Blanking out webpage in UI

[slash30 2]

Is there anyway to "black out" the interface screen or display a different html doc or spiffy java script other than the one it's parsing?

 

So basically "hide the magic" of what the bot is doing?

 

As I type this I realize the answer is no but it would be useful...

[Aaron Nimocks 19]

Minimize?

 

Thats the only thing I can think of.

[Guest Jim]

Here's some javascript to cover the page and display a message:

document.body.style.overflow = "hidden";
var overlay = document.createElement("div");
overlay.style.position = "absolute";
overlay.style.top = "0px";
overlay.style.left = "0px";
overlay.style.backgroundColor = "#000";
overlay.style.color = "#FFF";
overlay.style.width = "100%";
overlay.style.height = "100%";
overlay.innerHTML = "Please wait... We're working on something here. ";
document.body.appendChild(overlay);

 

You could make a sub that executes this javascript and call that sub after every time you navigate to a new page.

 

This overlay shouldn't affect anything in your script unless you're dealing with captchas.

[slash30 2]

Thanks Aaron. That works perfectly!

 

Yeah... I was just thinking that if I decided to compile the exe and sell it, I might want to "protect" some of the way it works. Plus if there was just a live summary page of events that could be displayed as they were completed- it may be a lot cleaner for the end user and a little more interesting than watching the bot surf.

 

"Summary:

 

URL Scraping... Done

Improving Aaron Nimocks One Liners... In Process"

 

TJ

[slash30 2]

 

You could make a sub that executes this javascript and call that sub after every time you navigate to a new page.

 

This overlay shouldn't affect anything in your script unless you're dealing with captchas.

 

Nice Jim thanks!

 

That's just what I was looking for, I guess I need to improve my javascript skills they are going to be very useful here.

 

I'm really more of a hacker than a coder. (Which is why Ubot is great for me.) I've mostly done a few needed scripts in PHP and Perl to parse databases and such. I think integrating these with ubot- I can automate some cool stuff.

 

TJ

[slash30 2]

Just tested and it works perfectly. Thanks again.

 

TJ

[webautomationlab 21]

Great tip, but the utility of this is hindered by showing the URL in the location bar. How much can the user see in the window anyway? What you clicked on? They can't see how you selected the attributes etc. They can't see list creation, list item filtering etc.

 

The UI for compiled bots needs an overhaul at some point.

[slash30 2]

Great tip, but the utility of this is hindered by showing the URL in the location bar. How much can the user see in the window anyway? What you clicked on? They can't see how you selected the attributes etc. They can't see list creation, list item filtering etc.

 

The UI for compiled bots needs an overhaul at some point.

 

I imagine if I really wanted to hide it I would just link cloak everything. But it's actually more to just give status updates and maybe some show stuff that's better looking than the bot surfing pages.

[Chris 2]

Here's some javascript to cover the page and display a message:

document.body.style.overflow = "hidden";
var overlay = document.createElement("div");
overlay.style.position = "absolute";
overlay.style.top = "0px";
overlay.style.left = "0px";
overlay.style.backgroundColor = "#000";
overlay.style.color = "#FFF";
overlay.style.width = "100%";
overlay.style.height = "100%";
overlay.innerHTML = "Please wait... We're working on something here. ";
document.body.appendChild(overlay);

 

You could make a sub that executes this javascript and call that sub after every time you navigate to a new page.

 

This overlay shouldn't affect anything in your script unless you're dealing with captchas.

 

This is a neat trick, thanks! Anyone know a way to make this active even while navigating from page to page? I'd love to be able to hide which pages are being navigated to and what's happening on them for a portion of one of my bots when I give it away.

[Chris 2]

you can create custom UI's this way too.

create page elements with JS, then choose by attribute to read/change.

 

can also save entered UI data to a txt and load it with the UI when run again.

 

So this would allow the user to input their data (which will be used as variables) inside of the web browser portion itself, right? You could even use the "while" command in conjunction with this to make a bot that is interacted with completely in the browser portion which would be sweet...if my thinking is right ;-)

[Grey 1]

Please clarify something for me. Are you saying that you can call a sub that runs javascript in Ubots browser window without displaying the URL that the bot is working on? If yes, my next 3 questions are - can you run all kinds of html (from a single webpage) within a sub? What about a multi-page website? Or (the next, most obvious step if that's the case..) a web-based app? Can you point me to related documentation or tutorials regarding this so I can fill in my gaps in knowledge?

 

Here's some javascript to cover the page and display a message:

document.body.style.overflow = "hidden";
var overlay = document.createElement("div");
overlay.style.position = "absolute";
overlay.style.top = "0px";
overlay.style.left = "0px";
overlay.style.backgroundColor = "#000";
overlay.style.color = "#FFF";
overlay.style.width = "100%";
overlay.style.height = "100%";
overlay.innerHTML = "Please wait... We're working on something here. ";
document.body.appendChild(overlay);

 

You could make a sub that executes this javascript and call that sub after every time you navigate to a new page.

 

This overlay shouldn't affect anything in your script unless you're dealing with captchas.

 

Edit: Just found all the additional "how to scrape _____ " vids on vimeo, but that doesn't seem to be what I need.