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Fix the page: bookmarklets and a page API

Six fixes for any page of this newsroom, as buttons, as bookmarklets, and as a JS API.

Every site has things a reader would change if they could: a menu they do not need while reading, text too small, too little contrast, no outline. This page is a working example of letting them, on this newsroom. It is the companion to Fix the page yourself, which makes the case.

Try them here, or take them with you

Press Try it here to apply a fix to this page. To use it on any page of this newsroom, drag the dashed button to your browser's bookmarks bar, open an article, and click the bookmark. Click it again to undo. What you turn on is remembered for this site, in your browser, and nothing leaves it.

Reset everything

The API underneath

Every bookmarklet is one line, because the work is in a page API. It loads once, and then anything can call it: a bookmarklet, the console, a test, or an agent driving the browser.

window.__tools.page.list()               // the fixes, and which are on
window.__tools.page.toggle('reading')    // flip one
window.__tools.page.apply('bigger', true)
window.__tools.page.reset()

It follows the convention the SGraph tools use: the API lives at window.__tools, announces itself with a tool:ready event, and is described by an api.json. The file itself is page-fixes.js, about 150 lines, versioned and immutable at its path, so a bookmarklet that loads it keeps working. For Playwright, or an agent:

await page.addScriptTag({ url: 'https://newsroom.sgit.ai/assets/page-fixes/v0/v0.1/v0.1.0/page-fixes.js' });
await page.waitForFunction(() => window.__tools?.page);
await page.evaluate(() => window.__tools.page.apply('reading'));

What a bookmarklet is

A bookmark whose address is a line of JavaScript instead of a web page. Click it and the line runs on the page you are on, with nothing installed. This is the one that toggles reading mode:

javascript:(()=>{const F='reading',U='https://newsroom.sgit.ai/assets/page-fixes/v0/v0.1/v0.1.0/page-fixes.js',t=window.__tools&&window.__tools.page;if(t){t.toggle(F);return}const s=document.createElement('script');s.src=U;s.onload=()=>window.__tools.page.toggle(F);document.head.appendChild(s)})()

And this one needs no file at all: a generic reading mode for any site, in one line. It is what you can do without the site's help, and it shows the limit: it guesses at the site's structure, and it gets it wrong where the site does not use the usual tags.

Reading mode, anywhere

javascript:(()=>{const s=document.createElement('style');s.textContent='header,nav,aside,footer,[role=banner],[role=complementary],iframe{display:none!important}main,article{max-width:42rem!important;margin:0 auto!important}';document.head.appendChild(s)})()

What this does not do yet

• Other sites can refuse it. A site whose Content Security Policy blocks inline or outside scripts will block the loader, and sometimes the bookmarklet itself. That is the argument of the article: a site should offer these primitives itself.
• It is not an extension. A browser extension with Chrome's activeTab permission would run only on the tab you click it on, with no install warning; that is the next step.
• Six fixes, one site. It is a start, and the list is meant to grow from what readers ask for.