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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

#21

Post by q_andrew »

aerojoe23 wrote: post #14

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…

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.

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#23

Post by x-sp »

kzrdude wrote: post #8
Forge36 wrote: post #7

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

Firefox for Android has reader mode.

As does Opera

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#24

Post by woldemariam »

q_andrew wrote: post #21
aerojoe23 wrote: post #14

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…

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.

+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.

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#26

Post by OJFord »

bryant wrote: post #17
eurasiantiger wrote: post #12

Many sites already work around this, and reader mode only shows a blank page or the contents of the disavow human rights box.

> 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…

Disabling JS also often works for the same reason. (But reader mode is great, nothing against it.)

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#27

Post by thrower123 »

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.

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#28

Post by q_andrew »

woldemariam wrote: post #24
q_andrew wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

+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.

You'd think google would use the same architecture for chrome! I haven't found it to be nearly as useful.

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#30

Post by illegalmemory »

aerojoe23 wrote: post #14

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…

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 )
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