{"id":26578,"date":"2020-09-29T22:10:31","date_gmt":"2020-09-30T02:10:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dannyadam.com\/blog\/?p=26578"},"modified":"2020-10-02T11:21:10","modified_gmt":"2020-10-02T15:21:10","slug":"auto-highlight-updates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dannyadam.com\/blog\/2020\/09\/auto-highlight-updates\/","title":{"rendered":"Auto Highlight Updates"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Auto Highlight<\/a>\u2014discussed in a prior post<\/a>\u2014was released over five years ago, on April 24, 2015. The browser extension is intended for automatically highlighting the important content on article web pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As shown by the GitHub contributions chart below, development was mostly inactive for a few years following the initial release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I’ve recently added additional features. Thanks to the users who suggested some of these!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2630 Context Menu<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The extension permits three levels of highlighting. As of v2.1.0<\/code>, it’s possible to use the context menu to directly apply the desired level of highlighting, rather than cycling through the levels. Additionally, controls for Global Highlighting<\/em> and Autonomous Highlights<\/em>\u2014both discussed below\u2014are available on the context menu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The menu can be accessed by right-clicking either 1) the Auto Highlight icon in the browser toolbar, or 2) the currently open web page. In either case, the icons are shown only on Firefox, as Chrome and Edge do not currently support context menu icons below the top level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\ud83c\udf08 Custom Colors<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Within the options menu, there are now settings to control the color of highlighted text.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\ud83e\udd16 Autonomous Highlights<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The Autonomous Highlights<\/em> option toggles whether pages are highlighted upon loading, without requiring user interaction. Delay<\/em> specifies how many seconds to wait\u2014after loading a page\u2014until autonomous highlighting is applied. State<\/em> controls the amount of autonomous highlighting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Blocklist<\/em> controls which pages do not receive autonomous highlights. In addition to URLs and hostnames, URL match patterns<\/a> can also be added to the blocklist. Rather than blocking<\/em> autonomous highlighting on certain pages, the blocklist can alternatively be used for allowing<\/em> autonomous highlighting on certain pages (this functionality is documented on the options page under Blocklist Information > Allowing Certain Pages<\/em>). Items can be added to the blocklist by either 1) manually specifying them on the options page, or 2) using the context menu to add specific URLs and hostnames.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\ud83c\udf9a\ufe0f Tinted Highlights<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

There is a new option that toggles whether highlights are tinted based on predicted sentence importance. Lower importance sentences, which receive more tinting, are highlighted with subsequent clicks of the highlighter icon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\ud83c\udf0e Global Highlighting<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Global Highlighting<\/em> can be used to set the corresponding highlight level on every tab. This is applied once, upon clicking the desired highlighting level from the context menu or options page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\ud83c\udf10 Browser Availability<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Initially available only on the Chrome Web Store, Auto Highlight<\/em> is now available from three browser add-on repositories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n