How to capture status bar text in Firefox v3.5.3

[bumblefoot2004]

IDEA: I am looking for a program that can capture all of the text that appears in Firefox's status bar (v3.5.3). I want to capture the text so I can then manually enter web addresses in AdBlock Plus (as filters). After a filter is activated AdBlock Plus blocks all traffic from the addresses, which makes web surfing a lot faster since garbage websites are summarily blocked from transmitting anything to your web browser. The problem is that the text that appears in the status bar appears and then disappears so quickly. Some of the referenced web pages can take a long time to respond, which means the web browser sits idle, doing nothing until the unwanted page finally responds.

An example webpage that I have noticed is frequently linked to the page I'm viewing is something like www.google.analytics.com -> sounds like google is tracking my every move, in order to serve up ads.

Perhaps someone can make an app that captures all text that appears in a specific region of the screen (of course, user-definable)? That might be more useful than just capturing status bar text. Plus it would be able to capture text in other browsers, etc.

Hopefully my request doesn't sound totally retarded. Thanks to everyone who replies.

[housetier]

you can use the extension noscript to stop google analytics.

And I strongly doubt that domain has something to do with google...

[Innuendo]

Even better, use the extension Ghostery. In addition to Google Analytics it will block 190+ trackers from watching your every move. (And it beats having to set up rules for each and every one in NoScript).

[bumblefoot2004]

Many thanks to housetier and Innuendo for your replies. What I really am looking for is something that captures all of the text that appears in the Firefox status bar (or any other web browsers); I just want to know what webpages are loaded or referenced whenever I visit a page. I'm sorry for not being clearer about what I'm looking for.

[awopbamboo]

This seems easy enough, I'm happy to do this?

[awopbamboo]

Ok,

Try this for a start.

Download latest TextCapture.....

Its very simple and basic. 

other text captures I have seen tend to capture area's of the screen, this isn't much good if you move or resize the window you are capturing from, so I have made sure this captures from a particular control on screen, no matter where it is.

So, if you want to capture the Firefox status bar....

1. Fire up firefox
2. Fire up TextCapture
3. Click the 'Detect' button
4. Hold the mouse pointer over the text/control you want to monitor (i.e. the text thats currently showing on the statusbar of firefox).
5. Wait a few seconds, a message will appear for you to confirm the text you are hovering over (you main need to move the main window to see the message)
6. Confirm if the text it has picked up is correct, by clicking OK.
7. Thats it, now any text value that goes into that control will be logged.
8. Click stop when you want to finish.

Let me know how you get on.

[awopbamboo]

If you can think of any way's to improve, let me know. I suppose I could start by correcting the spelling mistakes I made on the main screen!

[bumblefoot2004]

I do have some suggestions and some explanations of some minor problems I've run into. I would like to send you some screenshots of what I'm seeing, if that's ok with you. I'll zip up the screenshots then upload the .zip archive as an attachment. I've attached a screenshot as an attachment that gives you a good idea of what I'm talking about.

Also, does TextCapture "poll" the targeted area? If so, what is the time interval, and can it be adjusted by, say, a slider bar? The reason I'm asking is because of the speed that text appears and disappears (or changes) in the status bar. The text changes very quickly. Can TextCapture capture rapidly changing text? Thanks for your help.

[housetier]

there is an extension that lets you inspect the request and response headers which FF exchanges with servers. I wonder if those can be made to log the requested domains or URLs.

[awopbamboo]

Hi

A slider is easy enough to add, however it is already polling 50 times per second, I dount its missingmuch if anything.

Not sure why you are having that problem (was it with FireFox)? Perhaps I should download it and give it a go too. See if I can get the same problem.

Capturing a small rectangle, and interprutting that to text, would be quite a slow process, compared to what it is doing at the moment. 

I'll have a look tomorrow (its 20:30 now) time for a beer!