Can I detect whether a browser's Bookmarks toolbar is enabled with JavaScript?

Question

I have a bookmarklet, and my users are consistently clicking it instead of dragging it to their bookmarks bar first. I'd like to add an animation which would run in response to a click on the bookmarklet, say "Drag me to your bookmarks bar!" and show a nifty arrow pointing at the bar.

But that only makes sense if the browser's bookmarks bar is actually visible. Can I detect whether the bookmarks bar is visible using JavaScript?

Answer 1

For security reasons (among others), no - this is not possible with JavaScript.

Even if a browser chose to make this information accessible to the client, it would not be a standard implementation (supported across multiple browsers).

Answer 2

Put a div inside the link that holds a message when the user clicks on it use CSS to show the message. #bookmarklet:active #message{display:block;} You will need some javascript to return false on the click event.