The most underused browser feature: reader mode • Hacker News Board

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#231

Post by shandor » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 6:13 PM UTC

satellite2 wrote: post #187

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

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.

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#232

Post by CodesInChaos » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 6:21 PM UTC

shandor wrote: post #167

classichasclass wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Afaik firefox mobile only allows a small number of whitelisted extensions.

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#233

Post by ducttapecrown » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 6:23 PM UTC

mperham wrote: post #196

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.

And add margins!

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#234

Post by dredmorbius » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 6:26 PM UTC

jabroni_salad wrote: post #218

dredmorbius wrote: post #211

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…

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.

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.)

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#235

Post by prirai » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 6:26 PM UTC

morsch wrote: post #229

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…

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?

Yes, there is. Styx Browser on Fdroid has implemented it and also many other powerful features. Give a try, won't look back.

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#236

Post by dredmorbius » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

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/

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.

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#237

Post by freediver » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

k1m wrote: post #227

freediver wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

Makes sense. What does 'prune' and 'tidy' instruct parser to do?

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#238

Post by bovine3dom » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 6:29 PM UTC

lastgeniusua wrote: post #223

bovine3dom wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 : )

don't really have much experience with JS or TS, but might try this later, thanks!

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.

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#239

Post by mft_ » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 6:31 PM UTC

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/

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

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#240

Post by dredmorbius » Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 6:32 PM UTC

nicbou wrote: post #225

mperham wrote: post #196

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.

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.

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.