accumulating too much data? What are the max data limits? I don't care whether there is a risk of storing confidential information - you can just disable the whole plugin if you want to be safe. Of course the best is if there is a good interface where you can disable certain input fields and sites and where you can delete parts of history. But definitely the most important thing is to save everything, even in a total mess of input history, as long as you actually can retrieve your writing.

This is the Lazarus approach: http://screenshots.en.sftcdn.net/en/scrn/3334000/3334947/lazarus-form-recovery-chrome-03-700x178.jpg

And this is Firefox Textarea Cache approach: http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/save-text-comments.png and http://cnet2.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/2011/12/12/5742e1ff-fdc4-11e2-8c7c-d4ae52e62bcc/a92e4bdddf9e5aa7ad5c19dc09d47c89/12_13_11TextareaCache6.png

For recovering, the best is to press right button inside the field and then you have the options to get your history for the field. The Lazarus icon is on the way often and it's not necessary. The best is if you can rest assured that every time you press the right button you will see your history there, maybe 5 last posts for the field like so:

"Bla bla bla... : 3:33 PM 2015-03-01"

"Blu blu blu... : 4:44 PM 2015-03-05"

"Blo blo blo... : 1:11 PM 2015-03-11"

"Ble ble ble... : 12:22 PM 2015-03-13"

"Bli bli bli... : 7:25 PM 2015-03-31"

And then you could look at your whole history too, that'd be nice. Depends how the synced storage works and what limitations it has?

On Monday, March 30, 2015 at 5:09:17 AM UTC+3, Daniel F wrote:

There are multiple different options.

For saving:

1: Click a button by the field to save

2: Click an extension to save

3: Save text with a length greater than something

4: Always save

5: Some combination

Once you set it to save, it could automatically do so in the future

For recovering:

1: Click a button by the field to recover

2: Click an extension to recover

3: Always recover

4: Some combination

Always for both can be annoying because it will remember everything, even search terms.

Which would you people prefer?

On Sunday, March 29, 2015 at 7:05:11 PM UTC-7, Daniel F wrote:

Yes, I have experienced that problem. I don't know why that page doesn't work. I hastily coded that extension, because I never felt a need for it, so I didn't know if it would be actually used. If you people are interested, I will put more work into it.

On Friday, March 20, 2015 at 1:38:26 PM UTC-7, Jim Hoyle wrote:

I find it incredible that there is no proper way to recover your lost form input in Google Chrome. As many know, Textarea Cache on Firefox has much wider form support than Lazarus.

Lazarus has been very quirky from day one. Lazarus 3.0.6 is currently the official version in Chrome Web Store, but you might be able to also download 3.2 beta from http://getlazarus.com/download and then drag it to Chrome Extensions ( chrome://extensions/ ). However, 3.2 doesn't seem to work any better than 3.0.6 so maybe only 50% of sites are supported.

So, how is it possible that there is no better alternative for Chrome? A good recovery would be save probably millions or billions of hours of time globally per year.

Is there some problem in Chrome that makes it really difficult to create a working form recovery extension?

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[PhistucK]

I think the only way to access an iFrame from a parent frame is by executing the script in the context of the page.

☆PhistucK

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[Kc Kc]

Since TIRE is open source, can you put it on github and get a few developers to improve it?

[Chuck Baker]

I've created a repository on github: https://github.com/Shadoefax/TIRE-for-Chrome

Any and all developers are welcome to it.

[Kc Kc]

Are you joining the development? https://github.com/Shadoefax/TIRE-for-Chrome

[Chuck Baker]

Yes, I intend to contribute to the development as needed, but it would be nice to get other developers on board.  My day job keeps me too busy to expend a lot to time doing fun stuff like this.

As for registering on the forum with your gmail address, simply leave out the periods in the address.  For more information, see this thread: http://www.customsoftwareconsult.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=4760&p=15152

[Garrett]

If this is still on going, yes, I'd love to help test this out also.

[Chuck Baker]

Hi Garrett,

Are you a developer?  If so, I would appreciate help coding this extension.  My time has been limited and I probably won't be able to get back into it until this summer.  In the meantime, I've made the extension open source and have hosted it on GitHub (https://github.com/Shadoefax/TIRE-for-Chrome).  The bulk has been coded and it works fairly well as is, but there is defiantly room for improvement.

[Ory Zaidenvorm]

Chuck,

What's your preferred way for us to contribute? Fork + Pull Request? or add us as Contributors?

Also is there somewhere a list of tasks left to do (so we can pick one up and chip at it)?

Cheers

Ory

[John Gachina]

Hello fellow developers. Am I the only one who feels like all possible good chrome extensions have already been made at this point? Or am I just not creative?

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[John Gachina]

Hello fellow developers. Am I the only one who feels like all possible good chrome extensions have already been made at this point? Or am I just not creative?

On 22 February 2017 at 18:51, John Gachina <johnga...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello fellow developers. Am I the only one who feels like all possible good chrome extensions have already been made at this point? Or am I just not creative?

On 22 February 2017 at 10:22, Ory Zaidenvorm <ory...@gmail.com> wrote:

Chuck,

What's your preferred way for us to contribute? Fork + Pull Request? or add us as Contributors?

Also is there somewhere a list of tasks left to do (so we can pick one up and chip at it)?

Cheers

Ory

On Tuesday, 21 February 2017 07:48:49 UTC+11, Chuck Baker wrote:

Hi Garrett,

Are you a developer?  If so, I would appreciate help coding this extension.  My time has been limited and I probably won't be able to get back into it until this summer.  In the meantime, I've made the extension open source and have hosted it on GitHub (https://github.com/Shadoefax/TIRE-for-Chrome).  The bulk has been coded and it works fairly well as is, but there is defiantly room for improvement.
 

On Monday, February 20, 2017 at 11:22:33 AM UTC-7, Garrett wrote:

If this is still on going, yes, I'd love to help test this out also.

On Friday, March 20, 2015 at 3:38:26 PM UTC-5, Jim Hoyle wrote:

I find it incredible that there is no proper way to recover your lost form input in Google Chrome. As many know, Textarea Cache on Firefox has much wider form support than Lazarus.

Lazarus has been very quirky from day one. Lazarus 3.0.6 is currently the official version in Chrome Web Store, but you might be able to also download 3.2 beta from http://getlazarus.com/download and then drag it to Chrome Extensions ( chrome://extensions/ ). However, 3.2 doesn't seem to work any better than 3.0.6 so maybe only 50% of sites are supported.

So, how is it possible that there is no better alternative for Chrome? A good recovery would be save probably millions or billions of hours of time globally per year.

Is there some problem in Chrome that makes it really difficult to create a working form recovery extension?

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[Chuck Baker]

I've been a developer/programmer for decades but, to be honest, I've never used GitHub for any of my projects.  While I've had help on some of those projects, I've always done the bulk of the coding myself. GitHub uses terms like "Fork and Pull", "Branches", "Pull requests", and "Commits".  I have to admit that these terms are mostly foreign to me and I really don't fully understand them. My goal with the TIRE project is to have other developers (like yourself) contribute in whatever the best, most efficient way is to complete and polish the extension.  Perhaps you could advise me on the best way to use GitHub to achieve the best results.

The biggest hurdle I've encountered so far is identifying certain text input areas in specific pages. You can find examples in my TIRE support forum (http://www.customsoftwareconsult.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=19).  Another area that needs to be addressed is the TIRE Options UI.  It needs a good style overhaul.

I don't need to be considered "Author" of the extension. I and all other contributors would share the title of "Co-author" and the project would always be open source.

[Jim Hoyle]

Fantastic! Once TIRE starts working a bit more reliably, I'll be happy to participate in improving the Options UI and it's css if needed.

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[Ory Zaidenvorm]

Hi Chuck,

That's very understandable! Fret not, it's all pretty straight forward assuming you have had experience with source control systems in the past (although the machinations are different from the central source control systems that you've probably had exposure to).

Firstly it's really important to understand basic concepts in Git itself: https://rogerdudler.github.io/git-guide/

Specifically for branching and pull request I suggest you spend a minute or two reading:

https://guides.github.com/activities/contributing-to-open-source/

https://help.github.com/articles/fork-a-repo/

If you have any specific questions I'll be glad to help - drop me an email :-)

At the current stage of this project I suggest if possible you maintain the main branch. Other developers can fork and add stuff or fix stuff and when ready submit a pull request that you can review and accept (merge into the main branch) or decline with comments of what is needed for it to be merged back in. This process can always be changed later. 

What do you think?

Ory

[Chuck Baker]

Thanks for the info, Ory.

First let me apologize for the late reply. It's been very busy and hectic here the last few weeks (including the marriage of my youngest daughter - that was a week-long event!).

I will be retiring at the end of May (not programming, just from my regular day job).  At that point I will have plenty of time to indulge in my hobby/passion of software development. Until then I will, unfortunately, not be able to devote the attention the TIRE project requires.

I am perfectly open to the idea of maintaining the main branch of the project.  But if any other developer wants to take over the project before the end of May, I am willing to do that also.

[Tasha Wills]

Not sure what the issue is for you that it's not working correctly. I downloaded Lazarus Form Recovery a few days ago and it's works great for me on all websites. Just to be sure you are using it correctly. I recommend reading this post. :) https://www.technorms.com/20600/lazarus-form-recovery-save-lost-data-chrome

[Z Jones]

Chuck,

Coming new to this discussion as I looked into related maintenance issues.  I've helped support the open-sourcing of several projects onto GitHub, I'd be happy to help setup and maintain the repo there, field your questions about using GIthub – particularly during the period you'd get adjusted to it.  I've gained lots of Lazarus, and it would be my pleasure.

Glad to to any of this before the end of May, if you like.

[Chuck Baker]

Z Jones,

Thank you for the offer to get the GitHub repo functioning properly.  I upload all source files to GitHub about three months ago. (https://github.com/Shadoefax/TIRE-for-Chrome) under my account.  No progress has been made to date, but I'm not sure what the process is.  Since your expertise with GitHub is much more advanced than mine, perhaps you can tell me what I need to do next.  If you prefer, you may re-create the repo under your account to maintain it.  We don't need to wait until May.  As far as I'm concerned, it can be done ASAP.

[Chuck Baker]

I finally retired from my day-job and am able to get back to extension development!

I've spent the last few weeks working on TIRE and have a new beta version ready for testing.  If anyone has the time or inclination to help beta test, the latest version is available on my TIRE forum.

To keep the discussion in a more readable form, I would appreciate any comments/suggestions be posted in that forum.  The forum does require registration, but I try to be quick about activating new users.

------
Chuck Baker

[glyko]

Very cool, extremely interested in this project! I'll give it a whirl in the next week to see how it works. If you don't hear back from me that means I'm 100% satisfied, if I have any issues or suggestions I'll make sure to post them to your forums!

Keep up the good work!

[Athena24]

Awesome Chuck!!

[Chuck Baker]

TIRE v1.0 available for testing.

This version has many enhancements and fixes. Pages (and domains) can be whitelisted and/or blacklisted. (Blacklisting is for pages/domains that currently don't work quite right with TIRE - like w3schools.com.)

The TIRE toolbar icon will now display a badge to indicate the status of a page. Examples are "NWL" (not whitelisted), "BL" (blacklisted), "N/A" (not available e.g., 'chrome' urls), and "Opts" (TIRE options page). No badge indicates that TIRE is active on that page and will scan and store all text input. Whitelisting can be set in TIRE Options to "All", "All except blacklisted", or "Individual" (this means any particular page must be whitelisted for TIRE to be functional on that page).

I am still working on a few tweaks, but would appreciate any beta testers pointing out anything I've missed.

The new version can be download from the TIRE forum.

[Alex K.]

I'm waiting for official Chrome extension since it a way more safe to try it.

[Chuck Baker]

TIRE v1.0.1 available for download.

I believe this extension is just about ready for production release.  This new version has many enhancements and fixes. The documentation in TIRE Options > About has been updated and explains all the TIRE features.

Please post problems/comments/suggestions in the TIRE forum.

[Stephen]

Haven't registered for your forum, so posting problem here - See Attached image.

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[Stephen]

Must have been a permission issue. Works fine now.

[Chuck Baker]

I've just uploaded TIRE v1.0.3 to the Chrome webstore.  This version has had many changes since the original one publish last year (v0.0.0.6).  The way that page data is now stored is now different and is not compatible with the old version.  This update will start collecting text input from scratch.  I would advise that after installation, you click the button in TIRE Options > Advanced > Import/Export TIRE data > Reset TIRE data to default. You should also check out the other options to customize TIRE the way it works best for you.

 If you have any questions or problems, please start a thread in the TIRE support forum.

[Chuck Baker]

It seems there was a little hiccup during the publishing on the webstore.  Version 1.0.2 was active for about an hour or so, but the current version is 1.0.3.  If you have v1.0.2 installed, please update it.

[Tet Ming Chai]

On 2017年9月21日周四 06:46 Chuck Baker <cbak...@gmail.com> wrote:

It seems there was a little hiccup during the publishing on the webstore.  Version 1.0.2 was active for about an hour or so, but the current version is 1.0.3.  If you have v1.0.2 installed, please update it.

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[Giorgi Gzirishvili]

I checked out TIRE. It's okay, but I liked another extension better — check out Typio Form Recovery. I also gave the developer some feedback on it; so, hopefully, it'll improve even more.

[Lance E Sloan]

FWIW, Lazarus: Form Recovery has worked very well for me over the past few years.  It may not be perfect, but it worked well enough.

I noticed this discussion today because Lazarus has stopped working for me.  When I checked Chrome's extension management page, beside the extension, it says, "This extension violates the Chrome Web Store policy.".  I tried to find Lazarus in the web store, but it is no longer there, not even a newer version that redresses its policy violations.

I may be able to continue running Lazarus as though it were a locally-developed extension.  Depending on its policy violations, that may not be a wise thing.  Besides, it's probably better for me to pick some other extension that has support.

Still, when this kind of thing happens, I'd appreciate it if Google would give details of why the extension has been removed from the store and disabled in my browser.  It would be better to keep the extension's page in the store, with a notice and its installation button disabled.

[Michael Gantenbein]

Lazarus 3.0.6 has always been working fine and still does.

Just recently Google removed it from the Web Store and the most annoying part is that Chrome keeps disabling the addon.

Damn I'm lost without this addon. Saved me so many times from rage smashing my screen over those noobish websites where you have to try 7 times to fill a form before it actually eats the captcha and such.

[Chuck Baker]

Have you tried TIRE yet?

[Jim Hoyle]

Typio Form Recovery ( https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/typio-form-recovery/djkbihbnjhkjahbhjaadbepppbpoedaa?hl=en ) seems to be currently the best.

[Ted Wozniak]

Sorry to be a pain in the ass, but there's always the old-fashioned way (which is slightly more labor intensive, but GUARANTEED to save 90-100 of your text!

Have either word processing app open or System Notebook open.

Every so often as you type, right-click in the text box and choose "Select All" from the pop-up menu. Right-click over the highlighted area and then choose "Copy".

Go to WP/Notebook window and right-click then select "Paste" from the menu.

Voila!

Like I said - it's a little pain-in-the-ass but worth it and doesn't rely on the reliability of a form-saving app (like Lazarus), so even if your browser crashes the form content is saved on your PC (Hopefully THAT doesn't crash too!)

=============================================================================================================================

[Vesna Sunrider]

Lazarus was a real lifesaver for me, on both Firefox and Chrome. Then firefox 50-something disabled it but I could still use it on Chrome, and today I found out I can't use it on Chrome anymore. >:( The only replacement for firefox has low reviews and now I've installed two extensions in chrome in hopes they will work for me as good as Lazarus did (but I would like it most to have Lazarus up and running; however, the developer seems to have given up on it). :/

[Chuck Baker]

Have you tried TIRE yet?

[Amanda Nelson]

I would be more than willing to help with beta testing!!! This has happened to me a lot lately &  again just a few minutes ago. It is beyond aggravating. I'm still going from one page to another hoping for some unheard miracle, so that I don't have to retype it all, which also means trying to remember everything I typed as well.

[Chuck Baker]

You can install TIRE from the Chrome Store: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/text-input-recover-extens/gjhalkgpmhdpbfjdmeghbdbmbannipjf

I am in the process of updating the extension to include timestamping the saved entries so they may be deleted after a certain age.  This new version should be available soon.

[Daniel Blumentritt]

I find it incredible that there is no proper way to recover your lost form input in Google Chrome. As many know, Textarea Cache on Firefox has much wider form support than Lazarus.

Three and a half years later and Google still hasn't corrected this AND they banned one of the best extensions for it. Sadly typical.

[Chuck Baker]

What extension was banned?  My TIRE extension is intended as replacement for Lazarus and is still available on the Chrome webstore.

[Daniel Blumentritt]

Lazarus was banned. I used to use it and it was incredibly simple and useful. Am trying out TIRE right now. Seems decent so far but hard to tell much after such a short time.

[Michael Rajchandra]

@Chuck Baker Hats of to you buddy... I just stumbled upon this thread in search or a replacement to both Lazarus and Typio and noticed that you have undyingly worked hard since 9 June 2016 to make TIRE, giving us all a replacement for Lazarus, I am delighted and will install it immediately... 
Thank you for your selfless contribution and code charity to help make the lives of many of us easier... 

God bless, hope you get more in return than you have given ... 

thank you.

On Thursday, 9 June 2016 01:38:52 UTC+5:30, Chuck Baker wrote:

Since it has been over a year since any progress has been made, I guess we can assume that the new project has been abandoned.  I think I'll have a go at it.

I've been developing Firefox extensions for over a decade and am not new to the process.  However, all the Fx extensions I've developed were with the soon-to-be deprecated XUL/XPCOM framework in favor of WebExtensions.  I've already written three or four Chrome extensions with WebExtensions and have found it severely limiting compared to XPCOM.  Nonetheless, I was able to re-write one of my extensions (Paste Email Plus) to work with Chrome (Paste Email Plus for Chrome).  That extension has some similarities to what is being discussed here.  Paste Email Plus parses the DOM for all input fields and allows users to paste a predefined text string from a dropdown list.  A form fill recovery extension would also have to parse the DOM for input fields, but would save the field's value in a nonvolatile database.

One potential problem would be the limitations WebExtensions sets on storage.  Chrome extensions can only store 102,400 bytes in the cloud and 5,242,880 bytes locally. This includes the database overhead so the actual number of characters is less.  The database would have to store the URL of the page, the ID of the field, and the text content of that field.  Fields that have no ID cannot be stored.  Ideally, the database would be saved each time a field's value is changed, but this may impact performance.  Also, storage is done asynchronously so no guarantees on how quickly it is done. A browser crash or power outage would almost certainly corrupt the database, so some sort of backup mechanism should be employed.

At some point, I would require beta testers to help debug the extension.  Would anyone here be willing to help?

[Sam Damon]

Ted, you forgot one crucial step:  Save the file everytime you paste new text.  Otherwise, it's not going to help you if the computer crashes.  My alternative to your suggestion is to paste the text into an email editor.  I simply paste it into Gmail online.  It automatically saves drafts every few seconds so even if computer crashes or completely dies, the text is saved in the cloud.  Another advantage is that I can retrieve the text on any other device, including smartphones.

[Sam Damon]

Yes, I tried TIRE but ultimately removed it due to a quirk/bug that resulted from low disk space.  One of my computers is forever suffering from very low disk space, sometimes surviving on 0 megs.  While other apps and extensions would simply stop working, TIRE would constantly popup with warnings, with no way to disable them -- with the end result of freezing my browser completely.  Crashing was ALWAYS the result.  I finally disabled it and then removed it.  The extension should just recognize that there was no space and stop trying to save data after giving us a warning.   All my other extensions, like those that save your browsing session do just that.  They simply stop doing their job.  But TIRE stops the browser from functioning.  Once that is fixed, I'll try TIRE again.

[Sam Damon]

Ditto.  I relied on Lazarus in both Chrome and Firefox, and until last month (Aug), when my computer died, it was working fine.  I can't remember for sure but I believe the secret to prevent Chrome from disabling it -- and any non-approved extension -- is to turn on Developer's Mode.  Once I did that, Lazarus was never disabled again.  Now, the problem is finding the extension again so that I can install it on my new computer.