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Twitter Tests Opening All Web links in Safari 'Reader Mode' on iOS

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Apr 12, 2001
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Twitter for iOS is currently testing a new way of opening web links in Safari with the Reader mode automatically turned on (via TechCrunch).

Safari's built-in Reader mode, usually activated by tapping an icon in the browser's search bar, enables users to load a distraction-free version of websites minus formatting, ads, links, and so on, with font type and size custom options available.

Twitter-Safari.jpg

The Guardian was the first to notice that all the links they were clicking on in the Twitter app defaulted to the Reader mode. Twitter later confirmed to TechCrunch that it is testing the feature with select users, the aim being "to refine the product and make Twitter easier to use", according to a spokesperson.

The downside to any potential rollout is that content publishers can't customize the Reader view of their site, nor will they be able to generate ad revenue from page views that come from Twitter links. And as pointed out by The Guardian, some sites do not display correctly in Reader mode, potentially detracting from the user experience.

Twitter developers are said to be testing a series of changes to the social media network, in an attempt to improve the service after the company's recent internal turmoil, such as layoffs, the shutdown of Vine, and its much-publicized failure to find a buyer.

Article Link: Twitter Tests Opening All Web links in Safari 'Reader Mode' on iOS
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2016/11/01/twitter-tests-web-links-safari-reader-mode/
Not Twitter, and only tangentially related: Does anyone know how to disable Google's AMP pages which appear in search results?

Half the time they don't work (especially for reddit links) and the other half I want the full site.
 
Oh that's a neat idea. I like that. If I'm loading up a site in Twitter I'm there to read an article, so this works for me.
 
Now this is something I agree with! While they are at it, let's do the same reader view for web pages that open in FB. That would really be great. I use it all the time because it makes my reading experience enjoyable.
 
I just hope they do something regarding their ****ing disgraceful image linking, as in I don't enjoy being redirected to the tweet page when trying to look at the full size image.
 
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Right now the ability to add items to iOS Safari Reading List from an external iOS app (such as Twitter) is broken. So opening them directly in Reading mode would be a help. But only marginally. You'll end up with a slew of pages that you then have to add - one at a time - to Reading List if that's what you want to do. I wish Apple would get a fix in.
 
MacRumors said:



Twitter for iOS is currently testing a new way of opening web links in Safari with the Reader mode automatically turned on (via TechCrunch).

Safari's built-in Reader mode, usually activated by tapping an icon in the browser's search bar, enables users to load a distraction-free version of websites minus formatting, ads, links, and so on, with font type and size custom options available.

Twitter-Safari.jpg

The Guardian was the first to notice that all the links they were clicking on in the Twitter app defaulted to the Reader mode. Twitter later confirmed to TechCrunch that it is testing the feature with select users, the aim being "to refine the product and make Twitter easier to use", according to a spokesperson.

The downside to any potential rollout is that content publishers can't customize the Reader view of their site, nor will they be able to generate ad revenue from page views that come from Twitter links. And as pointed out by The Guardian, some sites do not display correctly in Reader mode, potentially detracting from the user experience.

Twitter developers are said to be testing a series of changes to the social media network, in an attempt to improve the service after the company's recent internal turmoil, such as layoffs, the shutdown of Vine, and its much-publicized failure to find a buyer.

Article Link: Twitter Tests Opening All Web links in Safari 'Reader Mode' on iOS
Click to expand...
i dig this completely
 
great concept and hopefully it works. also hoping the conversion of sites that weren't originally suitable for reader mode will be improved somehow though.
 
Seems like a nice thing for me the user, but surely publishers will be pissed off. A lot of traffic comes from twitter in this way and surely places want to serve ads when people come to their sites from twitter.
 
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Reader is on of those little things I take for granted, it does it's job really well.

PowerBook-G5 said:
Not Twitter, and only tangentially related: Does anyone know how to disable Google's AMP pages which appear in search results?

Half the time they don't work (especially for reddit links) and the other half I want the full site.
Click to expand...

Same for me. It's not the streamlined Google results that had me hooked for so many years. There doesn't appear to be any way to turn them off officially, I switched to DuckDuckGo a while back. Not for everyone and there are some things I miss, but it's good to get a list of search results again rather than the huge AMP carousel.

I wonder if it would be possible to block them using the "Hide Page Element" rules in 1Blocker.
 
Anything that will get links to open outside of Twitter's awful in-app browser! Twitter must have been A/B testing a change to open all links in a Safari View Controller (with reader mode enabled, but off by default), because it did that for me for awhile, but that behavior went away months ago. For now, I try to remember to tap-and-hold to pick the "open in Safari" share sheet option--especially if it's a heavy site that might require the muscle of Nitro's JIT.
 
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DanTheAppleMan said:
Beats sites that don't display properly without Reader mode.
Seriously, why do so few web masters appear to have even taken a glance at their mobile site?
Click to expand...

Webmaster here! Not a huge fan of this, considering those pages aren't monetizable (AT ALL), but it really sucks considering we've really spent time optimizing our mobile pages in recent months (we're down to just 2-3 seconds to load vs. 20+ seconds to load a year ago).

As for the "why we don't look at our own mobile sites" thing, it's pretty simple. We spend the MAJORITY of our time on desktop computers. Up until recently, I haven't really been a huge mobile browser user, so it's one of those "out of sight out of mind type deals." (Not a good excuse though, but I'm being honest) However, within the past year or so I'd been getting inundated with e-mails/comments on social media about the poor performance of our mobile pages, so I made it a point to just browse the site on my phone for a few days/weeks to see how it worked. That's when I realized that our mobile pages SUCKED and I made it a point to get them cleaned up of any bad/slow code and ads that take forever to load.

Now our mobile site is good to go, and I haven't gotten any nasty e-mails/social media comments in months!
 
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Why not offer reader view like safari or better yet hold / press more for other options.
 
I hope this is optional. Read so many news articles through Twitter and tend to go from story to story through the browser.. which yes isn't anything special but for quick reading and finding random things you wouldn't have bothered with before it's great.

Would be very annoying if I had to 'open in Safari' for full pages, comments and such.

Oh and I agree with that other poster how do you stop godawful 'Google AMP'? Ruined Google News for me and now it's showing up in search results.. yuck. Pretty much all websites for everything are optimised for mobile and work fine, phones are powerful.. there's no need to keep me stuck on your crappy text only version. Feel like I'm using WAP on an old Nokia or something. A step backwards imo.
 
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