3 ms·
Firefox's button is flaky - it seems to disappear depending on the page. For example it appears on HN comment page, but disappears on HN's top-level page. There
by theamk 1mo ago
Firefox's button is flaky - it seems to disappear depending on the page. For example it appears on HN comment page, but disappears on HN's top-level page. There is clearly some sort of heuristic which maybe tries to determine if there is "main content", but it fails on many blog-like pages, like current #5 [0].
It seems that any time I find a website with a horrible design and start looking for that "reader" button, that button is disabled in Firefox. Sometimes I tolerate the design, sometimes I switch to Chrome - because reader mode works on all sites there.
[0] https://masteranza.github.io/weedout/ https://masteranza.github.io/weedout/
- cubefox 1mo agoWe should find a clear example of a webpage with an article-like content where the reader is unavailable and file a bug.
- cubefox 1mo agoFound one: Blog of Scott Aaronson. E.g. this post https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=10046 https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=10046 Also: Substack posts don't seem to show the reader symbol immediately, often only after switching tabs or a page refresh, e.g. posts linked here: https://dynomight.substack.com/ https://dynomight.substack.com/
- theamk 1mo agoThis is a very good example what I meant when I said "it's designed for a different person"! For me, it's pretty clear that a much better idea is not to fix the broken concept, but do what the Chrome does, and show the button on every single page. Then users won't have to report the pages where button is missing, and Firefox devs won't have to keep updating that functionality all the time as the new types of pages appear. Yes, this means that sometimes reader mode might miss some relevant text, but that's OK, reader mode does this occasionally already. And Firefox is supposed to be for power users, right?