tota11y as an extension, instead of a bookmarklet

Since starting tota11y I’ve been on the fence to make it a full-fledged browser extension, or keep it as a bookmarklet.

Bookmarklet pros:

• Easy to install
• Easy to support multiple browsers
• Script is portable - teams can include it in the dev-environment (we do this at Khan Academy)

Bookmarklet cons:

• Requires manual activation (click the bookmarklet) on every pageload
• Can’t save preferences across sites
• Can’t be loaded on every site (tota11y injects a <script> tag into the DOM because its code is so large, sites like GitHub block these requests)

Extension pros:

• Can be loaded on every site
• Can be loaded automatically on every pageload
• Can have cross-site options (toggle which plugins you want)
• Access to an extension API - which we’ll need to audit things like unsemantic buttons (getEventListeners(DOMElement))

Extension cons:

• If your company uses tota11y, each employee would have to install it manually (this is one of the reasons I originally opted for a bookmarklet)
• Must maintain multiple browser releases

There’s also the question of having both a bookmarklet and extension.

Would love to hear your thoughts!

[seriema]

Me and a friend created one but are unsure how it should be connected with the official repo. It could either be a separate repo and just inject the script as the bookmarklet does, which is what we did now. Or we could somehow merge this so that every time tota11y publishes a new version a new Chrome version is created automatically and bundles the script. This later choice would allow offline usage and maybe toggling tota11y on/off or other features.

So currently we have some of the bookmarklet cons but PR’s are welcome!

Here’s the repo and Chrome web store.

[tricinel]

I’ve created a Firefox add-on as well. I’ve used the Chrome extension and missed it when I changed browsers. The bookmarklet worked just fine, but I never have my bookmarks toolbar visible…

This one bundles the script so it does work offline, but every new release of tota11y would require me to update the add-on (which I don’t mind at all).

Grab it here