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Comment by peterlk | Hacker News Reader

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 :)

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I've just poked through both the GetPocket site (https://getpocket.com/publisher/) and Mozilla's Readability Library GitHub page (https://github.com/mozilla/readability) without seeing obvious guidelines.

My general suspicion is that adhering to a simple HTML5 documemnt structure, and possible use of microformats (https://microformats.io/) goes a long way.

Update: there's some discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28301113

I haven't seen guidelines lately, but Readability.com, before it was shut down, did have a page that's archived here: http://web.archive.org/web/20160301180825/https://readabilit...

Thanks, yes I remember that page.

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 browsers can't trust anyone. Just read up on HTML5 and how tags should be used... then follow that.

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.

I recently worked on implementing readability in my app and here's the resources I found most useful:

A very long read but this covers everything:

> How to Section Your HTML

https://css-tricks.com/how-to-section-your-html/

These are specifically important for accessibility users.

Another short read:

> HTML5 sectioning elements, headings, and document outlines

https://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201103/html5_sectioni...

And you can use Markup Validation Service to validate and get tips:

https://validator.w3.org/#validate_by_input+with_options

Check out the excellent answer by Christian Kohlschütter on how readability works:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3652657/what-algorithm-d...

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