1554661 - No documentation for Firefox Reader View support

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Toolkit :: Reader Mode, defect, P3)

Description

[u218749]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:67.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/67.0

Steps to reproduce:

I am trying to allow a page to be displayed in reader mode. I cannot find any documentation on what a page has to look like for reader view to be available.

Actual results:

The only documentation on the feature seems to be this: https://wiki.mozilla.org/QA/Reader_view

Expected results:

It should include an explanation of what is required to enable Reader View for a website.

Comment 1

[tero gusto]

I agree, it would be great to have documentation on what is required to enable Reader View for a website. This could include tips, such as forcing Firefox Reader Mode by prepending about:reader?url= before the URL.

A tool which gave feedback for a specific URL or pasted in HTML, such as missing mark up, or wrong mark up structure, would also be really helpful.

An additional observation: Perhaps consider switching to calling it "reader mode" rather than "reader view"?

In the Firefox browser itself, "Toggle reader view (Ctrl+Alt+R)" is used, whereas here in bugzilla.mozilla.org it's named "Toolkit::Reader Mode". It also looks like "reader mode" is more widely used:

"Reader mode" - 113 times
"Reader view" - 17 times

From "The most underused browser feature: reader mode (frankgroeneveld.nl)"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28286493

Comment 2

[tero gusto]

I searched a bit, and found How does Firefox's Reader View work? which includes guidelines, and even a tool for verifying pasted HTML.

Two issues discussing Reader mode documentation Document how the algorithm works #9 and request addition to README: guide for website makers #502.

I would suggest that a link to How does Firefox's Reader View work? be included in https://github.com/mozilla/readability/blob/master/README.md.

Comment 3

[tero gusto]

The last bit I am missing in the puzzle are the minimal steps required to debug a page directly in Firefox.