I\'m looking to record keystrokes and mouse positions while I\'m in a browser window on various websites, but I\'m not sure how to do this outside the SWING (or some other GUI)
The support you need is not exposed by Java. It is a fairly simple matter to do this if you have access to the RECORD extension in X, or Win32 on Windows.
Here is a Python project that implements support for both of these platforms: pykeylogger.
I don't think you can do this from pure Java. If it is possible at all, it would require the assistance of a (highly) platform specific native code library.
(Windows only) In theory you could use JNA or JNI to bind to GetAsyncKeyState and you'd be able to monitor key presses.