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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

#31

Post by kzrdude »

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…

There seems to be some ways to do it in linux, but haven't tried myself yet: https://askubuntu.com/questions/953509/how-can-i-change-the-...

I'm not super fond of having to run any particular background service for this.

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#33

Post by busymom0 »

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.

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#35

Post by Jakob »

neebz wrote: post #19

In Safari you can set reader mode turned on for specified websites. I have done it for all the sites which I visit frequently. Unfortunately there is no way to to turn it on at global level. The only minor gripe I have is the slide-above animation when reader mode turns on. It's jarring when you keep getting that on each navigation.

You can turn it on globally by selecting:

Preferences > Websites > Reader > When visiting other websites: On

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#37

Post by rock_artist »

The title is maybe a little misleading? TL;DR - you can overcome so frustrating cookie permission popups and some invasive visual elements by using reader mode.

However if we focus on the title, Reader Mode is a great feature (and I’m pretty sure many others followed by this title agree with that observation).

I use it mostly on my mobile devices and it can greatly improve readability of something by controlling the text-formatting.

Having said that, still many times (at least for me) it can resolve wrong translation for the content due to:

* ignoring some divs in the page * in-ability to move to next pages (eg. hyperlinks) * bad RTL support

I wish I would be able to use it more often. :)

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#38

Post by sidpatil »

perryizgr8 wrote: post #9
hhsbz wrote: post #4

I never use it because I know the process is automatic and I'm always afraid I will be missing part of the text or the pictures. I've found ad blockers to be more or less competent in removing the stupid European banners, but they are far from flawless. Some sites get stuck without a scroll bar for example

This is exactly why I don't use it either. Sometimes I have noticed that diagrams/images are stripped out. Sometimes a couple paragraphs at the end will be omitted.

I've noticed the same thing. Nowadays I quickly check the end of the article before switching to reader mode, to make sure it's still there.

Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode

#39

Post by jraph »

I use it from time to time but I would probably use it more often if reader mode was automatically restored on websites where I used it a first time (and didn't switch back).

If the page is "good enough" when blocking ads (and I also have JS disabled by default), I won't bother using reader mode.

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