control a browser on another computer

hmmm,

typing the title made me feel like i am a hacker asking for some illegal stuf....

but the truth is different i think. My client wants to control 3 webapplications at different computers at the same time.

I can't say exactly what the porpose of this is, but he wants, when he clicks on computer A at button 1 in the browser, that on computer B in the browser also is clicked on button 1, and also on computer C.

When i devided this process in 3 steps, i realized that none of them are things i've done before:

first thing is to get the click event out of the browser second is to inform computer number B and C of the click event third is to click a button in the browser of computer B and C

Three things i don't know how to accomplish (i have done some remoting in the past, maybe that can work for the communication between the three computers, but all i remember is that remoting did NOT become my friend)

So if you can give me any clue on how to catch browser events outside the browser, talk between two pc's and raise events in the browser from outside the browser, your help would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT:

i don't control the application. My client will use it开发者_Go百科 to send multiple stock orders. so i think you can compare it with up-vote on a voting website

I know this is not an answer directly to your question, but it is a valid answer from a business and developer standpoint.

Unless your client is willing to pay through the nose for development time, it would be better to find out WHY the client wants this and offer possible alternatives. What they're asking can't be done without a LOT of work. I'm not sure where I'd even start - probably writing my own browser using the BrowserControl in a WinForms app, and using Remoting to control the WinForms app.

Really, you're better off researching the requirement better and proposing an alternative that is doable. Part of being a good devloper/analyst/project manager, etc is to be able to correctly divine what the customer actually needs from what the customer SAYS they want.

It could be that they just need you to track the status of something and your separate browsers need to auto-refresh. Or it could be that WinForms is not the right tool for the job. Or it could be something completely different. Heck, it could be as simple as only having one browser, and people can "watch" that browser from another PC using VNC or a similar tool.

There are usually multiple ways to meet a business need without focusing on difficult technical requirements. It's the business need that matters. and if you can find another way to meet it, you won't need to spin your wheels on this type of question.

As an added note, it makes me cringe to hear that you're even looking for "how to do this" without understanding why. Getting the requirements right is SO important in development. Most projects fail because the communication of requirements was not adequate.

What you want to do looks like 'shared browsing' or 'follow-me browsing'.

There are some questions that need to be asked :

• do you want to do this with or without installing some sort of browser plugin or application ?
• is the 'shared browsing' done only on a web application that you develop or do you need to browse to remote websites where you cannot add code.

If the web application can be modified, you could have all clients:

• Send all actions they do a server ( #id1, click )
• Poll the server for a list of actions that need to be triggered ( jQuery('#id1').click() )

If only one of the client is "master" and all the others are slave, it should be easy enough to synchronise everyone.

In a multi-master setup, synchronisation will be a little more complicated, and then maybe you will be re-developing Google Wave ;-)

Now if you need to be able to do shared browing over any website, thats a lot more complicated. Even more complicated if your solution needs to work cross-browser. You will need to develop extensions for each supported browser or native applications for all supported OSes. I advise you to look for existing solutions that already do have the shared browsing feature. You can also take a look at the VNC family of solutions (full desktop control).

I hope this will help you,

Jerome Wagner