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Comment by Fuzzwah | Hacker News Reader

I scroll down past the opening photo so the 1st line of text is at the top of my browser window and settle in to begin reading and then the header scrolls down to cover the top 3 lines of text.

Hate.

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I used to `fix` that with the .js extension for firefox [0] and in my `$HOME/.js` folder I would drop a `newyorker.com.js` file :

    $('div,a').css('position',
      function (index, value) {
        if (value == 'fixed')
          return 'static'
        }
    )

[0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dotjs/

It's really poor design. Widescreen displays are in the overwhelming majority at present, but few people prefer columns of text that fill the screen horizontally. Vertical screen real estate therefore commands a premium price. Users probably wouldn't mind a vertical bar off to the side nearly as much.

Another solution - Tampermonkey/Greasemonkey script:

    // ==UserScript==
    // @name       Remove New Yorker navbar
    // @match      http://www.newyorker.com/*
    // ==/UserScript==

    document.getElementById('mobile-nav-container').setAttribute('style', 'top: -550px;');

Side project idea, chrome or firefox extension that takes text and pictures from popular news sites and removes all the distracting bells and whistles. Now that I think about it, something like that probably already exists.

I do this manually sometimes, with chrome dev tools. The whole issue actually has a pretty profound effect on which sites I read. For example, I won't follow a link to usa today unless it's something really interesting, whereas I'll read almost anything from the la times, just because I enjoy their bullshit free layout.

Readability?

https://www.readability.com/

I would rather have something local, not send a list of everything I read to some server somewhere.

Ah, then you want Readable.

http://readable.tastefulwords.com/

     Evernote has acquired Readable!

Hmmm, let's check Firebug's Net tab

    http://readable.tastefulwords.com/log.js?rand=0.8736547357568928&url=http%3A%2F%2Farstechnica.com%2Finformation-technology%2F2014%2F10%2Fborked-belkin-routers-leave-many-unable-to-get-online%2F&options=%5B%5B%3Dtf%3A%20quote(Palatino%20Linotype)%2C%20Palatino%2C%20quote(Book%20Antigua)%2C%20Georgia%2C%20serif%5D%5D%5B%5B%3Dtfm%3A%20quote(Courier%20New)%2C%20Courier%2C%20monospace%5D%5D%5B%5B%3Dtfh%3A%20quote(Times%20New%20Roman)%2C%20Times%2C%20serif%5D%5D%5B%5B%3Dts%3A%2018px%5D%5D%5B%5B%3Dtlh%3A%201.5%5D%5D%5B%5B%3Dbw%3A%2030em%5D%5D%5B%5B%3Dcb%3A%20%23F5F5F5%5D%5D%5B%5B%3Dct%3A%20%23282828%5D%5D%5B%5B%3Dcl%3A%20%230000FF%5D%5D%5B%5B%3Dta%3A%20normal%5D%5D%5B%5B%3Db%3A%20blueprint%5D%5D&customCSS=&_=1412717055539

I'll stick to Color Toggle [1] then.

1: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/color-toggle/...

Good stuff on firebug research. I am however, not sure how switching between color modes helps with messy layout.

It doesn't, but if you uncheck "Let pages override this settings", all the backgrounds will be the same and the effect is quite similar.

Readability Redux (https://github.com/MHordecki/readability-redux) is local. It uses the old Readability library that Readability used before it turend into an online service.

You can achieve something very close to that by just disabling javascript and CSS. It's amazing how much better the web is without that modern cruft.

I use http://evernote.com/clearly/

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