diff options
Diffstat (limited to '_log/_site/bumblebee.html')
| -rw-r--r-- | _log/_site/bumblebee.html | 40 |
1 files changed, 0 insertions, 40 deletions
diff --git a/_log/_site/bumblebee.html b/_log/_site/bumblebee.html deleted file mode 100644 index a466d0b..0000000 --- a/_log/_site/bumblebee.html +++ /dev/null @@ -1,40 +0,0 @@ -<p>Bumblebee is a tool I built for one of my employers to automate the generation -of web scraping scripts.</p> - -<video style="max-width:100%; margin-bottom: 10px" controls="" poster="poster.png"> - <source src="bee.mp4" type="video/mp4" /> -</video> - -<p>In 2024, we were tasked with collecting market data using various methods, -including scraping data from authorized websites for traders’ use.</p> - -<p>Manual authoring of such scripts took time. The scripts were often brittle due -to the complexity of the modern web, and they lacked optimizations such as -bypassing the UI and retrieving the data files directly when possible, which -would have significantly reduced our compute costs.</p> - -<p>To alleviate these challenges, I, with the help of a colleague, Andy Zhang, -built Bumblebee: a web browser powered by C# Windows Forms, Microsoft Edge <a src="https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/webview2" class="external" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">WebView2</a>, and -the <a src="https://github.com/desjarlais/Scintilla.NET" class="external" toarget="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Scintilla.NET</a> text editor.</p> - -<p>Bumblebee works by injecting a custom JavaScript program that intercepts -client-side events and sends them to Bumblebee for analysis. In addition to -front-end events, Bumblebee also captures internal browser events, which it -then interprets to generate code in real time. Note that we developed Bumblebee -before the advent of now-popular LLMs. Bumblebee supports dynamic websites, -pop-ups, developer tools, live manual override, event debouncing, and filtering -hidden elements and scripts.</p> - -<p>Before settling on a desktop application, we contemplated designing Bumblebee -as a browser extension. We chose the desktop app because extensions don’t offer -the deep, event-based control we needed. Besides, the company’s security -policy, which prohibited browser extensions, would have complicated the -deployment of an extension-based solution. My first prototype used a C# binding -of the Chromium project. WebView’s more intuitive API and its seamless -integration with Windows Forms led us to choose it over the Chromium wrapper.</p> - -<p>What began as a personal side project to improve my own workflow enabled us to -collectively improve the quality of our web scripts at a much larger scale. -Bumblebee predictably reduced the time we spent on authoring scripts from hours -to a few minutes.</p> - |