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Feature #183

open

Reader Mode

Added by Soren Stoutner over 6 years ago. Updated 5 months ago.

Status:
New
Priority:
4.x
Start date:
08/28/2017
Due date:
% Done:

0%

Estimated time:

Description

Add a reading mode, that reformats the webpage to display only the body text. This will likely be a time consuming feature to implement unless Google adds it to `WebView`.

Actions #1

Updated by Soren Stoutner over 6 years ago

In Android < 4.4, the WebView was based on WebKit. It included two layout options (WebSettings.LayoutAlgorithm.NARROW_COLUMNS and WebSettings.LayoutAlgorithm.SINGLE_COLUMN) that were used to reformat the page for reading mode.

https://developer.android.com/reference/android/webkit/WebSettings.LayoutAlgorithm.html

When WebView was rebased on Blink to share the same codebase as Chromium in Android 4.4 these layout options were removed.

https://developer.android.com/guide/webapps/migrating.html#Columns

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_(web_engine)

Three is currently no easy way to do a reader mode using WebView. Perhaps it will be something that can be added in Privacy WebView, but it will likely require a bunch of work.

Actions #2

Updated by Soren Stoutner almost 5 years ago

  • Priority changed from 3.x to 4.x
Actions #3

Updated by Soren Stoutner almost 5 years ago

  • Subject changed from Reading Mode to Reader Mode

If Google doesn't decide to expose this feature in WebView, it should be fairly simple to enable it in Privacy WebView because the code is already included in the source.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/04/18/1558246/google-chrome-to-get-a-reader-mode

Actions #4

Updated by Prince Cooper over 1 year ago

This is a similar issue with Text only mode. Just implement that & no need of this.

Actions #5

Updated by Prince Cooper over 1 year ago

Moreover, if you use feed readers (rss, atom, etc), they also contain images as a part of feed, which negates the whole point of "text only".

Actions #6

Updated by Soren Stoutner over 1 year ago

Good catch. https://redmine.stoutner.com/issues/530 is a duplicate of this feature request and has been closed as such.

Actions #7

Updated by ask low 5 months ago

@Prince Cooper, both aren't the same. Reader Mode is an interpretation mechanism where the body text is primarily focused leaving the rest of the functions and CSS jargon. Whereas text only mode is a rendering layout where all the site functions compiled and printed only in the text form.

If you wanna taste some of its experience, try lynx browser on any Linux.

Reader Mode doesn't necessarily improve the performance, as you're still parsing the whole site including JS. But text mode omits everything & just prints the html (which is mostly useless for the current internet).

@Soren Stoutner I think google probably won't implement it in anytime. The codebase exists in chromium outside webview, under Accessibilities. It's not designed to be permanent, caz web is volatile and changes everyday.

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