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The Highlighter

What changed, what it cannot do, what is coming, and where to send the thing you found. If you got here from the panel, it already told this page which build you are running.

01

What's new

newest first

Three releases landed on 6 September 2026, in one long day of using the tool on its own pages and feeding the exports back in as the next round of input. 0.9.11 followed on 10 September, and 0.9.12 the same day.

0.9.1210 Sep 2026

The panel closes itself current

  • The panel's close button used to reload the whole page - your highlights were never at risk, but a reload throws away scroll position, expanded state, and anything you had half-typed elsewhere on the page. It now closes in place instead, tearing the tool down without touching the page around it.
  • Reopen the same way as before: click your Highlighter bookmark again.
0.9.1110 Sep 2026

Terms, and a version you can check

  • The Settings footer now carries two links next to the version: Check for updates, which opens this changelog with your build in the address bar and says so at the top if you are behind, and Terms, which opens the terms of use.
  • The check makes no network call. Your version travels in a link you click, so nothing leaves your browser on its own, which is the same promise as everything else here.
  • The Highlighter has terms of use now: short, plain, and linked from the install point as well as from Settings. Installing it is how you accept them.
  • You can leave an email address after installing, if you want to be told when a new version lands. Entirely optional, and the tool works exactly the same either way.
0.9.106 Sep 2026

The rail

  • After five idle seconds the panel folds itself into a 46px vertical strip and gets out of the way of what you are reading. It is the same element throughout, so nothing is lost on the way down.
  • Pick, copy, download, reload and theme all work from the rail. Only summary, erase and settings expand it, because only those have something to show at 46px wide.
  • Settings is three task-grouped columns and fits at 1024x700 with no scrolling. One colour list now does both naming and default selection instead of showing the same five colours twice.
  • Colour labels are functions, not colours: Key point, Works well, Question, Problem, Suggestion. An export reads **[Problem]** rather than **[Yellow]**.
  • Share this tool, plus a reset button and a link to this page.
  • Fixed: the panel bulged into a blob while collapsing. That was border-radius interpolating 12px to 999px and drawing every frame in between at a huge radius.
  • Fixed: three ways the idle timer could stop rearming itself and leave the rail stuck, all of them only reachable by keyboard or script.
0.9.96 Sep 2026

Storage and export fixes

  • Highlights are stored against a canonical key, so a page reached with different tracking parameters no longer looks like a different page.
  • Export front matter emits correct YAML newlines, so a long note no longer breaks the block it sits in.
  • The bookmarklet moved to a stable alias, so a saved bookmark keeps working across releases.
0.9.86 Sep 2026

First public build

  • Highlight, recolour, note, and delete. Highlights survive reloads, navigation, and closing the tab.
  • Pick mode for whole elements: a button, a link, a card, or a section, not just a run of text.
  • Export to clean Markdown with YAML front matter, or copy it straight to the clipboard.
  • Ships self-contained, so it runs on sites whose Content-Security-Policy blocks an external loader.
02

Known issues

limitations and workarounds

Written down rather than left to be discovered. Two of these are consequences of the tool having no server and no account, which is also why it needs neither.

IssueStatusDetailWorkaround
No sync across tabs or devices By design Highlights are kept in your browser's own storage, keyed to one page in one browser. Open the same page in a second tab and it will not see what you marked in the first, and neither will your phone. Workaround: copy or download the Markdown export before you move. The export is the portable copy, and it is the same artifact you would send in a bug report.
Desktop only By design The Highlighter needs text selection, a fixed panel, and a bookmarks bar to launch from. A phone gives you none of the three, so there is no mobile version rather than a bad one. Workaround: none that is honest. Use it at a desk.
Private windows lose highlights By design There is no account and no server, so a private window, a cleared cache, or a browser set to discard site data on close takes your highlights with it. Nothing is recoverable afterwards. Workaround: export before you close. If you work in private windows by habit, treat copy as the last step of every session.
03

Roadmap

agreed, not started

Three changes for v1.0, all of them arrived at the same way: by using the tool to review its own pages and noticing what the export could not say.

highlighter / roadmap

$ ~/tool-shed/highlighter ls roadmap/v1.0█

pick-mode-element-data next

# A pick-mode highlight on a decorative element exports with an empty quote and no element data, which gives a reviewer nothing to point at. It happened twice in one review and the card had to be inferred from ordering alone.

# TODO: carry the element's own attributes, a stable selector path, and a curated set of computed CSS. CSS yes, JS no: listeners can be delegated, framework-attached, or minified past recognition, and there is no clean way to attribute them to an element. `getComputedStyle` returns roughly 340 properties, so a curated set only.

colour-schema-with-priority next

# The five colours currently mean whatever you decide. Offer a schema where one axis encodes priority, and let the export group by colour before document order.

# TODO: the problem it solves is concrete. In one review the only real bug sat at item 4 of 7, between a formatting nit and a font-size note. Document order is not priority order, and a reader starting at the top starts in the wrong place.

count-notes-not-just-highlights later

# The export header says `highlights: 12` and says nothing about how many carry a note.

# TODO: add `notes: N`. A highlight with a note is actionable; a bare highlight says only that somebody looked at something.

scope-markers, context-for-short-quotes not a tool change

# Writing `all:` or `here:` at the front of a note, and adding surrounding context by hand when a quote is very short.

# Listed so nobody files them as missing features. These are things a reviewer does while writing, not things the tool should try to infer.

next  =  agreed for v1.0  ·  later  =  agreed, unscheduled  ·  not a tool change  =  a way of working, kept here so it is not mistaken for a gap

04

Send something back

the export is the good path

The Highlighter already produces a structured report: the page it was on, the build you were running, and every note under a colour that names what kind of thing it is. So the best bug report is one you make with the tool itself, on the page where it went wrong.

01 / found a problem

Report a bug

  1. On the page where it happened, mark what went wrong. Use the Problem colour.
  2. Add a note saying what you expected instead.
  3. Hit Copy in the panel, then paste the whole export into an email.

Prose is fine too, especially if the bug is that the tool will not start at all. Tell me the page URL and what your browser is, and that is enough to begin.

Email a bug report
02 / wanted something

Request a feature

Check the roadmap above first, since three things are already agreed and one of them may be yours. If it is not there, the most useful version of a request is the moment you wanted it: what you were doing, and what you reached for that was not there.

Marking up the page you were on works here as well. A note on the thing you were trying to do says more than a description of a feature.

Send a request

A tool worth keeping is one that tells you what it cannot do.

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