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firefox longdesc extension

description:

blame it on malarkey's question over at the accessify forums

I would like to ask specifically which browsers support Longdesc and which don't.

which prompted my reply

if by "support" you mean "make easily accessible to the user", then i think the answer would be none of the mainstream ones. i've been playing with the idea of writing a Firefox extension to add "view long description" to the image context menu for quite a while...just need to find the time to sit down and play around with XUL and stuff a bit more...

well, six hours later, here's my first ever firefox extension. after installing, it adds a "View Image Longdesc: ..." option to the browser's image context menu. as this is still version 0.1 there may be bugs lurking ... however initial testing gave me thoroughly positive results.

updates:

  • added a demonstration page to see the extension in action
  • version 0.2 (26/09/2004) - dramatically simplified javascript, now using native functions to makeURLAbsolute so it also works when viewing file:// pages (thanks to Ian Lloyd for spotting that)
completed:
17/09/2004
modified:
27/09/2004

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