Forum Discussion

HotCakeX's avatar
Jul 11, 2019

[Solved] Make Reading View button available on All web pages and websites. Make it a Fixed button

Currently the Reading View button shows up only on some article pages, while it should appear on all web pages, article or not. 

at the time i'm writing this Edge is on" Version 77.0.216.0 (Official build) canary (64-bit)"

 

Google Chrome Canary has similar feature called distilled web page contents and it is a fixed button next to the URL and you can use it on any web page, be it a YouTube video, a forum or article. that's really convenient.

 

p.s for those who don't know how to enable Reading View in Edge Canary, you should do it through here: Edge:/flags

  • ikjadoon gardenvv290 Elliot Kirk 

     

    So I just noticed in Edge Version 81.0.396.0 (Official build) canary (64-bit), you can actually turn any page or better say, any content in a web page, into immersive reader (reading view) mode.

     

    even though there are many web pages that don't have the required tags to trigger the immersive reader button to show up on Edge, now you can highlight or select a specific part of a web page such as texts or images, or just press CTRL + A to select everything and then right-click and choose "open in immersive reader".

     

     

     

    this is useful in 2 cases

    1.  on pages that you can already use immersive reader button because it shows up at top on the address bar but you only want to have some of the parts of the page in immersive reader mode.
    2.  on pages that don't support immersive reader at all, you can select all of the page or only parts of it and turn them into immersive reader mode.

     

    This is a great feature added, Thanks for listening to the feedback, that's exactly what I was looking for.

  • Thank you for the suggestion, HotCakeX.  I will make sure the right teams hear about it.  Just curious, for many sites the Distilled web offers no content.  What kinds of sites do you find the distilled web most useful for? Thanks - Elliot

    • Deleted's avatar
      Deleted
      Personnaly i often use it on webpage who let pop more and more question on there website, since it's not a pub it isn't blocked by the anti track or anti pub, so i switch (on the reading mode).
    • HotCakeX's avatar
      HotCakeX
      MVP

      Elliot Kirk Thanks, hope the Edge team make the changes soon.

      web pages I used distilled view on (and Edge's reading view don't work on) are for example wikipedia pages, forums, web pages and articles that are not properly HTML tagged and more. it also helps to have a stripped down and clean version of a web pages.

       

      i also sometimes use it on web pages before printing them to PDF because it removes unnecessary stuff that overlay the actual contents.

       

      so overall it is very useful and better be a fixed button so user can use it anytime they want.

       

      you mentioned for many sites the distilled web offers no contents, well i haven't came across any of those sites yet. Any web pages I used distilled web on so far always gave me contents. heck even on a YouTube page it gave me clean text and web contents.

    • ikjadoon's avatar
      ikjadoon
      Bronze Contributor

      Elliot Kirk 

      Actually, only slightly off-topic:

       

      For web developers, one workaround that's sorely needed is explaining how to make sites compatible with Reading View.

       

      Using semantic HTML5 tags is not always and there's a lot of voodoo / guess-and-check involved. Some higher-end CMS have gone through this painstakingly to reverse engineer how browsers work, but browsers should now (and should've in the past) given clear explanations of how the DOM should be structured and/or tagged.

       

      Barring that kind of needed developer transparency, I support adding a distill function. Let people read websites how they want to read them.

      • HotCakeX's avatar
        HotCakeX
        MVP

        ikjadoon gardenvv290 Elliot Kirk 

         

        So I just noticed in Edge Version 81.0.396.0 (Official build) canary (64-bit), you can actually turn any page or better say, any content in a web page, into immersive reader (reading view) mode.

         

        even though there are many web pages that don't have the required tags to trigger the immersive reader button to show up on Edge, now you can highlight or select a specific part of a web page such as texts or images, or just press CTRL + A to select everything and then right-click and choose "open in immersive reader".

         

         

         

        this is useful in 2 cases

        1.  on pages that you can already use immersive reader button because it shows up at top on the address bar but you only want to have some of the parts of the page in immersive reader mode.
        2.  on pages that don't support immersive reader at all, you can select all of the page or only parts of it and turn them into immersive reader mode.

         

        This is a great feature added, Thanks for listening to the feedback, that's exactly what I was looking for.

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