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

261–270 of 366 posts

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#263

Post by jtth »

puttycat wrote: post #262

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.

Instapaper has this, and can even be set up to send a weekly digest.

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#264

Post by dredmorbius »

nicbou wrote: post #259
dredmorbius wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'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...

Pretty good, at a glance.

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#265

Post by UntitledNo4 »

nicbou wrote: post #259
dredmorbius wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'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...

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.

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#266

Post by obscuren »

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?

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#267

Post by thenanyu »

EMM_386 wrote: post #44
binkHN wrote: post #40

I might be the minority here, but this is why I use Edge on Windows. It's, basically, Chrome with a reader mode.

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.

works now in brave, the setting is extremely confusing, you have to set it to "enabled and available in settings"

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#268

Post by reaperducer »

ducttapecrown wrote: post #233
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!

A little line-height: 1.2em goes a long way, too.

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#269

Post by badhrink »

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.

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 " ?

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#270

Post by onkoe »

busymom0 wrote: post #33
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…

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.

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)
Post reply on HN