Helena is a Chrome extension that can help automate repetitive interactions with well-structured webpages. A user can demonstrate how to scrape the first row of a dataset, and Helena will write a program for scraping the next hundreds or thousands of rows. Helena is also the name of the web automation language that the Helena extension uses. See https://helena-lang.org/ for an overview of the Helena project.

Sure! Here's a very quick video demo:

Yes! In fact Helena is designed especially for non-programmers. The idea is that you provide a demonstration of the actions you want Helena to do, and Helena figures out the rest.

Find the directions here: https://helena-lang.org/download

We have not yet placed Helena on the Chrome Web Store, since it's still in the early stages and still undergoing many substantial changes. We do expect to release a version in the Chrome Web Store eventually.

Helena has been tested with recent versions of Chrome on recent Mac and Linux operating systems.

We recommend learning from video tutorials! Our current playlist of tutorials is available here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYeneIW6KQxIDUEp2QaNNKrgXg9hVvxZo

We recommend starting with something simple like our favorite Google Scholar example!

If you want the quick intro: Helena: Write a Scraping Script in Under a Minute

If you want a slower walkthrough: A Brief Introduction to the Helena Web Automation Language and Tool

Once you've watched a few video tutorials and you're almost ready to start writing your own scripts, we highly recommend checking out our tips and tricks page: https://github.com/schasins/helena/wiki/Helena-Tips-and-Tricks.

Helena is just a research prototype. It's being developed by only one person, and it's still quite new. So definitely don't expect it to be a reliable, professional-quality, production-ready tool. But if you run into problems, please get in touch - we want to keep making it better!

We designed Helena to help researchers, especially social scientists and data scientists. If you're looking to use Helena for those purposes, please go ahead!

Yes! If you're interested in either using Helena for your research or in helping to improve Helena, please get in touch!