Is it possible allow a user select content from a web page and send it to a different server using a Browser plug-in or add-on?
My background is LAMP, C, Javascript, AJAX. I’m pretty knowledgeable about all of these, but I’m rather clueless when it comes to browser add-ons or plug-ins, so forgive me if some of my questions sound somewhat ignorant.
What I’m trying to do:
I’d like to develop a tool that will allow a person reading a web page to be able to select a word on that page, and through a mouse right click or by hitting a button in a browser add-on, send that web to my server, and have my server send back a definition, or translation, or other statistics about that word, displayed in the browser add-on toolbar, or possibly as a pop-up (I’m leaning away from the latter as I want my tool to interfere as little as possible with the target web page being viewed).
In other words:
[INDENT]www.xyz.com -> [web page content] -> client
client -> [selected word] -> www.myserver.com
www.myserver.com -> [info about word] -> client
[/INDENT]
xyz.com is the site serving the content (eg, www.cnn.com, www.tmz.com, etc)
myserver.com is my server, with dictionary or other stats stored in a database.
Obviously, what I want to do here requires cross-site (domain) access. I don’t want a hack, and I don’t want to do it in a way that is considered “illegitimate”, as I may want to pursue this as a for-profit eduction product.
Perhaps it’s not technologically possible, but if it is I think it would be through a browser plug-in, which I know little about and thus this post…
Here are two options I’ve considered:
(1) Browser add-on (specfically, firefox)
[INDENT]For example, a tool like: Web Developer (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60/)
My understanding is that these are written in Javascript, but the user has to specifically install them into their browser (which is fine for my purpose).
Q: Would this be able to implement the functionality I describe above (that is, let the user select words from one domain and send them to my server)?
Possible Downside: This would have to be ported to IE, and every other browser, and may not be an easy port.
[/INDENT]
(2) Internet Explorer “plug-in” using Win32 (that is, a .exe that gets downloaded and run by user on client, which installs the add-on/plug-in to explorer).
[INDENT]example: www.meep.com
Q: Would this be able to implement the functionality I describe above (that is, let the user select words from one domain and send them to my server)?
Any other thoughts or ideas would be appreciated.
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Thanks,
Helo