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The most underused browser feature: reader mode

frankgroeneveld.nl

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Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#161

Post by codq »

spupy wrote: post #91
pmontra wrote: post #57

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.

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.

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.

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#163

Post by canadianfella »

Otek wrote: post #144
ameminator wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

> hundreds of reams of paper.

How did you come to this conclusion?

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#164

Post by Veen »

pmontra wrote: post #57

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.

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.

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#165

Post by 5faulker »

ameminator wrote: post #131
BeetleB wrote: post #125

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…

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.

It's a nice compromise.

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#166

Post by pkulak »

BeetleB wrote: post #125

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…

> Bad for the environment.

Psst. Paper is a renewable resource and easy to recycle at least a couple times.

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#167

Post by shandor »

classichasclass wrote: post #81
shandor wrote: post #58

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.

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/

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?

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#168

Post by jamil7 »

k1m wrote: post #70

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/

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.

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#170

Post by hollerith »

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.

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