CoScripter: the Firefox addon that brings automation to your browser
I’ve come across this amazing Firefox extension called CoScripter (made by IBM) that states to be “a system for recording, automating, and sharing processes performed in a web browser”.
The examples shown in the demo flash video just demonstrate how this can be used to perform and share some simple tasks like looking for property online or Googling your name. But there is much more potential here. Far more!
Imagine what this little baby can do with some of the more routine tasks done in bioinformatics. It’s not my field of expertise, but I can see the potential here. And since you can share the “tasks” and watch the steps take place one at a time, it brings the whole sharing and open science act into place, once again.
I’d like some of my bioinformatics readers to give this a try, say what they think and share their tasks. Someone like myself can then pick up a routine task and follow the steps and see how things are done. Sort of like an interactive screencast, so to say.
[HT: Justin Blanton]
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Yeah, right, that’s what we bioinformaticists do all day long - we blankly stare at the NCBI BLAST page and click on the same ol’ parameters!
No, of course, not. In fact, real bioinformaticists don’t use web browsers. (of course, like “real programmers don’t use perl”, this is a bit of an exaggeration.)
It wasn’t my intention to make it look like that is what bioinformatics professionals do all day. But there are certainly ways that this great script can be used in that field, I believe.
At least as a didactic tool, this could provide to be a great tool.
Interesting, but doesn’t this then open up a gaping hole in the (relative) security of Firefox? Yet another vector of attack, IMO. I’d much rather use AutoIt v3 for my automation tecniques.