A while ago, I created a Chrome extension called /search.
It focuses the first search field on any page by pressing "/", which allows for instant searching on pages like amazon.com.
What always bothered me was that it only worked after the document is ready. On amazon.com that can actually take a couple of seconds. As of today, their index page consists of over 9000 lines, including tons of scripts. That just takes a while to be completely processed by browsers. (To be fair, the first bits of the page are visible pretty fast)
However, I really never took the time address this issue. At least not until today. The "fix" turned out to be rather small and straight forward. Chrome allows to control when a content script is executed in the manifest file.
The options are:
- document_start
- document_end
- document_idle (default)
I only had to set it to "document_start" and now the script is executed before any DOM is constructed, instead of afterwards. As soon as a user presses "/" the script can react to it and has access to all elements that are already rendered on the page.
If a user can see the first search input on the page, they can now focus it by hitting the "/" key. No more waiting until the page is ready.