Get the URL of the frontmost tab from Firefox on OS X?

Question

I am looking for a GUI scripting workaround since I know this seems impossible in Firefox at the moment. I know this can be achieved using the following method:

tell application "System Events"
     Keystroke "l" using command down
     Keystroke "c" using command down
end tell
tell me to activate
     set theUrl to the clipboard as text
end tell

But I would like to do this without interrupting the user. A GUI scripting method for Google Chrome was proposed here:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2483033/get-the-url-of-the-frontmost-tab-from-chrome-on-os-x

and I was looking for something similar.

tell application "Google Chrome"
activate
tell application "System Events"
    tell application process "Google Chrome"
        get value of text field 1 of tool bar 1 of window 1
    end tell
end tell

Answer 1

You can probably do the "google chrome" technique in firefox. You just need to know how to reference the proper field. For that you can google for UIElementInspector. That's a free program from Apple that will help you identify those references. You run the program and hold your mouse over the field... and it shows the reference.

Answer 2

http://pfiddlesoft.com/uibrowser/