Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The most underused browser feature: reader mode

frankgroeneveld.nl

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 366 posts

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#181

Post by somedude895 »

yodsanklai wrote: post #171
pkulak wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bad for the environment. Psst. Paper is a renewable resource and easy to recycle at least a couple times.

https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/consumption/other-...

> 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.

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#182

Post by marvindanig »

mariusor wrote: post #145
_t9ow wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which e-ink tablet would you recommend?

Kobo devices have out of the box integration with Pocket, which Mozilla supports natively.

Proprietary tablet vs. a browser feature on the open web–which option would you take?

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#184

Post by marvindanig »

fnord77 wrote: post #153
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'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.

I read all my books on the iPad. No hassle at all.

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#185

Post by satellite2 »

rawling wrote: post #146
egypturnash wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Surely that's just any halfway-competent pay/sign-up wall, rather than specifically anti-reader mode?

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.

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#186

Post by freediver »

k1m wrote: post #159
up6w6 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: htt…

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…

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?

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#187

Post by satellite2 »

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.

Exactly, as some sites will remove content too fast and the reader mode button disappear before any possible attempt at clicking it

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#188

Post by dredmorbius »

rawling wrote: post #146
egypturnash wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Surely that's just any halfway-competent pay/sign-up wall, rather than specifically anti-reader mode?

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.

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#189

Post by dev_tty01 »

w0m wrote: post #53
fergie wrote: post #22

I always assumed that Reader Mode was used pretty heavily.

i have read a total of 5 articles with it since introduction decade(s?) ago. The switch is just jarring

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.

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#190

Post by freediver »

jamil7 wrote: post #168
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.

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.
Post reply on HN