Contributors: Mathieu d'Aquin (@mdaquin), Alessandro Adamou(@anticitizen79)
The AFEL Browsing History WebExtension is one of the Browsing History Extractors developed in the AFEL Project. It is a browser add-on running in the background while you use the browser in the Web, and sends information about your browsing to the AFEL Data Platform. It will require login onto the AFEL Data Platform, either with an existing account or through registration.
This add-on has been developed as a WebExtension, the preferred format for browser extensions that became a cross-platform standard in 2017.
You can run this WebExtension on any of the following browsers:
- Google Chrome
- Firefox version 50.0 (released Nov 2016) and above
- Opera version 33 and above
- Vivaldi
Microsoft Edge is also picking up support for WebExtensions, however this add-on will only work if and when Microsoft decides to support the history API.
If you want to build the extension from source, you will need the Yarn package manager to install external dependencies.
Whichever installation method you choose, please make sure to read and accept the Terms and Conditions before downloading and activating this browser extension.
- Chrome Web Store: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/afel-activity-monitor/llipmmlocnefdomgmljdfgmlnhaphpoi
- Firefox add-ons: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/afel-activity-monitor/
To ensure you get the latest development version, you should be able to install it as an unpackaged extension after setting your browser to accept developer-mode extensions.
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Download or
git clonethis repository into a local directory. -
Import external dependencies. From the command line:
$ cd browser-history-webext $ yarn installNote that Yarn downloads more content than required by the extension (and included in the Web store distributions): this is expected.
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In your Web browser, choose the menu option for managing extensions (Window → extensions in Chrome; View → Show Extensions in Opera; Tools → Add-ons in Firefox)
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Enable Developer mode for extensions (Debug Add-on in Firefox)
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Select Load unpacked extension (Load Temporary Extension in Firefox) to select the directory where the extension has been downloaded. Some browsers may require you to select the
manifest.jsfile inside, others will just ask you to point to the directory where it resides.
The first time the extension is enabled, a new tab should appear in your browser showing a login page to the AFEL data platform. Please register if you don't already have an account. Once logged in, the extension will have obtained all the details needed to updload data about browsing activity on the AFEL Data Platform. A small icon will have also appeared on the right hand side of the browser's address bar, showing that the extension is active. Clicking on this icon will give you a link to the AFEL User Dashboard where you can monitor your own activity from this and other AFEL extractors.
This extension represents a typical form of user-centric data extractor for the AFEL Data Platform. As such, it is worth detailing the workflow through which this interaction happens. This workflow is described in the diagram below.
where the Extractor application here is the extension and the login page is achieved through a local tab.
The API to provide dataset ID and user key in the platform is part of the Data Catalogue, through the Data Catalogue Process Plugin. The actual use data (in this case, browsing activity data), is transferred to the AFEL Data Platfrom through the Entity Centric API.
A dashboard and mobile application to visualise, explore and even download your own data will be available on the data platform.
We are adding a button to turn off the monitoring done by the extension. Alternatively, you can either instruct your browser to temporarily disable the extension or use the incognito mode when you don't want your activity to be monitored.
The AFEL Chrome Browsing History Extension us distributed under the Apache Licence V2. Please attribute Mathieu d'Aquin and Alessandro Adamou from The Open University through the AFEL Project when reusing and redistributing this code.