Assistance Needed: Modify Annotorious Plugin to Use Right-Click for Annotations

[Surya-Jamalpur]

Hi Team,

We are currently using the Annotorious plugin to create annotations. At present, the plugin draws an annotation when you click and drag the mouse (without needing to hold the click), ending on the second click. However, our customer has requested the ability to initiate the annotation process with a right-click instead of the standard left-click.

Has anyone in the community encountered this issue or have suggestions on how to implement this change?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Best,
Surya

[production23]

Hi Surya,

Yes, this is possible. You can intercept the right-click (contextmenu) event on the annotation surface, prevent the browser’s default menu from showing, and then trigger Annotorious’ drawing mode from there. You’d also want to suppress the default left-click start if the user is configured for right-click, so only one gesture initiates the annotation.

A simple approach is:

• Capture right-clicks only inside the annotation area.
• Prevent the browser context menu in that zone.
• Switch the library into drawing mode and let the user complete the shape as normal.
• Optionally provide a fallback like Shift+Click or Ctrl+Click for trackpads.

That should give your users the right-click workflow they’re looking for without affecting other parts of the page.

If you’d like, we’ve built similar ergonomic customizations before and can share a more polished example or wrapper that makes the trigger configurable (left, right, or modifier+click). Happy to collaborate if that’s useful. Best - EvoLearns Team