Long_Word_Breaker

By Sean M. Burke Last update Jan 16, 2006 — Installed 899 times.

Script Summary: Breaks up long words, to keep them from making the page side-scroll



Version: 1.0.1

Remotely hosted version

This GreaseMonkey extension finds long words in HTML pages
and inserts invisible breakpoints in them (HTML "<wbr>":http://www.quirksmode.org/oddsandends/wbr.html
elements) so that they can be broken across lines if necessary
(instead of stretching the screen).

_Backstory:_ A significant accessibility problem for people who
use large fonts (or small screens) is that long words will make the
screen side-scroll. That is, if your screen is only about forty
characters across, and you have a fifty-character URL (or a blob of
source code, or a long German word, etc), then that long text-string
will stretch the virtual screen so that you'll need to scroll sideways
back and forth to read it.</wbr>