We’re happy to announce the release of an updated version of the WAVE Toolbar. You can install the new version at http://wave.webaim.org/toolbar - or if you already have the toolbar, you can force the update by going to the Add-ons menu in Firefox and selecting Find Updates.

While still in beta, this release includes many updates and additional features.

Firefox 3 compatibility

The updated toolbar provides full support for Firefox 3. There were some issues with the previous toolbar version in the Release Candidate versions of FF3. It also is MUCH faster in FF3.

New mini-toolbar button

The new toolbar now includes a small WAVE button that can be positioned almost anywhere within the chrome of Firefox, giving you quick access to WAVE functionality. The button can even be positioned on OTHER toolbars, such as the Bookmarks toolbar.

To move the WAVE button, right click on the toolbar, select Customize… and then drag the button (or any of the WAVE buttons for that matter) to its new location on the Firefox window. You can even add the button to other Add-ons. When you’re done, click Done in the Customize window.

New features

• There is a new Reset Page icon that returns the page to it’s un-WAVEed status. This does not refresh the page.
• There is a new Toggle styles icon that allows you to remove the page styles and linearize tables. Beyond being a great evaluation tool by itself, this is also useful on pages that become broken or cluttered when a WAVE report is displayed.
• You can now customize the toolbar to display both icons and labels, icons only, or labels only. This can be helpful if you want to reduce the size or display of the toolbar.

Bug fixes

• If you select two reports consecutively, the reports now display correctly.
• WAVE now properly displays icons withing nested frames and iframes.
• The possible heading rule is much more accurate with fewer false alerts.
• Fixed a bug that incorrectly flagged any image with missing alt text within a link as an error. If you have an image with empty alt text within a link, it is no longer an error as long as there is text within the link or another image that has alternative text. Any image with a missing alt attribute is still flagged as an error.
• Fixed a bug that displayed an error if an image with alt text was used as a label for a form element.

The updates to WAVE rules above have also been implemented into the server version of WAVE.

While you’re checking out WAVE, it would be really great if you could take a few moments to post a review and rating of the toolbar at the Firefox Add-ons Site. Without reviews and ratings, the toolbar will be forever marked as “experimental”.

If you have any feedback or recommendations for WAVE or the WAVE toolbar, please send us feedback.

The WAVE Toolbar is now available at the Mozilla Add-ons site - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6720

It will continue to be available here at wave.webaim.org, but making it available on the Mozilla site will give it more exposure.

Of note, it is listed as an ‘experimental’ add-on because it has not gone through Mozilla’s review process which apparently is taking several weeks right now. You can help by rating the toolbar and leaving a quick review.

Now that the first version of the WAVE Toolbar for Firefox has been released, we’re shifting our development attention back to the main server-side WAVE application. Updates being prepared include several bug fixes, a few new tests (plus tweaks to existing tests), and numerous performance improvements. However, we still have time to add things to that list, so if there’s a particular WAVE bug you really want fixed, or a feature you’d love to see implemented, now is your chance to let us know. (Just add a comment to this post).

The slides from our presentation at CSUN are available at http://wave.webaim.org/presentations/csun2008/. These may not make a whole lot of sense out of context, but they are there for your perusal.

We had many excellent conversations about WAVE at CSUN and it was fun to show it off a bit. We have MANY ideas for future development and are currently working on fixing some current bugs, increasing optimization, and moving both the server version and toolbar out of beta. As always, your feedback is very helpful. We’ll post more details about the future of WAVE in the coming weeks.

We’re happy to announce the beta release of the WAVE Firefox toolbar. You can download and install the toolbar at http://wave.webaim.org/toolbar.

The toolbar processes web content as it appears within the Firefox browser and does not rely upon server processing to generate a WAVE report. This allows secure evaluation of password protected, intranet, dynamically generated, or sensitive web pages. Because the WAVE toolbar evaluates the rendered version of your page, locally displayed styles and dynamically-generated content from scripts or AJAX can be evaluated.

This is very much a beta release. A few key features are missing in this version that will be made available in a future release in the coming weeks:

• The icon tooltips that provide additional information about the WAVE icons are not present. However, alt and title text for the icons do provide a brief overview of what the icon is indicating. Additionally, a toolbar button will display the full icons key in a new tab.
• Page-wide icons (such as those for missing page title, meta refresh, etc.) do not display.
• There is no option to disable styles, though the WAVE toolbar can be used in conjunction with the Web Developer or other toolbars to remove the document styles and leave the WAVE icons in place.
• There is not a direct indication of how many (if any) accessibility errors are in the document. You must scan for red icons to see if there are obvious errors.

Again, all of these features will be implemented into the toolbar in the near future. Additionally, we will soon have full Firefox 3 support.

We have lots of ideas for the WAVE toolbar, but would appreciate any feedback, bug reports, or recommendations you have. You can either post a comment below or use the feedback form.

Welcome to the new WAVE blog.

The WAVE developers from WebAIM will be using this blog to post information about WAVE updates and future developments. We invite you to check back often or subscribe to the RSS feed and participate in the discussion here. We want WAVE to be the most powerful, user-friendly web accessibility evaluation tool on the planet and appreciate your use of WAVE and invite you to post any feedback or recommendations you may have.