Chapter 5 - Collaborative scripting for the Web

Today's knowledge workers interact with a variety of Web-based tasks in the course of their jobs. We have found that two of the challenges faced by these workers are automation of repetitive tasks, and support for complex or hard-to-remember tasks. This chapter presents CoScripter, a system that enables users to capture, share, and automate tasks on the Web. CoScripter's most notable features include ClearScript, a scripting language that is both human-readable and machine-understandable, and built-in support for sharing via a Web-based script repository. CoScripter has been used by tens of thousands of people on the Web. Our user studies show that CoScripter has helped people both automate repetitive Web tasks, and share how-to knowledge inside the enterprise.