[HN Gopher] The most underused browser feature: reader mode ___________________________________________________________________ The most underused browser feature: reader mode Author : frenkel Score : 690 points Date : 2021-08-24 09:09 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (frankgroeneveld.nl) (TXT) w3m dump (frankgroeneveld.nl) | rock_artist wrote: | The title is maybe a little misleading? TL;DR - you can overcome | so frustrating cookie permission popups and some invasive visual | elements by using reader mode. | | However if we focus on the title, Reader Mode is a great feature | (and I'm pretty sure many others followed by this title agree | with that observation). | | I use it mostly on my mobile devices and it can greatly improve | readability of something by controlling the text-formatting. | | Having said that, still many times (at least for me) it can | resolve wrong translation for the content due to: | | * ignoring some divs in the page * in-ability to move to next | pages (eg. hyperlinks) * bad RTL support | | I wish I would be able to use it more often. :) | jrochkind1 wrote: | I had no idea this was an option in Chrome, you just had to turn | on a flag to enable it! | | I am interested... also interested in if it gets past various | paywall attempts.... | | Is there any way to get it on Android stock Chrome? | SubiculumCode wrote: | I love reader mode and use it a lot, but my biggest complaint is | that sites seem to be able to control when the option appears in | the browser, or if not, it seems to only appear after the site | has finished loading. | jraph wrote: | I use it from time to time but I would probably use it more often | if reader mode was automatically restored on websites where I | used it a first time (and didn't switch back). | | If the page is "good enough" when blocking ads (and I also have | JS disabled by default), I won't bother using reader mode. | Razengan wrote: | While we're on this subject, why the hell is HN so hostile to | readability? | | No dark mode, minuscule font, easy to mistap the tiny "buttons", | and no support for Reader Mode | dredmorbius wrote: | HN is managed very conservatively from a UI/UX perspective. | | I share several of your concerns. You can contact the mods | directly at hn@ycombinator.com | | One suggestion that is apparently in the pipeline is for a | user-provided custom CSS which could be used to fix font, | contrast, and other aspects. | | The underlying structure of HN pages (nightmare table-based | layout) makes more substantial revisions difficult. | | There are numerous alternative-interface projects using the HN | API as well. | vanderZwan wrote: | This doesn't even mention one of my favorite features of Firefox | Android: if you bookmark a site in reader mode it gets saved as | an off-line version | severine wrote: | Unfortunately, as others have pointed out, that feature is | deprecated in newer versions. | vanderZwan wrote: | Aaargh, it really feels like they're actively making their | product worse lately | tangoalpha wrote: | I have been using reader-mode on Firefox and Chrome for long. | | Not just for better readability, but also most content behind | paywalls is accessible with readermode. | | (May be because, most of the paywalls on news websites load all | initial content, and then either truncate the content or hide the | content using javascript, and hitting the paywall renders the | page again without a lot of the CSS and JS that is used for | hiding the content behind the paywall). | | Hopefully, this content doesn't have those paywall service | providers to start working around reader modes. | hollerith wrote: | The main reason reader mode is "underused" is that for a | substantial fraction of pages, it does not work. | | Because of the way the human motivational architecture works, if | there were a reader mode that always worked, its rate of usage | would be many times higher than the usage rates of the current | crop of reader modes. | | But of course, there is no way to create a reader mode that works | for all web pages -- and that fact is one of the main arguments | for _competing_ with the web rather than trying to _improve_ or | _fix_ the web. | | By "competing with the web", I mean creating online services that | take the attention of users away from the web for _some_ subset | of things the web is used for, e.g., consuming static textual | content, also known as reading. | | Gemini would be an example of an attempt to compete with the web, | and it has the property that every page is essentially | automatically in reader mode. | | The trick is to find some desire that the web is currently bad at | satisfying, then improving Gemini to cater to that desire. For | example, TOR was created (many years ago) by the US military to | give its employees a way to browse the web without revealing | their browsing history to the spy agencies of the US's enemies. | But maybe Gemini's much greater simplicity would enable it to | make a stronger guarantee of user privacy than the web is able to | guarantee. (The more complicated a web browser gets, the harder | it becomes to make privacy or security guarantees -- particularly | guarantees of interest to only a small fraction of the web's | users.) If that were the case, then whoever needs that stronger | guarantee would tend to become avid users and proponents of | Gemini. Getting very small numbers of avid users is considered an | effective way to start increasing the number of users of a new | online service. | | The idea I just described is probably a bad idea: there are | probably other desires that Gemini or some other non-web service | could cater to that are much more effective ways of creating avid | users of that non-web service. (For example, the idea I just | described has the disadvantage that even if the proposed improved | version of Gemini _could_ make stronger privacy guarantees than | the web can (which seems unlikely to me) good luck convincing the | average user who is not a security professional of that fact.) | | Finding them is hard! But trying to find one is a more potent way | to try to improve things IMO than trying to fix or improve the | web is. | spideymans wrote: | >But of course, there is no way to create a reader mode that | works for all web pages -- and that fact is one of the main | arguments for competing with the web rather than trying to | improve or fix the web. | | Web developers go out of their way to break Reader Mode. What | incentive would they have to create content for a platform that | competes with the web, which actively limits their ability to | deliver ads and degrade the reading experience? | | In any case, I imagine that a ML powered Reader Mode engine | would perform significantly better than a semantically powered | engine. It should be fairly straightforward to train a ML model | to make a visual distinction between the actual content, and | the ads and other garbage that pollutes webpages. Crowdsourced | training data would increase the accuracy even further, while | limiting the ability of developers to defeat the reader mode. | zzo38computer wrote: | Depending what you are making, different protocols can be good | (Gemini may be good for some things, NNTP may be good for some | things, IRC may be good for some things, etc). | | Gemini file format also could be usable independently of the | protocol, although I do not know of any implementations. | | I think that sometimes you might want to use Gemini without TLS | (it is good they have it, but I am not sure that requiring it | is so good), so my proposal is to make the new URI scheme | "insecure-gemini:" for this purpose. In this mode, client | certificates won't work, so TLS will still be required if you | want to use client certificates. | | Also, unfortunately curl is not implementing Gemini protocol; | adding that might help to increase its usage too, since then | you can at least download files from it easily. However, I have | seen discussions and some of them are valid concerns. For | example, I think -k should not be the default; doing it | different for different protocols doesn't seem like good to me. | You can still specify -k yourself if you want to do. Also the | patch does not implement redirects, even if -L is specified; it | ought to be fixed to allow -L to work. Allowing longer URLs | might also help. | | Furthermore, a better web browser will need to be made, | excluding half of the stuff and implementing the other half of | the stuff differently, before adding some more. | kixiQu wrote: | https://gemini.circumlunar.space/docs/faq.gmi | | > Gemini is not intended to replace either Gopher or the web, | but to co-exist peacefully alongside them as one more option | which people can freely choose to use if it suits them. In the | same way that some people currently serve the same content via | gopher and the web, people will be able to "bihost" or | "trihost" content on whichever combination of protocols they | think offer the best match to their technical, philosophical | and aesthetic requirements and those of their intended | audience. | Lio wrote: | Best thing for me about Reader mode is banishing annoying | scrollback menu flaps. | | Nothing worse than trying to position a long form text article | and a pointless menu flap popping up to obscure the text. So you | then have to perform another round of up/down to get the page in | the right place. | | It's not even as if modern browsers, either desktop or mobile, | don't give you a way to quickly jump to the top of the page where | you can see the menu. | mperham wrote: | My advice to bloggers: if your blog readability is improved by | activating Reader mode, you have a styling bug to fix. Two | universal improvements: | | 1. Bump up your font size. 2. Increase contrast. | bityard wrote: | Honestly, I see way more blogs with a font size 20% to 50% | bigger than what I consider readable. Pro-tip: if the text is | so huge that only like 10 words can fit on a line in a non- | maximized browser window, your font size is way too big. | | It's like they are formatted for reading by teleprompter or | something. | ducttapecrown wrote: | And add margins! | reaperducer wrote: | A little line-height: 1.2em goes a long way, too. | nicbou wrote: | 3. Remove all the crap that isn't the article the user came for | | I don't use Reader mode for readability, but to remove all the | clutter on the page. | dredmorbius wrote: | It's not absolutely necessary to remove it, but _when reading | the article_ it should not be front-and-centre on the page. | | That means: | | - Single-column layouts. Sidebars suck. | | - No fixed-position elements. _Especially_ not headers or | footers, though fixed sidebars are also almost always a | mistake. (There can be some benefit for reference / tools, | but only about one time in a thousand that they're actually | used.) On desktop, I disable all of these with either CSS | (Stylish) or uMatrix element blocker. I've given up on any | nuance here. If it's a choice of fixed header/footer or none | at all, it's none at all. | | - A _static_ set of nav or informational links _above or | below the main article text_ is acceptable. It 's present, | but doesn't interfere with the reading flow. | | - Put in a motherfucking scrollbar already. | FabHK wrote: | > Especially not headers or footers | | What drives me insane: website with floating header and | footer, and I read, then hit space to scroll down to the | next "page", but it doesn't take into account what's hidden | behind header and/or footer, so now I'm missing two lines, | and have to grab mouse/arrow keys to scroll back up two | lines. It just works and then you put in extra work to make | it not work thank you very much arghhhhhh | omaranto wrote: | > - Put in a motherfucking scrollbar already. | | You mean you want two scrollbars? One from the web page and | one from the browser window. That seems like an odd choice. | dredmorbius wrote: | Presently the fashion appears to be none. | | Worse: the scrollbars which do exist are indicator-only, | they cannot be used to actually navigate on the page. | | On the four mobile devices I routinely have access to, | none has an actual grabbable persistent scrollbar for | navigation. | | https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/0hgfswmoti3fi5zgftjecq | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21356511 | nicbou wrote: | I'm curious to hear your thoughts about the layout on | allaboutberlin.com. I built this website to be as pleasant | as possible for the readers, but perhaps I've been staring | at it for too long... | dredmorbius wrote: | Pretty good, at a glance. | rhn_mk1 wrote: | I'm following a similar philosophy as the parent (kill | fixed elements, disable CSS in extreme cases), and your | web page manages to look stylish and readble at the same | time. | | The fixed side bar on the "visiting" page is barely | enough to fit on the display, and when I shrink the | window (or increase the text enough), bottom items get | cut off without recourse. | | The banners on most pages are so big that I usually see | only 1 line of an article, which is mildly annoying. | | Note: disabling JS is a required part of making the web | readable for me, and that's how I perfomed the review. | UntitledNo4 wrote: | Not the poster of the original comment, but I just | visited your website (I live in Berlin), I found it very | informative, pleasant and readable. Well done. | binkHN wrote: | I might be the minority here, but this is why I use Edge on | Windows. It's, basically, Chrome with a reader mode. | EMM_386 wrote: | Chrome apparently has a flag for this under | chrome://flags/#enable-reader-mode | | I tried flag in Brave ("brave://") but it is not working. Works | great in Firefox. | asicsp wrote: | > _Chrome apparently has a flag_ | | And even then the options were confusing: 'Enabled' and | 'Enabled available in settings' | | I first tried with Enabled, didn't work. Then tried the | settings option, which showed reader mode option under | 'Appearance'. After turning on this setting, the icon shows | up. | thenanyu wrote: | works now in brave, the setting is extremely confusing, you | have to set it to "enabled and available in settings" | binkHN wrote: | I know this has been an on and off thing with Chrome, but, | yes, it does appear to be back and works now. | neebz wrote: | In Safari you can set reader mode turned on for specified | websites. I have done it for all the sites which I visit | frequently. Unfortunately there is no way to to turn it on at | global level. | | The only minor gripe I have is the slide-above animation when | reader mode turns on. It's jarring when you keep getting that on | each navigation. | Jakob wrote: | You can turn it on globally by selecting: | | Preferences > Websites > Reader > When visiting other websites: | On | markus_zhang wrote: | I always choose reader mode on mobile if applicable. I'm | wondering why some websites don't have reader mode. | npteljes wrote: | It's based on the browser detecting whether Reader Mode is | applicable for the content. If it's neatly organized into | headers, paragraphs, etc, then it will be available. If it's | unorganized on a technical level, the browser might not pick it | up correctly. | markus_zhang wrote: | Thanks that's probably the case! | hhsbz wrote: | I never use it because I know the process is automatic and I'm | always afraid I will be missing part of the text or the pictures. | | I've found ad blockers to be more or less competent in removing | the stupid European banners, but they are far from flawless. Some | sites get stuck without a scroll bar for example | aerojoe23 wrote: | I use it for the text to speech in Firefox a lot. When there | isn't a pay wall in the way I'll open the page in another tab | while reader read's it to me. | | This way I can see the text and pictures the way they intended | it to be. | | Another downside is that text content for other articles on the | site that aren't part of the article, will be in the content. | On the full site they'll be links or something and you just | skip them with out thinking. In text to speech reader mode, it | reads them off. | frenkel wrote: | You should give it a try, I've never noticed any important | parts missing. | kzrdude wrote: | Sometimes images are missing. Especially banner images, of | course, and sometimes those illustrate the story, but I think | also background-level images (that are used for non- | background purposes, if you miss them, of course). | q-rews wrote: | I use Safari's reader mode on Medium and it fails to load | lazy-loaded images (unsurprisingly) so if I want to see | those, I have to scroll down first _and then_ enable the | mode. | dredmorbius wrote: | There's no risk in invoking Reader Mode. If it doesn't render | or omits text, you can simply toggle it off / navigate back to | the native page. | | Images in online articles are irrelevant the overwhelming | majority of the time --- 75%--95% or more. At best they're eye- | candy or distractions. They occasionally provide context. Some | serve as a contextual reminder. I'd suggest that _information- | critical graphics_ (there 's information in the image that's | not available from the article itself) are in the neighbourhood | of 1% of all images. These tend to be graphs, plots, charts, or | maps. | | They're also generally rendered by Reader Mode, unless the site | is very poorly designed. | | TL;DR: This is an irrelevant concern. | perryizgr8 wrote: | This is exactly why I don't use it either. Sometimes I have | noticed that diagrams/images are stripped out. Sometimes a | couple paragraphs at the end will be omitted. | sidpatil wrote: | I've noticed the same thing. Nowadays I quickly check the end | of the article before switching to reader mode, to make sure | it's still there. | hlasdjlfhalwjk wrote: | > I'm always afraid I will be missing part of the text or the | pictures | | As for missing pictures, my argument is, either the text is | referring to an image that cannot be seen in reader mode, then | I'll notice and switch back to normal mode to see the image, or | the image is not relevant to the text, so I just don't care for | it. | specproc wrote: | Also a neat way to scrape some sites, big love for readability. | tyingq wrote: | Just tried it on chrome mobile. The only way to make it always | there is to change the triggering mode to always. Which means an | annoying popup at the bottom. And the output of it is usually not | helpful. Only works on (some) things that look like an article. | Otherwise, it's truncated content. | sprkwd wrote: | Not in my house it's not. A lot of sites are practically | unreadable without reader mode these days. | jrochkind1 wrote: | The "first example"[1] now 404s. Weird. So can't actually see the | demo the OP wanted to demo.... | | [1]: https://techdows.com/2015/02/enable-test-reader-mode- | firefox... | Raineer wrote: | Well I'm sure it's seeing a lot more traffic than the website | intended. | dusted wrote: | I love reader mode, but I can't for the life of me get it to work | everywhere on my site, and there's no way to hint to the browser | that I want to support it, or supply additional helpful metadata. | therealmarv wrote: | Did not know that there is a reader mode in Chrome. It has only | one bug: It does not work together with Google Translate :( | | I used in the past mainly Reader View because it does not need | access/injection to all your web pages | https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reader-view/ecabif... | another extension I used (which worked better sometimes) was a | local copy/fork of Rocket Readability | https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rocket-readability... I | forked it because I code reviewed it and it needs access to all | your web sites. I don't want any surprise update happen with that | extension. Seems I still need it for foreign articles+Google | Translate. | [deleted] | timwis wrote: | I always worry about missing bits like code samples in iframes | when switching to reader mode :/ | robotburrito wrote: | Reader mode is awesome and it makes a lot of the web actually | usable. | kazinator wrote: | I started making more use of reader more upon discovering that it | can get around paywalls in many cases. | jeromenerf wrote: | Dammit, don't tell everyone, they will notice it. | larodi wrote: | one little known feature of reader mode, no matter if firefox's | or safari/mobile is that more often than you would expect, it | kind of magically goes through pay-walls. so you get to see | articles that require subscription or payment or else, with a | single click. | | this happens so often that makes one wonder whether is due to | some devs being lazy (hiding the actual content) or is by intent | kept for savvy readers. | | also does great job getting through nasty full-screen cookie | consent banners. | | basically is a glitter of hope for the web as a whole. | | btw, was thinking about article like this one for some weeks now. | great minds think alike, right :) | GrinningFool wrote: | The less we talk about great things like reader mode, the | longer it will be before it's broken by default on the websites | that need it most. | subscribeNOW wrote: | > whether is due to some devs being lazy or is by intent kept | for savvy readers | | Neither, the business value isn't there, not enough people use | Reader Mode to warrant spending the dev time to close the hole. | It's coming soon though, and I'm building it. Sorry! | fergie wrote: | I always assumed that Reader Mode was used pretty heavily. | w0m wrote: | i have read a total of 5 articles with it since introduction | decade(s?) ago. The switch is just jarring | dev_tty01 wrote: | You mean the switch away from useless eye candy, advertising, | link farms, popups, slide down flaps, useless multi-page | clicks, cookie consent popups and banners, ...? Yes, it is | jarring, but in a good way. To each their own I guess. | DangitBobby wrote: | > When available for a website, it is displayed as an icon at the | end of the url bar in Firefox | | This is the only problem. When I really want it, it's often not | available. archive.is is pretty bad on mobile because they are | archiving desktop pages. Reader mode is not available there. | k1m wrote: | Any developers who'd like to contribute to improving how article | content is extracted from web pages should check out Mozilla's | Readability repository: https://github.com/mozilla/readability | | I'm currently trying to bring the PHP port up to speed here: | https://github.com/fivefilters/readability.php | | We use an older version as part of our article extraction for | Push to Kindle: https://www.fivefilters.org/push-to-kindle/ | mft_ wrote: | O/T, but thanks for Push To Kindle. I found the browser version | so useful I bought the iPhone app - both to use and also to | support you. Brought a whole new field of usefulness to my | Kindle | k1m wrote: | Thank you! That's really nice to hear. (Appreciate the | support too.) | freediver wrote: | Another robust solution is Tranquility reader which exists as | an extension and has better accuracy than Readability at the | expense of speed. | | https://github.com/ushnisha/tranquility-reader-webextensions | Tarsul wrote: | yes! I use this addon for firefox all the time. Usually I | click on my "Tranquility!" button the moment the cookie | notification pops up, no cookies needed ;) (good for articles | via HN, also possible to circumvent _some_ paywalls) | infogulch wrote: | ArchiveBox is a tool that downloads web pages and saves them in | various different formats: warc, pdf, rendered png, plain text. | I wonder what it uses for plain text extraction and if the | readability repo would be useful for that purpose. | | Edit: Oh neat it does actually. | https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/wiki/Configuration#... | | > Archive method SAVE_READABILITY | | > Extract article text, summary, and byline using Mozilla's | Readability library. Unlike the other methods, this does not | download any additional files, so it's practically free from a | disk usage perspective. It works by using any existing | downloaded HTML version (e.g. wget, DOM dump, singlefile) and | piping it into readability. | jrochkind1 wrote: | That's pretty amazing it already does it. | | ArchiveBox and the other stuff from the "DIY no-credentials | don't-care-about-the-rules" web archiving community, like | ArchiveTeam.... continues to astound me with it's quality and | "professionalism" (as a credentialed professional in the | field of digital library stuff... they are often outdoing the | actual credentialed professional community). | up6w6 wrote: | I believe the Instant View[1] crowdsourcing model where people | write templates for each website could boost a lot these | parsers (hope they open source it soon). Its just impossible to | make these extensions work for every single website with some | simple heuristics. | | Check the codebase of some popular parsers: | | Firefox (already mentioned): | https://github.com/mozilla/readability/blob/master/Readabili... | | Google Chrome: https://github.com/chromium/dom-distiller | | Mercury parser: https://github.com/postlight/mercury-parser | | [1] https://instantview.telegram.org/ | nyanpasu64 wrote: | Is it possible to utilize the database of Instant View per- | site parsers in a web browser or extension's reader mode? | bspammer wrote: | Another cool crowdsourced thing I discovered recently is | SponsorBlock [1] which is an extension to automatically skip | sponsored content in Youtube videos. Users contribute timings | to the database that everyone else uses. It works remarkably | well, any recent video with more than about 50,000 views is | pretty much guaranteed to have timings submitted. | | [1] https://sponsor.ajay.app/ | k1m wrote: | Thanks for mentioning Instant View, I hadn't come across | that. We actually maintain something similar here: | https://github.com/fivefilters/ftr-site-config | | We use these in our own tools and also get contributions from | others, including Wallabag users: | https://github.com/wallabag/wallabag | | Before it was sold, Instapaper used to have something | similar. A public database of its site-specific extraction | templates. We used that as the starting point for our | repository. | freediver wrote: | Thanks to both of you for expanding my 'readable web' | toolbox. | | What do you fallback to if the rule is not present or | doesn't work? | k1m wrote: | In our case, we try to match using the XPath selectors | that we have for the site. If we don't have any, or they | fail to match anything for the title, author, or body, we | then go to Readability and let it do its thing to try and | extract whatever we're missing. | freediver wrote: | Makes sense. What does 'prune' and 'tidy' instruct parser | to do? | k1m wrote: | Prune instructs the parser to remove any elements within | the extracted article block that look superfluous. This | can result in false positives, so we tend to disable it | when we've gone to the trouble of creating site-specific | extraction rules. | | Tidy determines if the source HTML should be cleaned up | first with HTML Tidy - https://github.com/htacg/tidy- | html5. If you're parsing the source HTML with an HTML 5 | parser, as we are now, it shouldn't be necessary any more | (I think we actually ignore it now). We used it more | before when we relied on libxml parsing, which often | trips up on modern HTML. | benzible wrote: | FYI your API pricing page doesn't seem to load | https://rapidapi.com/user/fivefilters | mdoms wrote: | Just reading through that code it seems like readbility is only | intended to work on English language websites? Like it checks | for nodes with class names matching | /and|article|body|column|content|main|shadow/ and uses a | minimum length of 140 characters for matching nodes that are | reader-able. Seems a bit lazy for a company whose stated | mission is "to ensure the Internet is a global public resource, | open and accessible to all". | dredmorbius wrote: | My suspicion is that there are an increasing number of | publishers who are intentionally severing compatibility with | Readability. | | _Washington Post_ , I'm looking at you mofos. Chief reason | I'll seek out any alternative news site for archival. It's been | this way for about a year, if not more. | jamil7 wrote: | I wrote a Swift port of it last year for my app but it deviates | from readability a fair bit as I tailed it a bit to my needs, | I've considered cleaning it up and open sourcing it regardless. | I know there is an Objective-C port floating around. | freediver wrote: | Do not clean it up just put it up there and let others do it! | I'd be very interested in it, please reach out when you do. | guessmyname wrote: | I ported Mozilla's Readability library to Go a couple of years | ago [1] and use it every day to power a custom RSS feed of | Hacker News via Reeder [2]. This is not a novelty, many people | have ported Readability to different programming languages over | the years. | | [1] https://github.com/cixtor/readability | | [2] https://github.com/cixtor/rssfeed | agumonkey wrote: | On i remember how often I used printfriendly just for that. | | Also I find the irony of reader mode quite funny. Lets build the | most dynamic and capable presentation system so we can go relive | bbs | ZachSaucier wrote: | Shameless plug: I maintain a cross-browser reader extension that | is like reader mode with some additional features. It's called | Just Read: https://justread.link/ | freediver wrote: | Looks great! What does this use underneath? How is it different | than Readability.js in terms of parsing output? | yepthatsreality wrote: | I wonder if low usage will lead it to eventually be removed (for | example no one cares to maintain the feature code), much like the | previous "reader mode" feature: RSS support. | | Will we say "that's fine browsers should only focus on one | thing"? | dredmorbius wrote: | I'm a huge fan of Readability Mode and use it often. It's proof | that Web design isn't the solution, Web design is the problem. | | For those who are using e-ink devices, or even just standard | tablets, EInkBro is another immensely useful tool. Yes, it's a | standalone browser, not a mode on Firefox, Safari, Vivalti, etc. | | https://github.com/plateaukao/browser | | (Available through Google Play, F-Droid and other sources. | Android-only, sorry iOS fans.) | | What it offers over standard browsers is that it's optimised for | e-ink displays. That is, it favours pagination over scrolling, | runs to full-screen, can easily adjust font size up or down (no | more itsy-bitsy-teen-weenie-yellow-polka-dot HN fonts), bold | text, and has its own reader mode as well. | | Even on a standard tablet, some of these features are a huge step | above and beyond the mainstream browsers. | | The feature-set is limited, some of the UI is a bit rough, and a | few things are just plain broken (if you need to edit entries in | the JS or Cookie enabled/disabled sites ... you have to delete | all data and start over again). | | That said, my usage is evolving from sending individual pages to | EInkBrow when I want to do long-form reading, to using it at | least part-time as a primary browser. (Mozilla Fennec Fox is my | first choice, still.) The browser _is_ stable and very much | usable despite this. The developer is responsive to requests and | bug reports. | | What's most refreshing is that the design principle is | _readability of Web content_ , as determined by the user, and not | by the page author or publisher. | amelius wrote: | I wish somebody would create a DL/GAN/style-transfer tool to | automatically change the style of any website into | https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ | | (regardless of how the website is structured, so deleting the | CSS doesn't count) | dredmorbius wrote: | On emissive / colour displays, this still is my preference: | | https://codepen.io/dredmorbius/full/KpMqqB | | On e-ink, the off-white / off-black colour palette is | actually something of a probem, though the page otherwise | remains highly readable. | | From the original page, the lack of margins is a problem. | Text running straight into the gutter is a readability | problem. | dredmorbius wrote: | Checking installing on an older tablet: EInkBro works, though | having it display colour is ... slightly disconcerting. | | But if you want to get a sense of the app, it's possible to do | so. | jabroni_salad wrote: | Thanks for linking that, I'm going to try it on my reader when | I get home. I like my boox for most things I try to use it for, | but right now the pain point is all the royalroad webnovels I'm | addicted to. | dredmorbius wrote: | I have both Mozilla Pocket and EInkBro on the BOOX. | | My preference is to read in EInkBro. | | Pocket's craptastic pagination is endless frustration. | | (I still use Pocket to save/tag content. But for what's | supposed to be an enhanced readability tool, it's | increasingly insufficient.) | [deleted] | fouc wrote: | I'm guessing this won't work with Remarkable. | | Or what are some good e-ink devices for this I wonder? | dredmorbius wrote: | Any Android-based device. | | Potentially in future, Linux-based devices which can run | Android apps. | | I'm not a particular fan of Android. Its application | ecosystem is a bonus though. | | Again, this is installable through F-Droid. | Groxx wrote: | Depending on how far you want to go, there are VNC | clients[1], toltec has opkg-installable stuff including at | least one browser[2] known to work, and there are full OS | replacements that let you run a full linux GUI[3] which can | almost certainly run a normal-ish desktop browser. | | So while this one won't work, there are options. | | [1] https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable [2] | https://toltec-dev.org/ [3] | http://www.davisr.me/projects/parabola-rm/ | peterlk wrote: | How can I implement my website such that it is optimally useful | for browsers like this? Just avoid flashy stuff? Is there any | way to list my blog somewhere as a friendly place to read? I'm | spinning it up again after a year off for reasons that I will | probably write about :) | dredmorbius wrote: | I've just poked through both the GetPocket site | (https://getpocket.com/publisher/) and Mozilla's Readability | Library GitHub page (https://github.com/mozilla/readability) | without seeing obvious guidelines. | | My general suspicion is that adhering to a simple HTML5 | documemnt structure, and possible use of microformats | (https://microformats.io/) goes a long way. | | Update: there's some discussion here: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28301113 | k1m wrote: | I haven't seen guidelines lately, but Readability.com, | before it was shut down, did have a page that's archived | here: http://web.archive.org/web/20160301180825/https://rea | dabilit... | bogomipz wrote: | Could someone explain how Reader Mode on iOS devices is able to | bypass login walls for new sites? | tomiplaz wrote: | My favourite and often used browser feature (Firefox). | mvanbaak wrote: | It's the only way to visit sites like medium.com ;P | AlexCoventry wrote: | Is there a keyboard shortcut for reader mode, in chrome? | andy_ppp wrote: | It's good for night time reading too (i.e. it obeys dark mode), | it's a shame hacker news doesn't seem to work with Safari's | reader mode though I guess it's designed for article pages! | acsigen wrote: | An even cooler feature which the reader has in Edge for Windows | is that it can read the articles aloud with a natural voice. Also | useful to listen to PDFs | zzo38computer wrote: | I would want to use my own styles or just the default HTML | styles, as one (I don't want it to use big font sizes, narrow | text, etc; I want to use my own settings please, and you can use | your own settings please). But also, will wanting ARIA view, | where the accessible tree is formatted (this would also allow | forms, etc to work). However, the accessible tree seems to be | missing some important information too, such as whether or not | text is fixpitch, strong, emphasis, etc (as far as I can tell it | is missing, anyways; trying a simple web page with different | formatting and displaying the accessible tree seems to lose this | information). Sometimes simply disabling CSS and JavaScripts | fixes it a lot, and avoids a lot of annoyances. Some forms don't | work if CSS is disabled, because they replace the widgets with | their own (I really don't like this); the ARIA attributes are | there though, which is supposed to allow it to display it | properly even if the styles are disabled, but simply disabling | CSS won't do that; it is necessary to parse the ARIA attributes | too. But to do better might require both the accessible tree and | the DOM tree. | inetknght wrote: | I used reader mode for a long time and liked it but stopped using | it because it still let javascript run. | black3r wrote: | I use this all the time on mobile just to bypass pop-ups, videos | and other annoyances I don't want to see when reading articles. | bambax wrote: | > _The same is true for Chrome, but you first need to enable it | at chrome: //flags/#enable-reader-mode_ | | Oh... I didn't know that! I mosty use FF and reader mode is a big | reason why. | | Reader mode is so much better for reading text... Also on mobile. | | The only weird behavior (on FF) is that it's a step forward in | history; whey you press "back" you don't go back to the previous | page, but to the current page in normal mode (with zero info in | the url bar or anywhere else (that I could find)). | funnyThing7 wrote: | "I believe not a lot of users know about this button, especially | because Chrome doesn't want to show it by default." | | Damn right. You can bet you ass Google doesn't want to actively | push users away from bloated pages filled with ads. | Narishma wrote: | I use it daily to deal with the epidemic of hard to read too low- | contrast websites, which this article is ironically guilty of. | 627467 wrote: | Underused? I wish I could set the browser to be always in reader | mode so I can save taps every day. Reader mode along with private | mode is great paywall circumventer. | | In opera mobile you can save reader mode pages in mhtml, it's | great alternative to webarchive | severine wrote: | SevenSigns posted an addon to do that here | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28287190 and there's an | alternative here | https://addons.mozilla.org/en/firefox/addon/automatic-reader... | | I don't use the automatic addons, but one that lets me right | click and open directly in reader view, works a treat! | https://addons.mozilla.org/en/firefox/addon/reader-view | | Try them out! | emaro wrote: | I love the reader modes accross the different browsers. | Especially Safary Mobile does a really good job, i.e. even | expands the partitioned articles from golem.de into one single | page. | | What slightly but consistently bothers me, is that the reader | view in Firefox has very little customization options and (in my | eyes) doesn't look very appealing. They should let a designer | improve the stylesheet. You also cannot force the reader mode | like in Pocket. | | I also want to mention the instant view feature of Telegram [0]. | It can be used as a reader view as well. | | [0] https://instantview.telegram.org/ | blunte wrote: | I use it on my phone all the time. It almost makes phone browsing | tolerable. It's great for getting rid of Medium crap and other | FUBAR sites. Plus it typically makes the text larger, so I can | read it without glasses. | lowercased wrote: | same here - it will default to a good size font and high | contrast dark mode. i've found myself using it... a lot over | the last few months. i picked up a new 12 mini, and as I was | developing new habits, this became one of them. if something is | more than one screen of text, i reach for reader mode. | pre wrote: | I press it as soon as I see a popup about cookies or login or | sales or basically anything at all. | | I press it when there's a paywall. | | I press it when the site doesn't do dark-mode. | | I press it when adverts become annoying. | | There also exists an auto-reader-mode plugin that you can tell to | always open that site in reader-mode in future. | | Reader mode is great. Hope it doesn't become popular so website | start trying to stop it working. | ldenoue wrote: | Agreed 100%. Because in Safari it doesn't work on all websites, I | made ReaderView, an app that does and also saves articles for | later plus lets you highlight passages. Give it a try | https://www.appblit.com/readerview | Forge36 wrote: | The flag doesn't exist on mobile. There is another, but i didn't | see it do anything. | | chrome://flags/#reader-mode-heuristics | | Accessibly has a "show simplified view" which seems comparable | kzrdude wrote: | Firefox for Android has reader mode. | x-sp wrote: | As does Opera | neop1x wrote: | and Brave (after enabling it in Settings) | corentin88 wrote: | I'm a huge fan of the reader mode on Safari for iOS. Probably the | feature that I'm using the most, right after password | autocompletion. | bvm wrote: | I really love the reading the codebases for these, the original | Arc90 Readability bookmarklet was really quite...readable when | unminified. | janandonly wrote: | I still use that JS script to make a pdf with all links written | out fully at the bottom <lovely> | | Also, I usually use Printfriendly.com to turn this page into a | small pdf for saving. That is if it's worth saving, of course. | puttycat wrote: | My workflow in case of a long article I want to read on my Kindle | without distractions: | | View in reader mode --> Save as PDF --> Send to Kindle email | address --> Sync Kindle. | | I wish this could be automized. | jtth wrote: | Instapaper has this, and can even be set up to send a weekly | digest. | beervirus wrote: | I use reader mode all the time on Firefox at home or on Safari on | my phone. I'm forced to use Chrome at work though, and I always | thought it didn't have this feature. Good to see it can be | enabled. | BeetleB wrote: | Reader mode really helps me in printing as well. Old comment of | mine: | | Printing is something I started to do some months ago. Instead of | keeping the tab open for weeks, I decided I'd print anything I | want to read and place it a physical "inbox". | | Some tips: I print 2 pages to a side, so 4 pages per printer | paper. Even long articles don't use too much paper, and for my | eyes it's still readable (there are a few articles where I need | to enlarge first). I print using either Firefox's "Simplify Page" | feature or its "Readability" feature. This removes almost all the | noise: No ads, no menus, etc. It's just the article and relevant | images. Similar to reading a physical newspaper. | | It's been a game changer. I can now read wherever I want. Going | to the mechanic? I just take some of these printed articles with | me. I find myself taking notes on the paper - something I would | not do well on the computer screen. My eyes get a lot less | strain. Once you get used to this, there's no going back. Now | when I see an article through a web browser, it's just ugly. Too | many distractions. Even the menus are annoying. I didn't realize | I'd been putting up with filth for so long. | | I initially worried that my inbox would get full and I'd have the | same mental angst, and my plan was that if it happens, I'll take | a random bunch and throw it in the recycle bin. But it never came | to that - I still manage to read everything I print. Somehow, the | physical inbox weighs less on my mind than the virtual one. I | don't feel I need to deal with this inbox. It's OK if it just | sits there collecting dust. | | Bad for the environment. Good for the brain. | jrochkind1 wrote: | This is really interesting, I might try it. I miss the printed | newspaper/magazine reading I used to do (although I still do | some). | dang wrote: | Please don't copy-paste comments on HN | (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27921786). It lowers | signal-noise ratio and isn't really how curious conversation | works. | | If you want to refer to another post, that's fine of course, | but in that case use a link and perhaps add some new info if | any is relevant. | | https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... | BeetleB wrote: | Hi dang, | | Is this a new rule? I often find people copy/pasting older | comments of theirs that is relevant to the current | conversation. | pvg wrote: | https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=2&prefix=true&qu | e... | | Six years of nopaste exhortations | mesh wrote: | When I was in graduate school way back in the 90s, I had an old | dot matrix printer that I would use to print out the daily RFE | / RI (Radio Free Europe) email news reports from Eastern | Europe. | | Its a huge waste of resources over time, but I find its much | easy to focus and take in the information sitting at a table | and reading over printed word. | | I wonder if e-ink / paper devices might be able to replicate | this now. | ouid wrote: | Paper isn't really that bad for the environment, right? That | was an ad campaign to sell plastic or something. Paper trees | are grown as crops and basically just fix carbon. The pulping | has some local undesirable effects, but I don't think they have | anywhere near the lasting impact of other human waste. | S0und wrote: | I straight up stopped reading. Just listen. I'm using | NaturalReader extension, which has a good voice in the free | tier. Even tho I use Firefox everywhere i just open an Edge, | copy-paste a link and just listen to the article. | rafael_c wrote: | You can do similar on the Kindle or any other ereader. There's | a chrome extension called 'send2kindle' that sends a simplified | version of the webpage you have open directly to your device. | | I'll just open tabs on the browser of whichever articles or | texts will consist of my morning reading diet that day and send | them all to my Kindle. Very practical device to read and no | more falling in a trap of continuous clicking on more and more | links, while lending a crappy level of attention to the actual | reading. | vilified wrote: | > Bad for the environment. Good for the brain. | | That's just bad for the environment two times lol | fnord77 wrote: | underrated comment | saurik wrote: | > I can now read wherever I want. Going to the mechanic? I just | take some of these printed articles with me. | | To be fair, I can (and do) do the same thing with my phone. | BeetleB wrote: | Off topic w.r.t Reader mode, but reading on paper is much | better than on the phone. Actually, _anything_ is better than | the phone. My hierarchy is: | | Paper > ereader > monitor > phone | jrgaston wrote: | I like reader mode but lately I'll send an article to pocket | (which cleans it up a lot) then I print it to a pdf which is | saved in a folder in Dropbox and which is synched with my Kobo | Elipsa, and with the Elipsa I can mark the articles up with its | stylus. (Writing this out makes it sound a bit complicated | which I guess it is.) | fnord77 wrote: | I'm the exact opposite - I love having books and articles on | devices. Physical clutter is a problem for me so this is | liberating. | | reading on my iphone or kindle doesn't seem to strain my eyes. | marvindanig wrote: | I read all my books on the iPad. No hassle at all. | pkulak wrote: | > Bad for the environment. | | Psst. Paper is a renewable resource and easy to recycle at | least a couple times. | marvindanig wrote: | That's a spurious claim! Pulp harvesting often destroys the | native flora and fauna, and the cost of lost forests and | animal habitat cannot be recovered. | yodsanklai wrote: | https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/consumption/other-. | .. | somedude895 wrote: | > Each ton of recycled paper can avoid the use of 17 trees; | 1,440 liters of oil; 2.3 cubic meters of landfill space; | 4,000 kilowatts of energy and 26,500 liters of water. | | > Paper is quite simple to recycle, yet 55 percent of the | global paper supply comes from newly cut trees. | | You can buy recycling paper too, it's not pretty but at | least you know it's made from recycled materials. | | Also, that page says we'll run out of fresh water in 18 | years and the source is literally a single quote from one | person. Seems a bit sketchy. | ratioprosperous wrote: | Doing exactly this with a large format e-ink tablet has been | revolutionary for me | eagleislandsong wrote: | Which e-ink tablet would you recommend? | abyssin wrote: | ReMarkable isn't perfect but I use it to read web articles. | The issue I haven't solved with my ReMarkable is finding an | alternative to the default synchronization system. I'd love | to use Plato for reading on the ReMarkable, but then I'd | lose the synchronization. | mariusor wrote: | Kobo devices have out of the box integration with Pocket, | which Mozilla supports natively. | marvindanig wrote: | Proprietary tablet vs. a browser feature on the open web- | which option would you take? | BeetleB wrote: | Kobo lets you install your own SW. There are open source | reader SW for the Kobo, and they're better than Kobo's | own reader. | dredmorbius wrote: | What reader(s) do you like / recommend? | | I've used FBReader, PocketBook (who sell their own ebook | readers as well apparently), the NeoReader (default Onyx | software), and have some familiarity with Kindle. | | PocketBook enables some (but insufficient) metadata | editing. The NeoReader has an excellent UI/UX generally | on BOOX devices, but has no management capability. | | I tend to have a large number of documents on my devices | (1,000s). Management is critical. | mariusor wrote: | I'm not sure what exactly you're arguing against. | dredmorbius wrote: | I'm pretty happy with the Onyx BOOX. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27521248 | | Turns out I was wrong about security. _Password recovery_ | requires a separate cloud-based account. Setting a password | does not. | ameminator wrote: | I'll be honest, this is my favourite feature of my Kobo - using | Pocket to save webpages and articles and read them offline. It | seems to accomplish a similar goal to what you do here - | without the need for all that paper. | Otek wrote: | I doubt he will print as much, so your e-reader will have | less environmental impact. All that plastic and components | are certainly the equivalent of several, if not hundreds of | reams of paper. | dredmorbius wrote: | Cost is a _very rough_ indicator of footprint. | | A modest e-book reader runs about $200. That's the cost of | about 3 cases of 20# letter-sized paper (10 reams/case), or | 15,000 sheets of paper. | | At ~300 pages/book, that's about 50 books cost equivalent. | | Note that _printing_ output tends to run higher, at $0.01 | -- $0.25 per page (higher for colour inkjet and laserjet). | | Depending on ones reading patterns, the cost (and | environmental impacts) of an ebook reader could well come | out ahead. It's also generally easier to carry such a | device than the equivalent number of printed books or | documents. | Thrymr wrote: | And the marginal cost of adding articles to a device if | you are already using it to read books is very low. | dredmorbius wrote: | Correct, up to storage limits. | | That's not a minor consideration from me as I can easily | fill 64--128 GB of total storage (about 30GB seem to be | system + apps). | | That's not all books --- I keep a fairly large number of | podcast episodes downloaded. But at about 5 MB/book, even | an apparently generous storage quickly shows limits. | | I passed on the ReMarkable as its 16 GB storage (about | 8GB available) only permits 1,600 books at 5 MB/book. | | (And that's without podcasts or audio.) | | The BOOX has a 64 GB onboard storage, maximum. I've got | that near capacity in about 6 months, though a large | share of that is podcasts. My preference would be 256 GB. | Plus far better content-management capabilities on the | device itself. I _think_ I could live within that. | | Retail cost is $20, falling by about half every 2 years. | The minimising of eBook storage makes absolutely no | economic sense. | rpadovani wrote: | I don't think he bought the Kobo only for reading webpages | tho, so you cannot really do a direct comparison like this. | canadianfella wrote: | > hundreds of reams of paper. | | How did you come to this conclusion? | 5faulker wrote: | It's a nice compromise. | BeetleB wrote: | I have a Kobo and I used to do this. And while I enjoyed | ereaders for many years, paper is still king. The Kobo's | resolution is still not good enough, and being able to flip | pages is still more convenient. | | The nice thing about the Kobo is you can install your own | software, so there's still hope for a better interface. | stuartd wrote: | You can set iOS Safari to default to reader mode for all websites | in Safari/Website settings/Reader/All websites | | Then for sites you don't want to use reader mode in, you turn | 'User reader automatically' off in the site settings. | ximm wrote: | > The web has been plagued by cookie consent popups and banners | since the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has come into | effect. | | It has become obvious that no user would willingly consent to the | overuse of cookies since the General Data Protection Regulation | (GDPR) has come into effect. | | Here, I fixed that for you. | pmontra wrote: | A useful feature of Firefox reader mode on Android is that if you | bookmark a page from inside reader mode, Firefox saves it locally | and you can go back to it from the bookmarks even when you are | offline. I used it to read long web pages (usually fiction) on | planes or in the middle of nowhere. | | Edit: it works only on older Firefox versions. This feature was | removed sometime in the last months. | alkyon wrote: | Interesting, but doesn't seem to work for me. | pmontra wrote: | You're right. I checked with the new Firefox (the one with | the "too many taps" GUI from one year ago) and it doesn't | work anymore. | | I'm using the old Firefox on my main phone and it explicitly | says "Saved offline" when I bookmark a Reader Mode page. The | new Firefox on the backup phone says "Bookmark saved". | | One more reason to stay on the old Firefox. | _1a wrote: | This was one of the features I was actually sad to see go | when I updated Firefox. | | I used this feature a lot as it was mainly manuals that I | was saving. | | They also replaced the default start page to be Collections | instead of bookmarks, which b of course for me was empty. | | I think I've got used to the new layout that I probably | won't downgrade just for the offline capabilities. | morsch wrote: | Yup, it didn't make the transition to Fenix. That was such | a cool feature. Maybe I should downgrade. | spupy wrote: | That sounds almost exactly like the functionality that Firefox' | Pocket provides. The app downloads a reader view of everything | you put in there so you can read offline. | codq wrote: | Pocket sometimes fails to save the article locally, and | forces 'Web View', rendering it useless unless loaded with a | data connection. | | I feel like Pocket could use some updates, it seems | underloved from the Mozilla team, especially for an app that | purportedly generates revenue for the company. | dredmorbius wrote: | That forced-web-view thing is absolutely maddening. | | I'd actually prefer a placeholder "we couldn't render | this", which leaves the tagging tools available, to | redirecting to the remote site. | Veen wrote: | Safari's Reading List feature does something similar. Or it's | supposed to. In my experience it often fails to save articles | so you can read them offline. | spullara wrote: | This is my most loved feature of Safari missing from Chrome by | default. Edge has added it recently. | zelphirkalt wrote: | I use it on a daily basis. Without it a lot of websites are | unusable for me. I just want to read the content, I do not wish | to see the ads or interactive whatever. I want content. It is | especially helpful, when websites manage to become unreadable | without loading JS, because somehow they screwed up their CSS so | badly, or it does not exist, without loading JS. Reader mode | basically saves those websites from becoming instantly closed | tabs. | Kim_Bruning wrote: | I recently started using this too. | | Now why can't websites just be written to work this way in the | first place? | shandor wrote: | My most wanted feature for Firefox right now is the ability to | right-click (or long-press on mobile) the link and choose "Open | Link in Reader mode" exactly like they already offer for "open | Link in New Private window". | | I think that would be even more important than the Private | shortcut, with the amount of unnecessary crap the websites try to | cram on your screen. | classichasclass wrote: | I implemented this for TenFourFox and it's a real godsend for | certain sites. Meanwhile, there's this, but not Android- | compatible: https://addons.mozilla.org/en- | US/firefox/addon/reader-view/ | dredmorbius wrote: | Thank you. | shandor wrote: | Thanks for the addon! | | Just for the sake of curiosity, what do you think it would | take for your addon to be ported to work also on Android? | classichasclass wrote: | Not mine, so I haven't looked at it closely. In general, | however, I think there are many more addons that _could_ | work, and _should_ work on Android. | CodesInChaos wrote: | Afaik firefox mobile only allows a small number of | whitelisted extensions. | nick__m wrote: | there is a way1 to install other addon (if you use | firefox nightly) but it is downright user-hostile. | | 1- https://www.ghacks.net/2020/10/01/you-can-now-install- | any-ad... | satellite2 wrote: | Exactly, as some sites will remove content too fast and the | reader mode button disappear before any possible attempt at | clicking it | shandor wrote: | Yep. I also wouldn't care at all if "forcing" reader mode | like this would most certainly break some pages. I wouldn't | want to stay on pages like that anyway, so I would lose | nothing. | [deleted] | [deleted] | [deleted] | egypturnash wrote: | Honestly now that I think about it it's kind of surprising that | Chrome has a reader mode button at all; why would a company whose | business is mostly "serving ads" want to make it easier for you | to get rid of them? | HeckFeck wrote: | Sssh, a Chrome PM might be reading! | fsflover wrote: | So more people will switch to Firefox, good! | thrower123 wrote: | The only time I ever use reader mode is when the iOS Twitter app | automatically launches Safari in that mode for links that I open. | Sometimes it's helpful, more often the website is hopelessly | broken and I have to try disabling it and going back to normal | mode a few times - it seems to toggle back to reader mode about | half the time when I disable it. Or I give up and copy the url | and open it in Brave instead. | [deleted] | underdeserver wrote: | I read this post on reader mode. | beyondcompute wrote: | Reader mode in mobile Safari is basically one of the two things | that keep me on iOS (the other one is dictation). | classichasclass wrote: | Reader View is excellent on low-spec systems. On TenFourFox you | can try any page in Reader View, not just what the browser thinks | will work. I also implemented sticky reader view, where going to | links stays in reader mode even on different sites until you | explicitly leave reader view (see | https://tenfourfox.blogspot.com/2020/09/tenfourfox-fpr27b1-a... ) | and auto reader view by domain or by domain subpages ( | https://tenfourfox.blogspot.com/2021/03/tenfourfox-fpr31b1-a... | ). Combined with a right-click to Open in Reader View menu | option, this means you can jump right in and spend less time | waiting for pages to load on older computers. | freediver wrote: | "Sticky Reader View" is an excellent idea! | | Perhaps there is no need for both sticky and auto reader view | settings. As soon as the user enabled auto reader view, you | assume Sticky mode and enable auto reader view on any domains | they subsequently visit (and render in reader mode successfully | at least once?) | classichasclass wrote: | TenFourFox uses sticky mode by default anyway. But you make a | good point for others who might implement such a feature. | midjji wrote: | Nice | kixiQu wrote: | I gotta go back and figure out if I can submit a PR to fix | footnotes, though [1]. I don't like using Reader Mode when I know | there might be stuff missing, so I itch to go and check. | | [1]: https://github.com/mozilla/readability/issues/654 | vermaden wrote: | Today's web is unusable without these two: | | - uBlock Origin | | - I Do Not Care About Cookies | | The latter can also be configured for uBlock: | | https://majkiit.github.io/polish-ads-filter/#i_dont_care_abo... | nayuki wrote: | Firefox's reader mode can bypass paywalls on many news sites | (e.g. The Economist). It's simple to activate; press F9 and then | F5. | matthewfelgate wrote: | I discovered Reader Mode on Chrome a few months ago and have used | it a lot since. I use it everyday and it makes it much easier to | read articles. | robinoh wrote: | reader mode shortcut on ff: ctrl-alt-r | inanutshellus wrote: | TIL! | noman-land wrote: | You are a god. | arepublicadoceu wrote: | > reader mode shortcut on ff: ctrl-alt-r | | F9 on Windows | | I use it all the time. | perilunar wrote: | command-alt-r on Mac/FF | | command-shift-r on Mac/Safari | everdrive wrote: | I use this all the time and it's wonderful! It's not underused | here. | | A LOT of the time a webpage will be completely broken / filled | with ads / javascript / and other useless garbage. One click and | I'm in reader mode, and all that junk is gone and I just have | nice clean text, and perhaps a couple of images. Makes me wonder | if I can set reader mode automatically for certain pages. | clipradiowallet wrote: | I'm a huge fan of reader mode! On a few sites that the adblocker | can't work on - or sites that won't work _because_ of the | adblocker...reader mode is usually the only way for me to see the | content. Example, wall street journal and some other mainstream | news sites will obscure the article with a paywall, but reader | mode shows it in entirety. | jonplackett wrote: | Does no one else user reader mode? | | I've found it the only way to stay sane on sites where ad | blockers don't work. | oefnak wrote: | Which adblocker do you use? With ublock origin I almost never | encounter sites where ads are visible. | jonplackett wrote: | Only happens on mobile sometimes, and when a site forces you | to turn it off to function. I'm on ublock too any other time! | I feel a deep sense of pity for anyone still surfing the web | unprotected! | obscuren wrote: | I've always been puzzled by the "You accept these cookies" | banners. Some have an 'accept' and 'don't accept/let me choose' | and some even come with a 'X' to close the banner. | | So what does it mean when I either click the 'X' or simply do | nothing and leave the banner there while I read the article? What | does it mean when I use reader mode and basically ignore the | question whether I accept them or not? | dijit wrote: | I think I have to share my incredulation; I always use Reader | Mode on Safari iOS: lots of sites are quite literally unreadable | otherwise. | schlupfknoten wrote: | Unfortunately, I have recently started encountering more sites | where Safari just doesn't offer the Reader Mode option. | asdff wrote: | The arms race continues | spideymans wrote: | If you have to actively circumvent the efforts of your | users to make your webpage more readable, you may have a | massive problem with your underlying design culture. | opdahl wrote: | Quick tip on Safari iOS Reader View: | | Click and hold the 'aA' button on the address bar and it will | go straight to reader view without you having to go through the | menu and selecting it. | interpol_p wrote: | And if you tap "Website Settings" from the 'aA' popup (this | is iOS 15, not sure where the setting lives in iOS 14, but | it's somewhere there too), you can toggle "Use Reader | Automatically" for the domain | FabHK wrote: | And, in both macOS and iOS Safari, you have a per-website- | setting to request reader view automatically. It's great. | punnerud wrote: | Hardpress on the AA in the URL-bar and you activate it directly | (if it's available). | | Possible new safari feature: Make the text bold if reader mode | is available | fckthisguy wrote: | I exclusively use reader mode on Firefox when reading news | articles. So many site are borderline unusable otherwise due to | all the ads, popups, cookie policies, and subscription promps. | LegitShady wrote: | ...I just use adblockers. | mywittyname wrote: | This isn't as effective as it was in the past now that | anti-adblocking is practically universal. | LegitShady wrote: | Haven't noticed any issues but maybe I don't visit the | same websites as you. | rodolphoarruda wrote: | Yes, and it gives you -- Firefox -- the chance to fine tune | your reading experience to that very moment. Sometimes you need | a larger font size or more text/background contrast depending | where you are. It's really useful. | Meph504 wrote: | I use it all the time to avoid a lot of modal popup article | blockers and the like. | rodolphoarruda wrote: | I'm an absolute heavy user of reader mode in Firefox, not only | for reading content per se, but to clean up content before I | copy/paste it into Evernote. I just love the feature. | ryanianian wrote: | I find Evernote's web clipper (browser extension) to usually do | a job either comparable to or better than Firefox's web | clipper. Clipper > Clip Format > Article. | | It used to be pretty bad but they've made it a lot better in | the past few months. | | It also has the benefit of storing the source url in the note | and creating the new note from scratch which you don't get by | copy/pasting into a new note. | SevenSigs wrote: | Haven't tried it but there is an addon to automatically enable | reader mode:https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto- | reader-v... | frenkel wrote: | That's super useful for some known bad sites that I use. | Thanks! | AdmiralAsshat wrote: | > I believe not a lot of users know about this button, especially | because Chrome doesn't want to show it by default. | | What? The browser made by the company that derives 90% of its | revenue from ads doesn't want to show you a button that can | remove the ads? I am shocked! | soheil wrote: | I use Reading List feature to save articles that I want to listen | to later during a run or workout. I made https://per.quest to | listen to any URL. I wish there was a rss feed provided by the | browser for Reading List feature so I could listen to articles | one after another. | | I also stopped using reader mode for sites with insane | ads/videos/js/popovers that hog the browser and just open them | with per.quest/read/[URL] to extract just the article text. | abrowne wrote: | Personally, I found reader mode missed just enough -- like images | loaded with js or footnotes referenced in an article -- that it | was more trouble than it was worth. And as much as I liked the | "readability", I missed missed seeing the different designs, | fonts and so on. (Who would want to read all books with exactly | the same layout and typeface!?) | | Now I have a collection of user stylesheets I use with Stylus to | improve sites I read a lot. I especially often remove fixed | toolbars and adjust font size and line height. I also use the | browser zoom feature a lot to get one-off sites to a better | reading text size. | Saint_Genet wrote: | You also get around many paywalls by activating reader mode. | aimor wrote: | Firefox USED to allow accessing reader mode by prepending the url | with 'about:reader?url='. This doesn't work anymore and I don't | know what to use instead. There is a reader mode button that | toggles it on and off, but some websites redirect or change the | content before I can click the button. Sometimes the button just | doesn't appear (why not, reader mode usually works fine). | Refreshing the page sometimes works, if the website doesn't | redirect or change the address. | | Is there some other way to force reader mode before the page | load? | maddyboo wrote: | I love reader mode but I don't use it when reading technical | content because it lacks syntax highlighting. I've also often | encountered bugs where certain graphics that are core the the | article won't be shown and I will be confused until I turn off | reader mode and see what I was missing. But for non-technical | articles, it usually works fine. | eurasiantiger wrote: | Many sites already work around this, and reader mode only shows a | blank page or the contents of the disavow human rights box. | eganist wrote: | > Many sites already work around this, and reader mode only | shows a blank page or the contents of the disavow human rights | box. | | Refresh while in reader mode. The DOM with most paywalls is | destroyed post-render, not before it reaches the web browser. | Refreshing in reader mode prevents client side scripts from | executing and rewriting the DOM. I'm presuming this is to be | search engine friendly, but I'll leave it to the SEO experts to | educate me. | | This is what I do with most sites. | eurasiantiger wrote: | With iOS, for example, refreshing npr.org just turns off | reader mode. | nojito wrote: | As you refresh it should change the address bar saying | reader mode avaiable and you should be able to quickly hit | the Aa icon on the top left. | eurasiantiger wrote: | They redirect to another subdomain, so I don't think this | will work. Thanks anyway! | subscribeNOW wrote: | > The DOM with most paywalls is destroyed post-render | | This has changed for most major sites. Users behind the | paywall are served a "truncated" version of the article that | _never_ included a full version of it. The days of "press | Esc before it finishes loading!" are coming to an end it | seems. | | The truncated version is still more SEO-friendly than a blank | page as it has the headline and partial content. | OJFord wrote: | Disabling JS also often works for the same reason. (But | reader mode is great, nothing against it.) | chrismorgan wrote: | In Firefox this is implemented as about:reader?url=..., and you | can use that URL to load reader mode even on pages that aren't | detected as compatible (so that the reader mode toolbar button | doesn't appear). | | This used be the URL on Firefox for Android as well, but if I | recall correctly (I seldom use reader mode) it got changed in the | Fenix world so that it's a moz-extension:// URL. | classichasclass wrote: | I used to enter about:reader URLs all the time for pages that | Firefox Android wouldn't show the button for. Do you know where | the moz-extension:// incantation for this is? I would think | it's a constant UUID, so maybe I just need to page through the | source. | | There really should be an option for "always let me try Reader | Mode." | stiltzkin wrote: | Highly recommend Instant View on Telegram: | https://instantview.telegram.org/ | | You can make your site and pages compatible with Instant View, | also there are bots which can export pages to Telegra.ph which | are also Instant View compatible. | lastgeniusua wrote: | Sadly Tridactyl (vim keybindings for Firefox) doesn't work in | reader mode, which really breaks the flow of my usual | scrolling/tab-switching with vim keys. This, and the pdf reader | tabs kill me because of it | bovine3dom wrote: | How much do you care? There's an open pull request you could | give a little time to that would fix it by integrating a reader | mode into Tridactyl here: | https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl/pull/3306 | | : ) | lastgeniusua wrote: | don't really have much experience with JS or TS, but might | try this later, thanks! | bovine3dom wrote: | If you're familiar with CSS, writing a decent stylesheet | for it would be a big help. If you've no interest in JS/TS | you could leave that part to me. | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | I use it often. Lots of sites have become wise to its use for | bypassing paywalls, but it does work, occasionally, to get past a | required sign-in. | | It's good for downloading sites as PDF. | sysadm1n wrote: | How does a browser's reader mode carve out the bit you want to | read and ignore menus and other cruft? Does it scan for semantic | elements like `<main> / <article>` or something and then serve up | the 'meat' of the article? | js2 wrote: | More or less. Here's various implementations: | | https://github.com/masukomi/arc90-readability | | Original JS library: | | https://github.com/masukomi/arc90-readability/blob/master/js... | | Specifically see here: | | https://github.com/masukomi/arc90-readability/blob/master/js... | CrlNvl wrote: | On FF, is there an extension that automatically turns on reader | mode when you are reading an article? | gizdan wrote: | Yes. I've been using Automatic Reader View[0]. Though, to be | honest, this should be an option directly in Firefox. | | [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/automatic- | rea... | refracture wrote: | Reader mode on Firefox for iPad OS is wonderful, gets rid of | everything but the text I want and it feels like reading an | eBook. | kjr247 wrote: | Doesn't work on Chromium Brave. /tries not to cry /lays on the | floor and cries alot | aerojoe23 wrote: | I love reader mode in Firefox. It will also do text to speech for | you. | | The voices seem to dependent on something built into the OS. They | sound okay on windows and I haven't figured out how to get them | to sound good on linux. On windows the voices sound good, but I | Wish I could get it to go a little faster. The voices don't sound | human so it takes some getting used to. | | On linux the voices just sound more harsh. To the point I don't | want to use it. If anyone knows a switch to flip or how to | install additional voices to make them sound better, that would | be great. | q_andrew wrote: | I use Microsoft Edge exclusively for its read aloud function -- | it doesn't require reader mode to be activated and has | integration with Microsoft's 'natural voice' which is almost | indistinguishable from regular speech. Also it will instantly | start reading from whatever word you click on which helps with | backtracking. The downside, of course, is having to use Edge. | woldemariam wrote: | +1 for Edge. Use it on my Macbook and love how it highlights | the sentence it is currently reading and scrolls the page | down automatically. It is not as good as Google Assistant on | android. Google Assistant on android knows to skip past image | captions and ads, and it knows when it has reached the end of | an article; Edge simply reads everything it sees. | q_andrew wrote: | You'd think google would use the same architecture for | chrome! I haven't found it to be nearly as useful. | ygra wrote: | I guess those parts are where Edge cannot use the same | services Google uses anyway (since they're not allowed | to). And if they have to provide their own TTS anyway, | they can just as well improve over Chrome at that point. | badhrink wrote: | How to activate this in Google Assistant? Is there a | special application or something? Or do we just have to say | "Ok google read this <URL> " ? | franciscop wrote: | Oh that must be new but it looks so useful. I had eye laser | last year and looked a lot for exactly something like that for | my 3-4 days of literally just laying down and not doing much, | but couldn't find anything like this. My plan was to open the | Gutenberg project HTML books (or plain text) and have the | browser read them, but nothing satisfied me (specially since | there was no "pause/scrub" in the ones I did find). Ended up | listening to audiobooks in youtube and that was good enough. | stuaxo wrote: | Wow, never tried the voices before and they are hilarious on | Linux (tried en-GB). | jayknight wrote: | I just wish Firefox Focus had reader mode. It's my default | browser on my phone, which gets me around free article limits | on some sites, so having to open it in another browser can | defeat that purpose. | SquishyPanda23 wrote: | Do you know how to enable this in Linux? I don't see a TTS | option in reader mode on Firefox. | | EDIT: I figured it out. I needed to install speech-dispatcher. | | On Ubuntu | | > sudo apt install speech-dispatcher | NAHWheatCracker wrote: | It's available on Linux for me. I'm on Pop! OS 21. The | "listen" option is a set of earphones at the top left of the | page. | | The voices are awful to listen to, though. | stuaxo wrote: | Hilariously bad. | barbinbrad wrote: | For web developers, one thing to keep in mind with text to | speech is that you can use the aria-hidden attribute to prevent | things (like menus or ads) from being read. | | https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Accessibility/A... | isaac21259 wrote: | The text to speech goes through speech dispatcher which by | default probably uses espeak. I believe there are better text | to speech engines like festival which you should be able to | have speech dispatcher use quite easily but I've never tried | this. | illegalmemory wrote: | One of the little feature of reader mode I love is, if you time | it correctly (before loading all javascript of the page) you | can skip a lot of prompts ( subscribe to read / monthly limit | reached and so on ) | ethbr0 wrote: | Try hard refreshing the page _after_ you 're in reader mode. | mywittyname wrote: | It's only a matter of time before sites start rolling out | anti-reader mode "features." | nsxwolf wrote: | I stopped using these modes years ago because of | inconsistent results that I assume must be from reader- | blocking tech. | marssaxman wrote: | I stopped using those sites, instead. I figure that if | they're so far up in themselves that they want to employ | such user-hostile design, I'm probably not missing much | if I just move on and read something else. | matheusmoreira wrote: | It's already happenning. Just like adblockers, anything | that makes life better for users is actively fought | against. | egypturnash wrote: | It's already been done. Wired, for instance, only shows you | the first paragraph of a story until you've made an account | and logged in, even in reader mode. | rawling wrote: | Surely that's just any halfway-competent pay/sign-up | wall, rather than specifically anti-reader mode? | satellite2 wrote: | Not necessarily as they still want to be referenced | properly. | | The workaround was to whitelist Google's spider ips and | remove the paywall for those but with the progress of | other search engine / social nets it's more complicated | to paywall without hurting SEO. | matheusmoreira wrote: | > The workaround was to whitelist Google's spider ips and | remove the paywall for those | | Isn't that against Google's own policies? I think they | call it cloaking. | dredmorbius wrote: | For sites dependent on link-aggregator sites (such as HN, | Tildes, Mastodon, Diaspora, etc.)[1] for spreading and | sharing content, hard paywalls tend to very strongly | discourage further readership and sharing. | | I'm aware that HN has multiple levels of penalties | applied to sites / domains, for various reasons. Users | may also flag inaccessible content. (I certainly do.) | | ________________________________ | | Notes: | | 1. If you've determined that "etc." is doing much heavy | lifting here, congratulations. The resources listed are | highly encouraged. | egypturnash wrote: | If you wanna split hairs, sure. "Breaking reader mode" is | a component of an access wall. For a while a lot of sites | didn't have that, so reader mode would work to skip all | that. | morsch wrote: | No tts in Firefox for Android, sadly. That'd be really useful. | Is there no way for Android apps to use the built-in system | tts? | prirai wrote: | Yes, there is. Styx Browser on Fdroid has implemented it and | also many other powerful features. Give a try, won't look | back. | kzrdude wrote: | There seems to be some ways to do it in linux, but haven't | tried myself yet: https://askubuntu.com/questions/953509/how- | can-i-change-the-... | | I'm not super fond of having to run any particular background | service for this. | busymom0 wrote: | For anyone interested, my hacker news app HACK does both reader | node as well as read text to speech. It's brand new so any | feedback is welcome: | | https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pranapps.h... | | It's available on iOS too which uses the built in reader mode | of safari. | AlexAndScripts wrote: | Just tried it out. I usually use Harmonic, and in general I | much prefer the UI - it's more minimalistic, lower contrast, | and I prefer the font (Product Sans). It also has a built in | ad blocker. However, I appreciate the various filtering | options / different feeds and the archive access seems like a | really useful feature. | | On the whole I think I'll stick with Harmonic, but it looks | like it has some potential. | busymom0 wrote: | The settings in my app can be customized to make it as | minimalist as needed (like hide favicons, hide the | metadata, only show titles etc). There's also settings for | color choices and a setting to use lower contrast text. | Font sizes and paragraph spacing can be changed to make it | more compact. My app has a built in adblocker too for the | built in browser. | | My app has reply push notifications too which I don't think | any of the other HN apps have. | | As for the font, Product Sans is not legally allowed to be | used by third parties as far as I am aware: | | https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/102262/ca | n... | | My app allows you to change fonts too and it supports | Montserrat font which looks visually similar to Product | Sans. | onkoe wrote: | Please consider putting this on F-droid. Many people here | don't use Google services and you're likely missing out on | many downloads (including mine) | busymom0 wrote: | Thanks for the idea. I will research F droid and put it on | there. | mastrsushi wrote: | I use reader mode anytime I come across an informative webpage. | That being said, I always use it as the precious feature it is, | presuming it will be removed either over lack of use and support | or effect on ad market. | GrumpyNl wrote: | The icon doesnt show on chrome latest version. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-08-25 23:00 UTC)