I have the same problem reading emails on my small screen phone. This in spite of the fact that emails contain a text representation of the message in addition to the formatted version. The default mail client on iPhones can be improved a lot but it doesn’t look like it’s getting any attention at all.
The most underused browser feature: reader mode
321–330 of 366 posts
Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode
#322one little known feature of reader mode, no matter if firefox's or safari/mobile is that more often than you would expect, it kind of magically goes through pay-walls. so you get to see articles that require subscription or payment or else, with a single click. this happens so often that makes one wonder whether is due to some devs being lazy (hiding the actual content) or is by intent kept for savvy readers. also do…
I'm using Vivaldi, which is like Chrome but with a far better UI. It has a reader mode, which afaict does not help with the paywall at The Economist. Perhaps it's because if you pay for a subscription there, the full article is at a second link?
Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 described a good set of similar practices for text/article-centric websites: https://seirdy.one/2020/11/23/website-best-practices.html
I don't expect anyone to follow it 100%, but the gist is that the page layout shouldn't look too different from browser defaults or use advanced features.
Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode
#324Underused? I use it for almost every article I open.
Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doing exactly this with a large format e-ink tablet has been revolutionary for me
Which e-ink tablet would you recommend?
Remarkable 2 is the only one I have experience with, and I recommend it highly if you are comfortable exploring the community APIs and tools. It uses a proprietary cloud platform by default, which may not appeal to folks, but you can use ssh over usb to avoid their cloud entirely. I use a script based on https://github.com/subutux/rmapy to send the tablet pdf files with one command. The reading experience is excellent and the writing surface/pen are great for marking up documents as well. It's a magnificent paper notebook replacement that you can fairly easily put pdfs on. If you need on-tablet web browsing, other apps, or state of the art epub reading, I'd look elsewhere. For getting reading material off a backlit screen as though it were an endless stack of paper with arbitrary content, it's phenomenal.
Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode
#326IMO most underrated browser feature is "Create shortcut" on Chromium. It can make any website to app-style window and create shortcut, so it can be pinned to Windows taskbar. So it can virtually replace some Electron apps to just a window for web version, so we can save system resources used by each Electron Chromium instances. It's also useful that shares browser profile, and extensions like ad blocker and password manager.
Sadly Firefox truncated similar feature. It's deal breaker for me. https://superuser.com/questions/468580/create-application-sh...
I wish more Chrome users use this to avoid the feature removed.
Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode
#327Firefox's reader mode is amazing, especially if you need to read long content; their text-to-speech tool works very well and I use Firefox in large part because of it.
On Chrome, a startup named Speechify has a (crappy/intrusive) extension. They also have a decent iOS app, for ebooks, PDF and mobile web browsing... but their pricing structure is ridiculously expensive (also their annoying marketing feels like a giant ego trip/self promotional mania from the founder/CEO). However their voices are slightly better than the OS's.
Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode
#328IMO most underrated browser feature is "Create shortcut" on Chromium. It can make any website to app-style window and create shortcut, so it can be pinned to Windows taskbar. So it can virtually replace some Electron apps to just a window for web version, so we can save system resources used by each Electron Chromium instances. It's also useful that shares browser profile, and extensions like ad blocker and password…
Agreed - this allows me to run WhatsApp on Linux (as much as I don't want to, everyone I need to interact with is using it) in a chromium window like an app.
Re: The most underused browser feature: reader mode
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can I implement my website such that it is optimally useful for browsers like this? Just avoid flashy stuff? Is there any way to list my blog somewhere as a friendly place to read? I'm spinning it up again after a year off for reasons that I will probably write about :)
Adhere to the actual semantic meaning of HTML5 tags and browsers will handle the rest - honestly. So long as you're not using JS to swap in hidden content and CSS to arbitrarily reorder content flow then even aria hints are pretty unnecessary - but adding the relevant aria attributes will make sure that screen readers have an easier time. Not abusing the tags solves pretty much everything at this point because the br…
For writers, that is a good idea (although I think there are a few things missing from most implementations, such as foot notes, and a table of contents window; I do have the idea of a "feature" attribute to handle such things, but it is not implemented either (although using it is harmless, since unrecognized attributes in HTML will be ignored)). CSS should mostly be not needed.
For readers, it will be necessary to fix the implementation to do the working better, since not everyone will write it properly.