No to RSI - yes to filling out online forms quickly and easily! (RoboForm)

Member Name: wjwallace

Product:	RoboForm
Date:	10/05/02 (319 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: quick, easy, free!

Disadvantages: didn't like the default plugin to my browser

As an avid internet competition subscriber, I have probably filled out countless hundreds of web based forms asking me for my name, address, email address etc.

Now I like to look after myself, and preventing RSI whilst maintaing my sanity has always been high on the agenda.

As such, after filling out the umpteenth form today, I made the informed decision to try and find some mechanism which would do it form me.

So off to ww.cnet.com (which I can happily suggest as a good port of call for software downloads), to search for said tool.

Low and behold, the most downloaded automatic form filling tool available (with over 72,000 downloads as opposed to a rather measly 10,000 + for the second place rival) was a product named AI RoboForm.

Great name. It reminded me of RoboCop, and memories of my youth, so was a must download.

The premise behind the toll is simple enough. If you are viewing a web page which requires you to fill out numerous 'fields' of information, it will automaticaly pop-up and give you the option of allowing it to auto complete them for you.

Quite clever really. But it is in the method of execution, and more importantly the quantity of features which set this product apart from similar ones which I truied before making my decision.

Firstly, it integrates itself into your web browser so that you are not necessarily aware of its existance. This basically means that it is constantly checking the web pages you view to see if it can complete any fields of information for you.

It works with most Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator versions, so that should cover the vast majority of users.

Secondlyit allows you to setup multiple 'profiles'. Ideal if you have multiple people using your PC, or perhaps you wish to setup a 'real' and a 'spoof' profile, which can be useful when you are forced to complete a form on occasion, but youdo not wish to give reals details
.

Under each profile it allows you to enter such details as: name, birth, address, phone/email,credit card, bank account, ids, job/business, default password and custom.

You are not forced to enter any of these fields. You may like me wish only to enter those which are non-sensitive, i.e. name/address/email.

I am perhaps being somewhat sceptical here, but if I have to enter my credit card or bank account details online, I will do so manually - once I am happy with the security of the particular site.

You can choose for the tool to automatically fill out a form (allowing you to select which profile at that time), to fill out and automatically submit, say no for now, or no for ever for this site.

Fantastic.

Even more importantly, as well as user based 'profiles', it is possible to set up site specific 'profiles'. It can store the details of the site you are on under a seperate profile, so that you can use it again and again.

A typical usage of this feature is as follows.

On www.freeserve.com/entertainment there are a number of competitions. They ask a simple multiple choice question and then require you to fill out the required fields of information.

When RoboForm kicked in, I chose for it to complete the form for me using my standard user profile. However, its date of birth format, and that used by the site were different. So, after completing these manually for the first time, I saved the profile for the site, and all subsequent competitions only require em to click one button on RoboForm, and choose my multiple choice answer.

A great tool. I should have used it earlier.

I hope you find it useful too.

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