I prefer the design of Firefox Reader Mode. That is-- do your thing, modern web. Once you finish I click a button to destroy your Rube Goldberg machine and retain only the tiny marble I wanted in the first place.
I only wish it could detect when asshole newspapers do that last minute mutation of the DOM to put bullshit divs in front of the article. It makes me play a button-click race to beat the rendering of the bullshit div to reader mode.
Btw-- why do asshole newspapers actually send the article content before adding the bullshit divs? If you're gonna be evil, just send the first paragraph over the wire and make it appear as if the rest of the article is just one email sign-up away.
Btw if you do this often look into the Auto Reader View addon. Then the common places you visit and can use reader view will be viewed in reader view immediately. The escape hatch works to which is nice. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-reader-v...
Safari has this built in and it's magnificent. I can't remember the last time I had to peer through a 20px high peephole at content on the Guardian website.
> I only wish it could detect when asshole newspapers do that last minute mutation of the DOM to put bullshit divs in front of the article. It makes me play a button-click race to beat the rendering of the bullshit div to reader mode.
More often than not, going into reader mode, then hitting refresh will fix this! (works for NYT)
Cloaking is showing different content, no? Not making it easier for Google to read the content than normal users. Lots of newspapers show Google the content for paywalled content.
Disabling javascript almost always works too - frequently where blocking elements doesn't, because the js does something fancy like delete the non-visible content elements.
> It makes me play a button-click race to beat the rendering of the bullshit div to reader mode.
Wouldn't the reader still work if they just put a div over the content? And couldn't you just delete the offending div in the DOM instead of racing against the Javascript? Or just disable the Javascript entirely and re-load?
1. Something renders that appears to be the entire article. Winning the FF Reader Mode race confirms it is indeed the entire article.
2. Bullshit Div appears blocking my access to content. First paragraph of said article is greyed and now ends with an ellipsis, or "To read the rest", or some such bullshit text.
3. If I lose the race, FF Reader only shows me that first paragraph.
Usually it fails to work when they actually remove most of the article from the DOM (e.g. "Subscribe to read the rest of the article!"), rather than when they cover it up.
I only wish it could detect when asshole newspapers do that last minute mutation of the DOM to put bullshit divs in front of the article. It makes me play a button-click race to beat the rendering of the bullshit div to reader mode.
Btw-- why do asshole newspapers actually send the article content before adding the bullshit divs? If you're gonna be evil, just send the first paragraph over the wire and make it appear as if the rest of the article is just one email sign-up away.