Reading View in Insider Channels

Microsoft

Microsoft Edge’s reading view experience is designed to let you read web content without any extraneous information or anything jarring that strain your eyes. Reading is

 one of the primary activities that people do on the web. In most cases, it is hindered by ads and other irrelevant content that can be distracting. Reading view solves this problem by transforming the page completely to offer an immersive reading experience to people while consuming content on the web.

 

How to enter Reading View

Reading view can be accessed for most of the websites that have a lot of content to read. Some categories of such websites are news, articles, blogs, stories etc. To enter reading view, you can go on any of the websites that fall in the above categories and check out for a book shaped icon (reading_view00.png) in the top right corner of the address bar (as seen in the screenshot below). Reading view currently works for Windows, macOS and Edge on Android.

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Reading View entry point on desktop

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Reading View entry point on Android

 

Reading View experience

Once you enter Reading view, you will see the page transformed into a cleaner layout that has been optimized for efficient reading. The background theme, the fonts, line spacing, number of words per line etc. have been adjusted for a favorable reading experience. Apart from a distraction free and clean layout, research suggests that these changes help improve comprehension, concentration, and speed. See the images below on how it transforms the page.

reading_view03.pngreading_view04.png

Reading View experience on desktop

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Reading View Experience on Android

At the same time, we have changed the layout from the previous version to a vertical one on desktops since it was one of the most requested changes by the users. We are working on the reading bar that can be used for customizing the background themes and font sizes and you will be able to access those features soon.

To exit, click the same icon and seamlessly get back to the original webpage.

 

Grammar tools:

To assist users with reading comprehension, reading view offers Grammar tools built right into the experience.reading_view07.png

 

Click on the Grammar tools option on the toolbar and turn on parts of speech. This will highlight the text in reading view with colors associated with Nouns, Verbs or Adjectives.

To get assistance in pronunciations, you can turn on the " Syl•la•bles” option to see text broken down into chunks that make correct sounds for that language. 

Grammar tools may not be available in your version of Edge yet. You can either wait for the version of Edge with Grammar tools in reading view or you can enable the following flag by going to edge://flags and enabling the Grammar tools item there.reading_view08.png

Directly opening Reading View from bookmarks

You can also easily bookmark your favorite articles and open directly in reading view. As you can see, the URLs of all pages in reading view start with “read:” and hence can be uniquely identified. So, any webpage that is saved on your device or shared to friends will be automatically navigated to reading view for an engaged reading.

 

What do you think?

We’d appreciate if you can give reading view a try and let us know if you run into issues or have new ideas for the reading view functionality. Also, do comment on the layout of the experience and tell us if you want to see reading view on websites where we do not support currently. We would love to hear back from you. Click on the send feedback button and drop us a note.

91 Replies

@Elliot Kirk There are many articles that use embedded Tweets to source quotes. This does not make it through to Reading View. 

@Elliot Kirk 

I love it! This will be perfect for ad-heavy sites. I use it incessantly on mobile because of the crazy clutter (and poor mobile responsiveness) on some sites, so I'm super happy to see it on desktop.

 

My only feature request (already sent via the smiley:( adding a shortcut key combo to open Reading View? I'd like to quickly open Reading View as soon as I see a lot of ads--usually, my hands are on the keyboard already after going to a site.

 

"CTRL+SHIFT+R", used for Reading View in Classic Edge, just reloads the page on Edge Dev 76.0.176.1.

 

@Elliot Kirk 

Elliot,

Is there any rough ETA for when Reading view will have its tools?

Cheers,
Drew
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@Elliot Kirk This is a feature that is long overdue. The unnecessary distractions of ads that bombard the page takes so much time from viewing. The cookies also direct specific ads that may be of interest to the reader/user; which will distract from the time intentionally meant for reading. Plus the accidental clicking of the ads will lead to more time wasted as we will need to navigate back to the original page. The look of the Amazon Fire or Kindle or Nook makes reading more pleasant. For kids, they need a clean page with some illustrations (or not) with the eye-friendly colors. The Grammar is super helpful as well. This should start very early on with elementary school material all the way through high school. If an additional button to remove the Grammar mode is there, this can also give someone the option. 

@tlclouis 

Edge has long had Reading view. It is one of the "Comin soon" items for Edge C.  When it does arrive, we will be looking for it to have its tools.  Some of us have Reading view, now, in Edge C, BUT, it or that version, has none of its tools.

Cheers,
Drew
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@Elliot Kirk 

Elliot,

When will Reading view have its tools back, again???  It's not a good thing, at all, that they are (all) missing!

Cheers,
Drew
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Hi Elliot, talking about reading, I'm wondering if microsoft edge dev could open .epub file. I tried it and it couldn't open it, is there any kind of extension I need to install?, I'm asking it because usually I use microsoft edge to open .epub file.

Thanks @Elliot Kirk 

Interesting that the Reading View does not work on the some of the Wikipedia pages? For example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_10.

@Peter_Dinh 

Hi Peter,

I am going to suggest it may be because there is no need.  Their articles or the articles' pages, really, don't have unrelated peripheral rubbish to remove.  Just my perception on the matter.

Cheers,
Drew
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Hi @tommyd100 

Thanks for your feedback. We are working on it and it should feature shortly.

 

We hope you are enjoying the experience. Keep using the feature and providing us feedback :)

Hi @ikjadoon 

 

Thanks for the feedback. We are delighted to know that you are enjoying the experience.  

 

Yes, adding a keyboard shortcut for quick navigation is on the cards and will feature soon. 

Hi @Drew1903 

 

Thanks for your feedback. We hope you are enjoying the reading experience. 

 

We have added grammar tools for now behind a flag. You can go to edge://flags and search for "Grammar tools in reading view" to enable. The other tools that were present in Spartan are in process and should feature in shortly. 

Hey @Drew1903 

 

Thanks for your feedback. Currently, we have grammar tools behind the flag. You can go to edge://flags, search for "Grammar tools in reading view" and enable it. Other tools are going to be live soon. 

We hope you are enjoying the current experience otherwise. 

@alex_17 

Hi Alex, For now, you can refer to some apps from Microsoft store. You can check the reading app collections from here - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/collections/thereadingroom. Hope this helps!

Hi @Peter_Dinh

 

Thanks for your feedback. We are working on making the Wikipedia experience a lot better. Currently you may get a standard / no experience on some of the pages. Be rest assured the experience will be a whole lot better when we launch. Keep an eye out for it :) 

@aditya10 

Ok.  It's just certainly good to know the tools (we all know what they are) are coming. I, for one, will await them being in RV.  That's my preference rather than > flags for bits & pieces.  Of course, I enjoy RV, use it a lot. However, it is only fully & truly enjoyable with all its tools. That's why it has them.  As stated, good to know they are coming.  Understandably, when Insiders see something 'bare bones' (Read: incomplete), they become concerned & vocal.

Cheers,
Drew
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@Elliot Kirk the features are exactly what we need.

 

I have two feature requests for Reading Mode:

  1. Option to see the definitions of words in the Reading View itself. This is one of the best features of Reading mode that Edge Classic had. It looks something like this:image.png

     

    This is one of very handy features and will be much appreciated by the users.
  2. Option to Read aloud the article in Reading Mode available in the Reading Mode Toolbar, which is shown in the top option bar in Edge classic. It is also shown in the snip above. 

Both of these features will make the Reading Mode complete in addition to the customization options and the Grammar Tools available...:)

@Rohit Yadav 

I, for one, certainly support you.  They are saying the RV Features/Tools of which, we know & speak, will be in RV by or before release of (new) Edge. :crossed_fingers:

Cheers,
Drew
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@Drew1903 thanks for your reply ☺

Another bug I'd like to mention here is that, if you open a secured site in the Reading Mode, the site info is displayed as insecure. This must be corrected to show the info of the original page for which the Reading mode has been turned on...

Here is a snip showing the same:image.png

The site's favicon on the tabs also gets lost there (shown in snip), which is not nice. Either the original site's favicon should be shown or a new Reading mode icon should be displayed over there...:D