How to automatically capture browser screen/page shots

[ReadyOne]

Suppose you sat someone down and gave them a URL for a site. Then some demon watched the pages displayed (and typed input like URLs), making a record that can be played back later for analysis.

We're looking for a tool that lets us get a feel for how users actually worked. What pages did they visit? How long did they stay? What seemed to catch their interest?

I can get a URL trace (any Net Nanny type program), but pages are often dynamically generated. I can't tell what the user actually saw by looking at a URL that starts some server side database by passing a long string of meaningless (to me) characters. I just want to literally see what the user saw.

The other alternative is a program that does a screenshot every "n" seconds. The ones I've seen aren't too smart; it doesn't take long for frequent screen shots at a decent resolution to fill up a hard disk. Plus, you don't know from the shot if the screen has been completely painted yet (or the browser is still waiting for more content to arrive).

Plus, there's the scrolling problem. How far down did a user scroll? What did they miss seeing because it was off the visible screen?

What would be nice is something (a BHO?) that saved the rendered page at the time of every mouse click or last scroll wheel turn. The assumption is that the user won't click until they've seen the whole screen, and they won't be clicking every second. And when they paused surfing, the log file wouldn't fill up with basically the same screen shot over and over.

Has anyone seen a program that meets these requirements? It can be browser specific, IE 6 preferred. We might even go though the trouble of setting up a proxy server if it could do the monitoring job.

Thanks!

 

[Gangrif]

Depends on your level of expertise i guess.
I have a network at home, and i run a unix-like machine, mostly for learning purposes (you're probably getting the feeling that I'm a Geek, you mgiht be right.. ).
If i want to watch what's going on, on my network, u run a packet sniffer. It ONLY caputres traffic (weather its inbound or out) on my network. So its not invading anyone elses privacy across the internet.

The one i personally run on my unix machine is called Snort.
However there are plenty of them out there for Windows (if youre running windows), one of them that comes to mind is "Ethereal". Its a lot more friendly than Snort too. Usually they operate in a real-time sort of manner, you can watch the current traffic. Usually theyll have an option to log the traffic. Itll show you every packet that passed through your network in the time you had it running. You can pick through those logs to see what web sites people viewed, and really whatever else they might have been doing, if you know what youre looking for.

 

[Ezzy]

Why don't you look at the history and view what is cached?

This will give a good idea of where they went, but the other question I have are you setting this up in a work environment and are you making sure that everybody knows they are going to be spying on them?

Most workplace policy makes visiting porn or "other" sites a sacking offence.

If thisis being done to study internet usage, what are you doing to safeguard users identities so they can't be acted against?

 

[ReadyOne]

A suggestion was made that the remote desktop/remote assistance feature in XP could be used if there was some way to record what happens locally.

Set up a remote assistance session with the PC in the test room, don't touch the monitoring PC. You can watch what happens on the monitoring PC as it echos the user's actions on the test PC.

Now if there was some sort of recording software to run on the monitoring PC that would "make a movie"...


Another suggestion is to use some sort of automated testing tool script generator. Turn in on in "record macro" mode, run the tests, then play back the macro created by the user's actions during the test. Anyone ever use such a package?

 

[ReadyOne]

Depends on your level of expertise i guess.
I have a network at home, and i run a unix-like machine, mostly for learning purposes (you're probably getting the feeling that I'm a Geek, you mgiht be right.. ).
If i want to watch what's going on, on my network, u run a packet sniffer. It ONLY caputres traffic (whether its inbound or out) on my network. So its not invading anyone elses privacy across the internet.

The one i personally run on my unix machine is called Snort.
{snip}

Sniffing could work if there was some sort of "pseudo browser" that could use the log to take its input from the transmissions recorded there.

One problem is that, due to scripting, the stuff sent with a post request could be heavily massaged, meaning the script language on the page translated the user's selections into a condensed or preparsed configuration.

Also, encryption might get in the way. If the keys were sent over the wire then they could be recovered, but if a public key system were used, or the key were imbedded in a java applet, it might be impossable to decode the transmission from the log.

There are packages, such as Surfer Logger, which will capture the URLs and get/post data, organizing it for display in text format.

I expect a log processer would not be able to do much more unless it were very VERY sophisticated.

Still, a great idea. Please keep them coming!

 

[ReadyOne]

An aside...

I used the word "j-a-v-a-s-c-r-i-p-t" (no hyphens) in a previous post here, and clicked the 'preview post' button.

Reading my post, I noticed that the BBS system we use replaced the word with astericks, both in the formatted post and in the message composition window.

1. I wasn't aware there was some sort of censoring for particular words going on...

2. Why would the particular word I used be on the censor's list?

(I replaced the word with the phrase "scripting language".)

 

[Gangrif]

I;ve been looking for something that i could use to "view" the logs created by snort too, other than a text editor. the logs arent all that easy to read when theyre just poured into a text file.
The best answer i can give to that is, let me know if you find one.

and i can see how JS might be concidered a naughty word. heh. but i didnt think any word was too naughty for these forums.

 

[Ezzy]

I used the word "j-a-v-a-s-c-r-i-p-t" (no hyphens) in a previous post here, and clicked the 'preview post' button.

Reading my post, I noticed that the BBS system we use replaced the word with astericks, both in the formatted post and in the message composition window.

1. I wasn't aware there was some sort of censoring for particular words going on...

2. Why would the particular word I used be on the censor's list?

(I replaced the word with the phrase "scripting language".)

The word you used is the first part of any ********* so it has been disabled and it can't be used.

This is to stop malicious code being used on the forums.

 

[jradek75]

At my work, we use Spector Pro. It's made by SpectorSoft. www.spectorsoft.com It's a little pricey, but amazing. It will record sceenshots in gray scale and temporarily shut down during inactivity to conserve space. It plays it back like a VCR. It can record in stealth mode. Once you get past the Big Brotherness, it's pretty cool. If I remeber correctly, a days recording will take up about 50-60 MB. A bit expensive for my liking though($99).