Resurrect lost form data with this free program

Oops No more! Lazarus is here…
Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 (32/64 bit)
Firefox, Chrome, or Safari browsers (sorry Internet Explorer fans)

I don’t how many times I have wished I had a program like Lazarus. It seems like almost every Web site (including ours) uses forms for support and forms to contact them. And while forms work great most of the time, there’s always a chance when you click “Submit” that the form script will freeze, the Web server that handles the form script will temporarily be down, or your browser will freeze or crash. And if any one of those things happens then everything you’ve typed in the form – that long plea for help from a software developer — those 1000 words you typed describing your exacerbating problem in detail — are gone. Poof!. And you won’t get those words back either. You can go back and reload the page 100 times but you only find your words have disappeared into cyber space, somewhere out there, but you’ll never see them again.

This has happened to me many times, and I am sure it has happened to many of you as well. That’s why today, we’re adding Lazarus to our fine tips and tricks section. It’s not perfect. There are still some forms it does not work with (Gmail’s Message form, for example) but it works with most – which is better than nothing. And it doesn’t work in Internet Explorer either. Since less than 50% use IE anymore, that means that about 1/2 of you will find Lazarus useful — the other half, the Internet Explorer half, will just have to wait until Lazarus has a version for IE.

Lazarus is very small download (it’s a browser extension); the size varies depending on the browser you use.

We’d be remiss (and sometimes we are) if we didn’t let the developers have the last word — or almost the last word. Here’s what they have to say:

“Ever had one of those “oh $*#@” moments when you’ve finally finished filling out a long form, and hit submit only to see an error message? And when you hit the back button, the form was blank… If so, you know you need Lazarus. And if not, you have a chance to install Lazarus before disaster strikes!

Using Lazarus, you can recover lost forms with a single click. Lazarus automagically encrypts and saves every form as you type. If the submission fails or if you forget to send it or your computer or browser crashes, then you can return to the page and recover the form data you originally entered.

Lazarus 2.1 for Firefox works with WYSIWYG editors, Rich text boxes and AJAXified forms. It also comes with RSA and AES hybrid encryption so your data is more secure than ever!

Lazarus is a simple, secure, reliable and free add-on produced by the Interclue team. If you’re finding it useful, check out Interclue, our super advanced webpage previewer.

Lazarus 3.0, currently in beta, is also available for the Chrome and Safari browsers. It’s more intuitive to use, but it doesn’t yet work for every form on the web, as the 2.1 version does (or close enough). We’re currently waiting for the Chrome/Webkit team to fix a certain browser bug before we can handle certain very tricky types of form, for instance, the gmail message editor…”

Think of Lazarus as form insurance – you’ll never find yourself aghast when you click “Submit” and 30-minutes-worth-of-typing goes up in puff of cyber-smoke after you click “Submit”. Lazarus is free and available for Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. You can read more about it and/or download it from here .