The EUSES Web Macro Scenario Corpus, Version 1.0

Web macros use the programming-by-example concept to automate user actions within a web browser. Although web macro recorders and players have grown in sophistication over the past decade, we believe that these tools cannot yet meet the needs of real users. Based on observations of browser users, we have compiled various scenarios describing tasks that end users would benefit from automating using web macros. Our analysis of these scenarios yields specific requirements that web macro tools must support if those tools are to be applicable to real-life situations. For example, these opportunities for improvement include better support for triggering macros on events, authenticating to sites, transporting data to/from spreadsheets, taking advantage of data’s semantics, and recovering from errors. Our collection of requirements constitutes a benchmark for evaluating new and improved web macro tools. We developed this corpus as a collaboration within the EUSES Consortium, whose aim is to help End Users Shape Effective Software.