Tell HN: Setting reader view as default will vastly improve your web experience | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: Setting reader view as default will vastly improve your web experience

12 pointscarlosjobim10 comments

A lot has been said about the shabby state of the modern web - especially the user-hostile design and littering of advertisements.

But there is a solution built into the browser, that's called reader view. Maybe some of you use it sometimes, but I'm here to say that it should be set as standard in your browser for all websites. Every article loads with the article right there, in a font and format that's suitable to read and no distractions. If an article has images, they're perfectly inserted in the reader view. If an article has YouTube videos, they're perfectly inserted in the reader view. Bright or dark mode under your control, as well as font and font size.

If you feel like you're missing anything by using reader mode - you're not missing anything. It's like switching from watching movies with ad-breaks to using streaming. The first few days you might feel like you're missing something when there's only content and no distractions, but you quickly get used. Yes, you will have to except a few sites who are not suitable for reader view. It's easy and seamless.

Especially on mobile, reader view is a must-have. The modern internet is almost unusable on phones due to bad design and sticky headers. Reader view makes the web a first class experience on mobile again.

Now, I'd also like to ask: Is there any movement to continue this kind of branch and make a web browser a true user agent instead of an agent for the pages you visit? If you have reader mode, pretty much all that's missing is standardized navigation, and you cover the needs of most users. I've seen the Gemini protocol and browsers such as Kristall and Spacewalk as something interesting in this direction, but why change the protocol instead of just taking back control of the HTML?

I actually tried this a couple of years ago, with disappointing results. I felt like I had to disable reader mode about as often as I currently choose to enable it, and life was no simpler. It seems that are many pages where one could use reader mode, but it's not really helpful - this very discussion page is an example. Reader mode is an option here, but it cuts off all the comments, which probably isn't what you want.

Yes, message boards / forums are the weak point of reader mode, and I haven't really found any good solution for cleaning them up, unless you want to go the route of injecting your own CSS styles.

But maybe you could give reader mode a shot again? At least in Safari it usually won't activate unless it is actually useful for a page. And soon enough after some use, you've whitelisted most domains that you don't want to use reader mode on.

I use reader view all the time! - I just activate it manually. I don't know of any such whitelist in Firefox, though, and there's no Safari on Linux.

Can you make it work for more than the first post, for example here on HN? Sometimes I can force reader view in Safari, even when it doesn't want to, by pressing CMD+Shift+R

With Apple's Safari browser, you can configure websites to always open in Reader mode. Beats being bombarded with pop-overs, chat bots beeping, auto-playing videos and demands for cookie permissions!

Exactly! Not to speak of sticky headers, scroll hijacking, unreadable fonts, animated hero images, the list is almost endless.

This also circumvents the paywall on websites that hide the content with some JavaScript that executes after the initial page load (e.g. NYT). (Note that if you enter reader mode after the paywall has already loaded, it won't work, but if you set the site to default to reader mode then the next time you load it, you will see the full article.)

Another option is to use Firefox which lets you override both the page's fonts and colours.

For fonts you uncheck "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections above" and for colours you uncheck "Use system colours" and set the drop-down to "Always".

TBH, I usually just use Dark Reader for the colours portion though, just for the variety so it's not always the same thing.

uBlock Origin.

Yes, but it only removes ads. Reader view fixes all other annoyances.

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