How to access unrelated browser window?

Question

So I know this might sound crazy, as it is technically a security concern which I understand. So I'm just trying to find out if there's any ideas on how to handle something like this.

Anyways, long story short, I was told to look into figuring out a possible way to scrape information from another browser window/tab. I have been asked to do this because, and I know this sounds crazy too, but the users of our website are incompetent enough to not be able to copy/paste and or type correctly something from a different website. I know it's tough for some to have to have several things in their workflow, but this is basically what they do: Go to their first website (after logging in) and bring up a record with information on it...including an identification number. Then, the user should take that number and go to the second website, our website (after logging in), and type it that number in a textbox (and eventually do some other stuff). But we have found that getting that identification number from the first website to ours is difficult for them. Some copy/paste correctly, some copy/paste too much text from the page, some write it down on paper then type it in our website, and some just seem to have trouble visually "copying" the number from site to site.

What I was thinking was that this could happen: the user would have already brought up the record on the first site, then they would come to ours. They could click a button, and that would run whatever I/we here come up with, that goes and finds the other browser window, finds the specific text needed, and puts it in our textbox. Sounds simple, right? HA.

The first website is not owned or managed by us in any way, otherwise this might be a little easier.

A little bit of background information: unfortunately, I'm technically targeting IE >= 10 through 9, so if there's a solution just for this (why I tagged vbscript), then that's great. If there's a broader solution (like with an applet or browser extensions... http://crossrider.com/ ), then that's even better, but not important. If it helps, we already have a hidden applet on the page that accesses the OS (yes, it has the mayscript attribute on the element so it is able to), so I thought that could be something to incorporate with. Also, the way I expect to know which window/tab to access is by URL and/or document title - either will be very specific.

We cannot install stuff on the users' computers, at least something outside of the browser (like extensions). I'm not sure how browser extensions work, so I'm wondering if they'd need to be "installed".

I know of HTML5's postMessage, but it only has partial support in IE (and none in IE <= 7)...and the partial support refers to not including exactly what I might need. It also requires that the other website be listening (which we don't have control over, but technically might be possible to include). So it doesn't count :)

The things I found with Java are to possibly find the list of processes currently running, but I don't know how to access/control one. Especially how to access the browser's Document.

And vbscript...I just don't know. I don't know if it's just me, but I can't seem to find good documentation on it, so I'm not sure what can be done with it.

Even if I could get control of the other browser window, I don't know how I would get information from it (like the DOM).

I'm not looking for code, just ideas...I'll do the research. And although it may sound impossible, don't just brush it off because Javascript can't do it - I haven't.

UPDATE:

I ended up developing a browser extension with http://www.crossrider.com/ which wasn't ideal, but works.

Answer 1

You could use a bookmarklet for this ... the user would have to drag the bookmarklet into their bookmarks bar on their browser, but if doing that wasn't beyond your user's abilities/the technical restrictions you've mentioned, then you'd definitely be able to send the information you need back to your site that way.

You'd just need to give your users instructions to:
i) drag the bookmarklet into their bookmarks bar on their browser
ii) go to the website in question and click the bookmarklet

you could code the bookmarklet so that it would grab the info you need, and redirect the browser to your website. All done in one click.

I think you may be thinking about it in the wrong way when you talk about posting from one 'window' to another. You could write the bookmarklet so that it would do a http post of whatever information you wanted into your site from the other site, and it could also redirect the window that they were looking at when they clicked it (the other site) to your site. Or if, for some reason, you didn't want to redirect the the window that they had the 'other' site in to your site, then you could add a listener to your site so that once the bookmarklet had posted the info you require then the window with your displaying could automatically update. The first option would make more sense and be easier though.

Answer 2

Maybe to open the other site from button/link resided in your site using window.open() method?