Getting started

The Annotator libraries

To get the Annotator up and running on your website you'll need to either link to a hosted version or deploy the Annotator source files yourself. Details of both are provided below.

NB: if you are using Wordpress there is also a Annotator Wordpress plugin which will take care of installing and integrating Annotator for you.

Hosted Annotator Library

For each Annotator release, we make available the following assets:

http://assets.annotateit.org/annotator/{version}/annotator-full.min.js
http://assets.annotateit.org/annotator/{version}/annotator.min.js
http://assets.annotateit.org/annotator/{version}/annotator.{pluginname}.min.js
http://assets.annotateit.org/annotator/{version}/annotator.min.css

Use annotator-full.min.js if you want to include both the core and all plugins in a single file. Use annotator.min.js if you need only the core. You can add individual plugins by including the relevant annotator.{pluginname}.min.js files.

For example, a full version of the Annotator can be loaded with the following code:

<script src="http://assets.annotateit.org/annotator/v1.2.5/annotator-full.min.js"></script>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://assets.annotateit.org/annotator/v1.2.5/annotator.min.css">

Deploy the Annotator Locally

To do this visit the download area and grab the latest version. This contains the Annotator source code as well as the plugins developed as part of the Annotator project.

Including Annotator on your webpage

You need to link the Annotator Javascript and CSS into the page. You will also need to include jQuery >= 1.6.

NOTE: Annotator requires jQuery 1.6 or greater.

<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script src="http://assets.annotateit.org/annotator/v1.1.0/annotator-full.min.js"></script>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://assets.annotateit.org/annotator/v1.1.0/annotator.min.css">

Setting up Annotator

Setting up Annotator requires only a single line of code. Use jQuery to select the element that you would like to annotate eg. <div id="content">...</div> and call the .annotator() method on it:

jQuery(function ($) {
    $('#content').annotator();
});

Annotator will now be loaded on the #content element. Select some text to see it in action.

Setting up the default plugins

We include a special setup function in the annotator-full.min.js file that installs all the default plugins for you automatically. To run it just add a call to .annotator("setupPlugins").

jQuery(function ($) {
    $('#content').annotator()
                 .annotator('setupPlugins');
});

This will set up the following:

1. The Tags, Filter & Unsupported plugins.
2. The Auth, Permissions and Store plugins, for interaction with the AnnotateIt store.
3. If the Showdown library has been included on the page the Markdown will also be loaded.

You can further customise the plugins by providing an object containing options for individual plugins. Or to disable a plugin set it's attribute to false.

jQuery(function ($) {
    // Customise the default plugin options with the third argument.
    $('#content').annotator()
                 .annotator('setupPlugins', {}, {
                   // Disable the tags plugin
                   Tags: false,
                   // Filter plugin options
                   Filter: {
                     addAnnotationFilter: false, // Turn off default annotation filter
                     filters: [{label: 'Quote', property: 'quote'}] // Add a quote filter
                   }
                 });
});

Adding more plugins

To add a plugin first make sure that you're loading the script into the page. Then call .annotator('addPlugin', 'PluginName') to load the plugin. Options can also be passed to the plugin as additional parameters after the plugin name.

Here we add the tags plugin to the page:

jQuery(function ($) {
    $('#content').annotator()
                 .annotator('addPlugin', 'Tags');
});

For more information on available plugins check the navigation to the right of this article. Or to create your own check the creating a plugin section.

Saving annotations

In order to keep your annotations around longer than a single page view you'll need to set up a store on your server or use an external service like AnnotateIt. For more information on storing annotations check out the Store Plugin on the wiki.