By
@solxmn
A browser extension that gets cookie banners out of the way, gives you a quick reading estimate, and lets you save your place in an article. (Chrome / Manifest V3)
I’m done!
The basic idea is still pretty small: get cookie banners out of the way, show how long an article might take, and help me find my place again when I have to stop reading.
The cookie skipper took more work than I expected. It had to recognize common consent platforms while searching for the deny button. Some reject buttons were titled I do not agree, which is easy to miss if you only look for buttons named “reject” or “decline”, and not even mentioning the localization options. I ended up checking the surrounding markup and several kinds of button metadata while keeping the actual click logic reject-only.
The reading badge had its own set of edge cases. Articles do not all use the same HTML, and some of them fill in their content after the page loads. I added duplicate protection, a force-show action, and a guard against counting the same badge repeatedly when the toggle is switched on and off.
The marker feature grew out of a practical annoyance: closing a tab should not mean losing the article and the exact place I reached. There are now three slots, each with a name and optional timestamp. Returning to one finds the original tab if it is still open, otherwise opens the page and restores the saved position. Chrome needed an extra fix here because the popup closes as soon as a new tab is created, so the background script has to finish the handoff.
I kept the Chrome and Firefox versions in sync as I went. They share the popup, content, and background behaviour, with the expected Manifest V3 difference in Firefox’s background setup. Firefox also required the local-only data collection declaration before the add-on could be submitted, however it is not present as of version v1.0.0 if you download it via github.
The popup went through a surprising number of small redesigns. I started with a dark three-stat layout, then moved toward the more formal looking version that is there now. It is not trying to be flashy; it just makes the automation visible and gives you control over it. Settings, markers, and stats stay in local extension storage.
After the tests passed and the Firefox submission was accepted, I finally called it finished. It is a small tool, but it removes what I think are a few annoyances that show up every time I read online.
1h 14m 31s logged
Added everything needed in manifest.json in order to actually upload the project;
Uploaded the Firefox extension to Firefox Add-ons marketplace, and it got accepted;
Revised the banner detection logic so the extension can handle more consent platforms and common variations in their markup;
Checked and fixed inconsistencies between the chrome and firefox version while respecting the differences between their manifest v3 implementations, and more
1h 2m 29s logged
Reworked the popup layout, gave it a more formal look with wider spacing. Redesigned sections, improved the logic, and made the reset action smaller and cleaner.
Added reading markers with three save slots, editable names, optional timestamps, site labels, and cross-tab return support.
The extension currently has 3 main features:
Automatically detects cookie and consent banners, then selects reject or necessary-only options instead of accepting tracking cookies. It supports common consent platforms, site-specific handling, and broader detection based on cookie-related buttons, IDs, classes, and labels.
Displays an estimated reading time and word count on longer articles. The badge can be dismissed, and the Show reading badge button can force it to appear when automatic detection doesn’t recognize the page.
Provides three customizable save slots for reading positions. Each marker can have its own name, optional timestamp and scroll position marker. The URL is still kept next to the name, in case you forget. Markers CAN be used from another tab or reopened automatically in a new tab when the original page is no longer open.
28m 10s logged
