Is there any way to completely duplicate the state of a current tab in Google Chrome? I want an exact copy of the current state of the page without having to reload the page in another tab.
An example use case:
While browsing a "slideshow" on a news website, I want to preserve the current slide that I'm on, but create a duplicate so that I can continue viewing the next slide. If I simply Right-Click and "Duplicate" the tab, the new page will completely Reload, reprocessing all of the Javascript and running the pre-slideshow advertisement again.
In short "NO" you can't.
I am not expert on this
but a similar behavior can be achieved in some ways i know :
Dump the whole DOM
Never tried this though. You can convert the DOM to a string, pass it to the new window and then parse it as a document. This will let you lose your DOM events and State manipulation javascript. (But that's good for your case)
var dtab = window.open('about:blank', 'duplicate_a_tab');
dtab.document.open();
dtab.document.write("... yout html string ..");
dtab.document.close();
Develop an extension
Let the users continue on the current tab with the current state, your extension should be able to capture the screenshot of that area and open that screenshot in new tab. There are plenty of screenshot taking extensions are available in the market.
If that website is your own
You can develop your services that uses state locally like progressive web apps. Give a link separately to 'duplicate' which will eventually open the same URL in different tab with the same local state and with the flag do-not-sync.
This will not work when the user uses browser inbuilt duplicate
feature.
Related
Is it possible to extract multiple resources' URLs in Sources or Network tab of Chrome Dev Tools?
When I want to get URL of a single resource, I can do it with context menu function Copy link address
I can switch to this resource from Network to Sources tab and vice versa, but what if I have a need to get URLs of multiple resources at once? It is very cumbersome to copy them manually if resultset consists of 200-300 resources.
What I've tried so far:
To copy the whole folder from a sources tab, but from this answer I found out it is not possible for now.
To use $(selector) as specified in the Console reference, in a form of
$('img')
in case we need to fetch image URLs.
The complexity of this approach is that it's often hard to distinguish target images on a page that has hundreds of them, and furthermore, multiple versions of the same image (views, previews, small-sized icons and etc.) I.e. to match the element inside the tag with the needed resource is not that easy, as it seems. Also not all the file types have dedicated tags (as in the case with img).
Maybe I should use src tag with some modifiers? Any other suggestions?
make sure Network panel is active
switch devtools Dock side in the menu to a detached (floating) window
Next time you can press CtrlShiftD to toggle docking.
in the now detached devtools press CtrlShifti or ⌘⌥i on MacOS,
which will open devtools-on-devtools in a new window
Run the following code in this new window:
copy(UI.panels.network.networkLogView.dataGrid.rootNode().flatNodes.map(n => n.request().url()).join('\n'))
It'll copy the URLs of all requests that match current filter to clipboard.
Hint: save the code as a Snippet and run it in devtools-on-devtools window via the commands palette, CtrlP or ⌘P then type the snippet's name.
In old Chrome the code was different:
copy(UI.panels.network._networkLogView._dataGrid._rootNode._flatNodes.map(n => n._request._url).join('\n'))
copy(UI.panels.network.networkLogView.dataGrid.rootNode().flatNodes.map(n => n.request().urlInternal).join('\n'))
I found the above method too clunky, its way easier to use fiddler:
open fiddler (possibly install it)
filter on the domain name that you are interested in
clear the screen
refresh the web page
Select the fiddler output
right click and select copy just the URL's
Based on #wOxxOm, this worked for me:
var nodes = UI.panels.network._networkLogView._dataGrid._rootNode._flatNodes,
urls = [];
nodes.forEach(function() {
var req = arguments[0]._request;
if (req !== undefined) {
urls.push(req.url());
}
});
A selection and simple copy (Ctrl+C) work for me.
I select URLs in the Url column by the mouse.
Then I use the context menu to copy the list to the clipboard.
The clipboard contents then I can paste to Excel and get the URL list. It adds some empty lines though.
My web application is mimicing the UI of my desktop application, flow is as follows
Select Task in browser window
Change any Options and then start
Show Progress in same browser window, the progress bar goess back to server every 5 seconds checking progress.
When task has completed we show report in new tab
and go back to Select task Window,
this is done by running following Javascript in progress page
window.open('/start','_self'); window.open('/reporturl','_blank');
This works fine on my PC but when trying on Safari on OSX and on Android phone and iPad one of two things happen
The progress page becomes the start page but the report page is not opened in tab
The Progress page becomes the report page
My question is does opening window in new tab with _blank have all the problems of using popup windows. If so should I modify my prcoess so that at stage 3 it just displays report page, and then add a back button or navigable footer to the report to allow user to get back to start page ?
I can think of some options you could use instead of new tab.
Modal with Ajax
-- With jQuery it is posible to open modal
dialogs they can be populated with html (or other data) fetched with ajax (async). I am a big fan of these and use them all over my projects. Users will not be annoyed with pop-up warning messages, etc. Once the content is read (or whatever) the user can simply close the dialog. (If I had to make your app I would certainly implement this).
Besides the jQuery dialogs, other modal/dialog scripts are out there. Check out Bootstrap Modal if you like it modern.
Serve report as download
-- Depending on what the user can/will do with the report, it might be interesting to write the report page in a way that it sends back a .pdf file, or another type of file, as download. Loading the URL in a new tab will now always start a download. Triggering this from JS without user interaction might be a problem though (same as with pop-up / new tab). Adding a button to trigger the download on complete will solve this.
I know the question was about the use of tabs.. But try to avoid it. Browsers handle it all in their own way. And many users get confused when suddenly stuff is opening in tabs when they did not ask for it. In case of pop-ups, it is possible for users to turn them of or convert into opening a new tab from within the browser settings. If they have been fiddling with browser defaults, you'll have troubles of keeping the 'flow' of the app the same for all users (and cross browser).
(I am developing a Node.js/Express web application.)
Is there a way to identify a tab and have its identifier saved locally in the browser so that the identifier is persistent across different pages of the same web site?
Example, my web application is opened by the user in two tabs of the same browser. I would like to know that they are opened in different tabs. Even if the user in tab A presses F5 to refresh the page, I (in the client Javascript) would like to know that the page is still in tab A.
Is there a property of window or another object in the DOM that identifies the browser tab?
Nothing simple. However, there are two interesting technologies that may help you solve your problem.
sessionStorage is the closest to what you described. It gives each tab a different Storage object that you can store random IDs in. It doesn't quite work though, because when you open a link in a new tab the second tab gets a copy of the parent page's sessionStorage object, including whatever you stored in the parent page's sessionStorage.
The storage event is probably what you want to use. You can have your tabs communicate directly with each other to coordinate unique IDs or detect multiple tabs being open. See this question which is focused on how to communicate across tabs in javascript.
Some combination of these two technologies will probably help you solve whatever you are trying to accomplish.
Is it possible to extract multiple resources' URLs in Sources or Network tab of Chrome Dev Tools?
When I want to get URL of a single resource, I can do it with context menu function Copy link address
I can switch to this resource from Network to Sources tab and vice versa, but what if I have a need to get URLs of multiple resources at once? It is very cumbersome to copy them manually if resultset consists of 200-300 resources.
What I've tried so far:
To copy the whole folder from a sources tab, but from this answer I found out it is not possible for now.
To use $(selector) as specified in the Console reference, in a form of
$('img')
in case we need to fetch image URLs.
The complexity of this approach is that it's often hard to distinguish target images on a page that has hundreds of them, and furthermore, multiple versions of the same image (views, previews, small-sized icons and etc.) I.e. to match the element inside the tag with the needed resource is not that easy, as it seems. Also not all the file types have dedicated tags (as in the case with img).
Maybe I should use src tag with some modifiers? Any other suggestions?
make sure Network panel is active
switch devtools Dock side in the menu to a detached (floating) window
Next time you can press CtrlShiftD to toggle docking.
in the now detached devtools press CtrlShifti or ⌘⌥i on MacOS,
which will open devtools-on-devtools in a new window
Run the following code in this new window:
copy(UI.panels.network.networkLogView.dataGrid.rootNode().flatNodes.map(n => n.request().url()).join('\n'))
It'll copy the URLs of all requests that match current filter to clipboard.
Hint: save the code as a Snippet and run it in devtools-on-devtools window via the commands palette, CtrlP or ⌘P then type the snippet's name.
In old Chrome the code was different:
copy(UI.panels.network._networkLogView._dataGrid._rootNode._flatNodes.map(n => n._request._url).join('\n'))
copy(UI.panels.network.networkLogView.dataGrid.rootNode().flatNodes.map(n => n.request().urlInternal).join('\n'))
I found the above method too clunky, its way easier to use fiddler:
open fiddler (possibly install it)
filter on the domain name that you are interested in
clear the screen
refresh the web page
Select the fiddler output
right click and select copy just the URL's
Based on #wOxxOm, this worked for me:
var nodes = UI.panels.network._networkLogView._dataGrid._rootNode._flatNodes,
urls = [];
nodes.forEach(function() {
var req = arguments[0]._request;
if (req !== undefined) {
urls.push(req.url());
}
});
A selection and simple copy (Ctrl+C) work for me.
I select URLs in the Url column by the mouse.
Then I use the context menu to copy the list to the clipboard.
The clipboard contents then I can paste to Excel and get the URL list. It adds some empty lines though.
I was thinking of using the tabid to do this, but it seems to change quite often as I am browsing around within the tab. The API reference notes that the tabid is unique within a "browser session". I took this to mean within the lifetime of the browser process, but it seems more likely now that uniqueness is only guaranteed during a session with a specific website. Is there another way I could uniquely identify a tab for its entire life?
Due to prerendering and other factors, tabs can be 'replaced'. This means that tabId can change even if you keep the tab open. chrome.webNavigation.onTabReplaced can be used to capture such events. See https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/webNavigation.html#event-onTabReplaced for more information.
To demonstrate this, following these steps may help:
Make sure that you've requested "tabs" and "webNavigation" request for your extension and your extension doesn't use a non-persistent background page (without background.persistent = true in manifest.json). Also make sure Google is your default search engine and Instant Search is enabled.
Open some website (not Google search).
Execute chrome.tabs.query({}, function(tabs){console.log(tabs)}) in the developer tools of your extension's background page. Look at existing tabs and their ids.
Execute chrome.webNavigation.onTabReplaced.addListener(function(details){console.log(details); in the DevTools.
Type something in the omnibox of that tab to trigger Google Instant and click on the body of the page. You should see the onTabReplaced event fired and the old and new tab ids in the console of the DevTools.
Execute chrome.tabs.query({}, function(tabs){console.log(tabs)}) again and you'll find that tab id actually 'changed'.