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Make Medium Readable Again
- sandeep5630 9y agoHii its a great topic to discuss <a href="https://www.fortechinfo.com">free https://www.fortechinfo.com">free paytm cash</a>
- sandeep5630 9y agoHii its a great topic to discuss https://www.fortechinfo.com https://www.fortechinfo.com
- noahster11 9y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15123638 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15123638
- andrethegiant 9y agoEnough of the "Make X Y Again" please, it does nothing but refer to negative connotations.
- isseu 9y agoBut this is actually a solution...
- andrethegiant 9y agoI don't doubt that it is. Why someone would want to associate their app/tool/product with a controversial political slogan is beyond me.
- DennisAleynikov 9y agoMaybe remove the controvesial from your sentence? Its a nearly universally heard campaign slogan and has been riffed on all sides of the political spectrum. Including many democratic institutions trying to ride the popularity of the phrase.
- Retra 9y agoWhy would would someone want to censor themselves just because people they don't like want a monopoly on language? Is acting in a milquetoast manner attempting the broadest appeal more important than having common sense and integrity?
- geofft 9y ago> Why would would someone want to censor themselves just because people they don't like want a monopoly on language? All effective communication is "censoring yourself". When I say that I'm a software engineer, I'm refusing to say that I'm a kazoo player, because I intend to convey the idea that people get when they hear "I'm a software engineer" and not the idea that people get when they hear "I'm a kazoo player." No matter how much I dislike (or like) kazoo players, I'm not going to attempt to reclaim the term from them. And the English language is descriptive, not prescriptive. When a phrase has a well-established meaning - whether that meaning was first by commoners 400 years ago, or commoners today, or (for some languages) a bunch of academics in an ivory tower today - people are going to think I mean that meaning when I use the phrase. If I want my communication to be effective, it's on me to pick words that I expect people will understand, not on my audience to figure out what I really meant. When I communicate, I intend to communicate the most accurate thing I can to, yes, the broadest audience I can.
- Retra 9y agoI'm not saying self-censorship is bad, I'm saying that if you do it because someone else misappropriated some language, then you're on a clear path to only saying what other people permit. And this is especially wrong when those 'other people' are actively trying to undermine your ability to communicate.
- OrganicMSG 9y agoTo avoid the risk of this entirely predictable meta-discussion regarding a headline format, that has little to do with the readability of Medium, but was probably chosen to try and increase clickthrough rates?
- geofft 9y agoWell, yes, and the people who use "Make America Great Again" generally believe that their proposals are actually a solution to an actual problem of America being no longer great. It seems to me that if you want to convey that you disagree with those people or their assumptions, using their snowclone to describe a tool that actually solves a problem that arose recently is counterproductive. If I wanted to convey disagreement, I might release a tool called, say, "Make HN Readable Again" that added a bunch of slow JavaScript and popups. (And if I wanted to convey neither agreement or disagreement, I'd pick a different name.)
- tachyoff 9y agoI refuse to let a simple phrase like that become verboten just because a certain configuration of it was used by someone that our circles of friends dislike. Personally, I think it’s a funny reappropriation. But either way, this isn’t particularly germane to the conversation, and you could even argue that it wasn’t done intentionally considering that Medium used to be readable. Anyway, Medium is annoyingly hard to read now, and I’m glad someone’s done something to fix it.
- iamdave 9y ago>just because a certain configuration of it was used by someone that our circles of friends dislike. I'm going to stand on the side of this issue and argue it's more than that the configuration of "Make X Y Again" was used by people circles of my friends dislike, it was a rallying call, a point of campaigning, to cause a deliberate division of people at the expense of individuals whose mere presence makes America less than great according to some-on deeply superficial grounds. But yes, not really relevant to the discussion. I will ask this though: In what ways is Medium difficult to read? Personally speaking it's one of the easiest sites to read, just curious what that experience is like for other people, clearly it's pronounced enough for someone to make a browser extension. Just wondering. Edit: I do hate the amount of clicking that has to go on just to read "Network" responses, however.
- adamrezich 9y agoAre you sure this sentiment is universal?
- ziikutv 9y agoI like this title as it’s short and sweet. Actually, most threads in HN have negative messages such as this on. Every single thread. Some new kid makes a small little app and it gets crushed with someone pointing out - usually obvious - short comings or how unnecessary it is. Let’s all be supportive for once. Not saying OP is not supportive; OP is just communicating their frustration. Just using OP as a conduit to explain the pattern I usually see.
- PKop 9y agoThat's your opinion. Some would say it doesn't.
- OrganicMSG 9y agoOTOH, I quite like; "Make Tragedy Farce Again".
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- hprotagonist 9y agohttps://medium.com/@tgaul/introducing-unobstruct-230e4e95cf5e https://medium.com/@tgaul/introducing-unobstruct-230e4e95cf5... Unobstruct is a good anti-dickbar tool for iOS.
- Sam_Harris 9y agoMedium blesses us with an unclosable "OPEN IN APP" pop-up on every page, on mobile devices.
- fancyfacebook 9y agoI've gotten so used to right clicking and removing the offensive parts of websites in ublock origin that I always find it shocking just how bad the web is on a new machine. So many banners, so many subscription lists, so many useless social bars. It's also kind of silly that I have four different extensions just to shield myself from how bad the web has gotten. I feel like I'm going under red alert every time I want to check my email.
- pmlnr 9y ago> every time I want to check my email. Ever considered using a non-web email client? K9, Tunderbird, Evolution, Kmail, Geary, mutt, alpine, etc?
- dredmorbius 9y agoThere's also CSS extensions such as Stylus.
- B1FF_PSUVM 9y agoSheesh, why do we need tools for user-hostile layouts? I hate reading between slats on Medium, don't they realize that? What's their incentive for it?
- madeofpalk 9y agoIncreases usage?
- tragic 9y agoDoes it? Does anyone just go to medium.com and see what's going on rather than being linked to some specific article? Is there anything about the medium reading experience that means someone would rather go to them specifically rather than where the content they want happens to be? Are they trying to lure writers that way? I don't get it. I mean, I'm sure they know their business and everything. Again: I don't get it.
- madeofpalk 9y agoWell, that's the incentive for Medium to do it. Only they would know whether it works or not. It sticking around suggests it does. However, success hides all problems.
- ziikutv 9y agoI like this plugin. Thanks. I do not like the recent “pivot” if oh will of medium allowing branding etc. It’s not executed perfectly; though I do not have a better solution in mind.
- amelius 9y agoBetter idea: make the internet readable again. Perhaps using a combination of AI/ML and collaborative raw-text extraction.
- madeofpalk 9y agoYou mean Safari's (and presumably any other browser) Reader Mode? https://imgur.com/a/qsYrf https://imgur.com/a/qsYrf
- interatx 9y agoThat's what I use on firefox. Works great most of the time.
- amelius 9y agoThanks, just tried it, but it seems to remove all images, also the relevant ones :(
- jamesgeck0 9y agoIt depends how they’re added to the site. In-line images on Ars Technica appear fine.
- amelius 9y agoYes, and that's exactly why it probably needs some AI/ML or some collaborative user input ;)
- jamesgeck0 9y agoMedium inserts the images as you scroll; they don't show up if you extract the text before scrolling down.
- tachyoff 9y agoThe internet was readable before AI/ML. I don’t think bikeshedding should be that complicated.
- amelius 9y agoNote: this plugin can read and change all the data on the websites you visit.
- dictum 9y agoWithout reading the source, I reckon this is because not all Medium blogs are under medium.com subdomains, so you can't request access only to *.medium.com in the extension manifest.
- jhot 9y agoThis is the reason. The code does look for a specific appname that is present on all medium blogs before running the code. If this were a closed source extension I would worry about it, but since it's open source you can verify it's not doing anything malicious. That said, I think I will copy the source and turn it into a user script so I don't have to install another extension.
- kiliankoe 9y agoCan one verify if the published source is the same as the published extension?
- Denvercoder9 9y agoYes, Chrome extensions are just packaged code. No compiling or anything necessary.
- kentonv 9y agoHowever, Chrome will automatically update the extension. Things that could go wrong: * The author could wake up in a bad mood one day and decide to push a malicious update. * The author's computer could be compromised, and someone could steal the signing keys and publish a malicious version of the extension. * The author could get bored of the extension and transfer ownership to someone who offers to maintain it for them, but who turns out to be malicious. * The author could be in need of some cash and could decide to accept one of the many offers they no doubt get from shady parties to buy their extension. I'm sure the author of this extension would never do any of these things... but I'm not sure enough to risk it. :/
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- outsidetheparty 9y agoI've been using a bookmarklet that simply removes all fixed-position elements from the page; it makes Medium and plenty of other sites tolerable. This is it: javascript:(function()%7B(function%20()%20%7Bvar%20i%2C%20elements%20%3D%20document.querySelectorAll('body%20*')%3Bfor%20(i%20%3D%200%3B%20i%20%3C%20elements.length%3B%20i%2B%2B)%20%7Bif%20(getComputedStyle(elements%5Bi%5D).position%20%3D%3D%3D%20'fixed')%20%7Belements%5Bi%5D.parentNode.removeChild(elements%5Bi%5D)%3B%7D%7D%7D)()%7D)()
- ronjouch 9y agoYup. Source/author: https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/ https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/
- saagarjha 9y agoOn Safari and Firefox we have a built-in way to remove distractions like these, such as Reader mode. A cynical viewpoint on why Chrome doesn’t offer this is that doing this would prevent you from seeing Google’s ads.
- IncRnd 9y agoThe past has shown that cynicism is realistic when discussing whether ads or altruism are the motivation of google.
- rwc 9y agoDon't think any cynicism at all is required to arrive at this conclusion.
- nothrabannosir 9y agoI marvel at the creative genius that can come up with a, with any plausible alternative explanation, to be honest.
- GuiA 9y ago“At Google, we love the internet and creators who dedicate their life to crafting webpages that are beautiful to look at and delightful to read. In order to honor the hard work of these creatives, we have decided to not implement the “reader mode” many other browsers have. You can rest assured that Google will always do everything it can to support the visions of all who make the internet as we love it possible.” (Could also insert a sentence or two about how Google has AMP instead, leaving “creators” in control unlike “reader modes”)
- Nition 9y agoIt's sad how plausible this is. Particularly in light of how Google explained removing the "view image" button from Google images the other day: "Today we're launching some changes on Google Images to help connect users and useful websites."[1] [1] https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/964226180776845312 https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/964226180776845312
- mayneack 9y agoAs a serial selecter, I wish it would get rid of the popup when you select text. https://imgur.com/G5x0U9P https://imgur.com/G5x0U9P
- plinkplink 9y agoInstall Stylish or Stylebot, create a new style: .highlightMenu { display: none!important; } Stylish - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/stylish/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/stylish/ Stylebot - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylebot/oiaejidbmkiecgbjeifoejpgmdaleoha https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylebot/oiaejidbm... Sorry if this has been answered already, didn't have time to read through replies.
- programbreeding 9y agoIf you use ublock origin or similar, block the following element: ##.highlightMenu
- alpb 9y agoI think the extension should handle this too. It's to annoying to pass on
- thebaer 9y agoAbsolutely -- feel free to submit a GitHub issue and I'll take care of it: https://github.com/thebaer/MMRA https://github.com/thebaer/MMRA
- scrollaway 9y agoOh man. I stopped reading Medium blogs because they have that inane selection-popup bullshit. I'm not going back but you do have my love for implementing that :)
- ItsMe000001 9y agoDone (I didn't see anybody else having done it even though it's been 7 hours): https://github.com/thebaer/MMRA/issues/21 https://github.com/thebaer/MMRA/issues/21
- gnicholas 9y agoThe pictured hackernoon banners are especially visually intrusive. Hackernoon also inserts text and image ads (inline) to some of the posts that contributors make. The contributor is not notified of these edits, and chrome extensions like this won’t catch them (and they are also neon green). It might be good for their branding if my primary takeaway were positive, not annoyed.
- detaro 9y agoI always find it weird if a link shows up on twitter or HN and then a few days later it appears again, now suddenly under this generic "hackernoon" branding. Medium is bad enough at hiding author identity, mixing the good with the crap, but hackernoon adds another layer and I just don't get it.
- minimaxir 9y agoThe value-proposition for the author by submitting to an Medium publisher like HackerNoon is increased exposure, although I wonder if it's worth the cost of having the personal brand obfuscated. (page views for a personal blog are a vanity metric, after all) Incidentally, whenever I see a HackerNoon or FreeCodeCamp domain on Hacker News, it serves as an anti-signal of quality, which is an interesting side effect.
- detaro 9y agoSame with the anti-signaling for me. Having the same issue with Medium too, but at least there the author is in the URL.
- kristianp 9y agoThis looks great, now how to get rid of these annoyances on Android Chrome? Especially the uncloseable "get app" button.
- edjroot 9y agoNot to sound edgy, but you don't (and probably never will). Use Firefox instead and be happy with your extensions :)
- thebaer 9y agoHey, creator here. This is also available for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/make-medium-readable-again/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/make-medium-r... And feel free to suggest any improvements, or submit a pull request on GitHub! https://github.com/thebaer/MMRA https://github.com/thebaer/MMRA
- mastazi 9y agoThank you for making this, in particular thank you for the "disable lazy loading" option, which I have always found annoying when I'm on a slow connection (which is very often since I'm in Australia).
- chrismorgan 9y agoI hate scroll-based lazy loading of images. It’s bad enough when latency is merely high, as is commonly the case for such things for us in Australia, but it’s actively hostile to unreliable internet connections. When I know I’m not going to have an internet connection, I used to be able to just load pages, and know that they’d be there when I got to them. But with lazily loaded images? Nope. (Non-scroll-based deferred loading of images is not necessarily bad, though I don’t see much purpose in it.)
- kuschku 9y agoAs a developer that recently implemented lazy loading of inages, the goal is simple: getting the site interactive and usable as fast as possible. Most users stop reading without ever scrolling down, having already made a decision yes or no. So loading the content after scrolling down uses more of that users data plan, and makes the site load slower. That said, I simply replace the thumbnail with the actual image as soon as it scrolls into the view, and let the browser do its own thing.
- mastazi 9y agoHave you tried lazy loading as it is implemented specifically in Medium, while on a slow connection? (Just head out to Medium, find a post that has several pictures, and then you can simulate being a slow connection using developer tools). Basically the previews are completely useless (just an unintelligible, extremely blurry splash of colour without shape or form) and they are not progressive (not many intermediate steps between the initial splash of colour and the final picture, so you have to wait a long time anyway to even figure out if you are interested into that particular picture or not), in addition it seems to be computationally expensive (whild guess: perhaps because of the overdone gaussian blur effect), which you notice when you try to scroll and the scroll motion becomes choppy (even though I'm on a gaming PC with decent specs). I much prefer the "blocky" look that many other lazy loading solutions have, rather than the blurry look in Medium, because with the blocky look you are more likely to guess what's depicted in the photo.
- cabalamat 9y agoThe Kill Sticky bookmarklet does a lot of this, and works on most sites, not just Medium: https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/ https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/
- debt 9y agoI thought this was going to make Medium more readable; but it literally makes Medium more readable.
- colejohnson66 9y agoWhat?
- ygaf 9y agoHe means the articles themselves didn't change.
- joelrunyon 9y agoOutline.com is a great tool to quickly do this with any webpage.
- dredmorbius 9y agoStrongly seconded. https://outline.com https://outline.com Works where Reader Mode isn't an option.
- kmfrk 9y agoI don’t for the life of me understand the people who write about programming on Medium when the CMS doesn’t even have native syntax highlighting. I wish I could tell people it’s straightforward to migrate from Medium, but it involved a lot of annoying copy-pasting when I did it. Sooner is better than later, though. Call it markup debt if you well.
- drunkkcunt 9y agohttps://dev.to https://dev.to is such a great alternative to Medium for programming posts. I really wish it catches up and becomes more popular
- pmlnr 9y agoSo is any blog engine with syntax highlighting, or even a simple HTML document with something like prism-js[^1]. [^1]: http://prismjs.com/ http://prismjs.com/
- klintcho 9y agoNot sure if my comment here is relevant, but the past 5 - 8 days or something Medium (logged in) changed for me significantly. I can now only see the main header stories and some top lists to the right: https://imgur.com/a/bfdHb https://imgur.com/a/bfdHb The mobile just says "You've made it through your stories for now". Has anyone else experienced this the past days ? Have they expanded their subscription model to include even articles that are not "paywalled" ?
- wooque 9y agoOr if you are using uBlock Origin add this to custom filters ##.u-fixed
- rch 9y agoDoes this mainly fix things that are annoying to non-members? I've considered making an extension to retool the "clap" nonsense myself, but for readability Medium is second only to mobile-friendly view on Android most of the time.
- feelin_googley 9y agoMedium looks fine in a text-only browser such as links. Better than most websites in fact.
- orliesaurus 9y agoYou could just use ublock and get rid of those parts manually on articles pages
- jayzalowitz 9y agoHey, one of the founders of Hackernoon here. Love what this does, could you make it removing fixed positioning instead? Basically this kills all of our branding. we try to maintain a quality threshold for our community, and as such hope that yall notice our colors and at least consider that it might be worth it to read. Personally, Id love something that minimized the nav to the bottom while moving but thats just me. This is amazing work! Thanks for helping the community!
- shopkins 9y agoIt does remove the fixed positioning.
- jayzalowitz 9y agoDerp. I Thought it was removing the element, my bad!
- mcbits 9y agoCould you consider removing fixed positioning instead? Much like hiding functionality behind a mouse hover, it's a terrible "feature" that always ruins the experience for someone, given the explosion of user agents and form factors over the last 10 years.
- thangngoc89 9y ago> could you make it removing fixed positioning instead? This is actually what it does. Hackernoon is a resourceful site but I hate reading it. I usually open Chrome Developer Tool and kill the header + bottom engagement bar manually. If I'm too lazy, I just close the tab. I'm so glad I found this extension.
- jayzalowitz 9y agoYeah, we don't have control of our layout like that :( I derped really hard and didn't notice it was just making it fixed from the photos (I was mobile when commenting)
- 9y ago
- sagichmal 9y agoWhy does this extension need permission to "read and change all your data on websites you visit"?
- thebaer 9y agoSo it works on custom domains like hackernoon.com [0] [0]: https://github.com/thebaer/MMRA/blob/master/content.js#L66 https://github.com/thebaer/MMRA/blob/master/content.js#L66
- ZachSaucier 9y agoWhy not make all the web readable again? https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/just-read/dgmanlpmmkibanfdgjocnabmcaclkmod/ https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/just-read/dgmanlpm...
- lykahb 9y agoRecently I've released an extension that hides the sticky elements. It works on all sites including Medium. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sticky-ducky/gklhneccajklhledmencldobkjjpnhkd https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sticky-ducky/gklhn...
- hardwaresofton 9y agoHope someone from Medium is reading this thread -- there's a problem with your product if people who want to go to your site to take time and read consider your site unreadable.
- paulie_a 9y agoI appreciate the creators efforts here, but honestly medium just needs to get their shit together. I use Reddit enhancement suite because it adds features. This just makes a basic blogging platform useable for reading. Personally I've just opted to not use medium any more.
- therealmarv 9y agoMedium is dead. This is not a problem since yesterday... Medium has fallen in the same trap it wanted to solve at the beginning. I advice everybody to stop using Medium for their practices...
- dawnerd 9y agoWhats stupid is the whole point of medium was focusing on the content. Obvious the investors have a different opinion.
- Rskeats 9y agoI got a lot of sarcastic arrogant messages back from the developers about the fixed bars over the years. I did some research but I have to check again. Some of them on their Linkedin profile use to work for media advertising corporations and as I dug I through I saw associations to Mindspark kind of things and as a technician I use to manually remove the dodgy browser toolbars that are associated with these aggressive advertising firms. Sort of see a pattern there. I questioned them that I don't want these things stuck my screen constantly. All I want is to be able to close it without using Adblock, I showed them a good example, archive.org and they turn nasty, dodge the issue, insulted me further, like talking to me a like a dog and called Adblock harassment in itself and started moaning about it becoming evil and killing their revenue. They ignored me when I showed them a thread I started on Adblock forums asking for help in blocking the Ebay basketbar and I clearly stated I don't use it to block adverts. It appears that some of the developers who work for websites and implement there bars are overzealous and the type would say "I am overqualified for the job" and can do what I want and think of what the user/ guests want.
- rayalez 9y agoI have made a stylish stylesheet with a similar purpose: https://userstyles.org/styles/150108/medium-custom https://userstyles.org/styles/150108/medium-custom But it is more focused on the writing experience. I really love medium's editor, but I wanted a dark theme (more comfortable for the eyes), and to remove all the clutter so I could focus on no-distractions writing. I hope you'll find it useful =)
- cztomsik 9y agoNow we need something which will silently remove React hype articles :-D
- arnaudsm 9y agoMedium was specifically created because of bloated blogs. It has become the very thing it ought to destroy.
- scrollaway 9y agoIt's the cycle of people who want to "do things better". Step 1: Find a type of website experience that sucks for users. Example: Blogging, image sharing. Step 2: It's so simple! Just do the same, improve on the UX, don't plaster ads, have a clean site and give it a cool name. Example: Medium, Imgur. Step 3: As people flock to your site because it's cleaner than the alternatives, have the lightbulb moment: "Oh wow, I could monetize all these users!". So you plaster the site with ads, marketing gimmicks and what not and you don't suffer for it. It's not that it works. It's just that you have a userbase that trusts you and is already used to you. They don't know anyone else. What are your users gonna do, build their own site that doesn't suck? It really is a depressing, wasteful cycle.
- iaml 9y agoThe problem I see here is the more users you have, the more it costs to keep the hardware running, so at some point you have to monetize in some way or another.
- welcomebrand 9y agoI'm pretty sure Medium at one point was a decent low level solution to the problem they set out to solve - it just doesn't scale to the multi million/billion dollar solution the founders wanted.
- wepple 9y ago> It really is a depressing, wasteful cycle. I do agree with this, but I believe we can make it at least not-as-bad. I recently started a new blog & evaluated a load of options, Medium was one. I quickly decided it had become a cesspool of attention engineering and social widgets, and ultimately settled on self-hosting, with no banner adds or social rubbish. Can the average public do this? I’d argue it’s not trivial nor inexpensive currently, but maybe that’s worth fixing? Encourage people to move off centralized platforms for sharing content, and maintain control.
- t0mislav 9y agoTechnology is progressing fast, but I think UX is going down more and more. To be able to read basic text, we need to fix things by ourselves, make scripts, addons, etc. Soon we will need fix for this, fix for that, fix for everything.
- codedokode 9y agoEvery time I visit medium, it shows a popup reminding me how much times I visited it before. Do they want to make me feel guilty for visiting too often?
- Rskeats 9y agoI have found a Chrome extension over a month ago called "Sticky Header Hider aka Fixed Header Fixer" by Emojistuff which works very well. Yesterday I found the other one "Make Medium Readable again" by A Bunch Tell when I changed my search term from "Sticky Headers etc" to dickbars and found I am not the only one being tormented by those things. I also see another extension for Apple called Unobstruct. I like the option "Disable lazy image loading". I have noticed that. I thought it was for constantly loading of adverts. Pleased to see something done about this annoying practice. They think I am so stupid that I can't locate the navigation bar so they have to ram in my face/fixed line of site constantly. So nice to have the freedom back without any work in hiding things with Adblock or clicking that bookmark for most sites.