Status Update 6 of Reader Mode for desktop Firefox
22 October, 2012 § 2 Comments
This post was guest authored by Kevin Woodward, one of the students working on the reader-mode project.
Over the last week a lot of time was spent in preparation for the team’s alpha presentation which covered most of the functionality of Reader Mode. Real, testable data is being pulled from the parsing done by the Readability API, and all that remains to do with this content is to add it to aboutReader.html after it has been loaded into a new tab. At the present time this data is being displayed using simple alert messages as was discussed in our last meeting.
The process of extending the functionality of Bookmarks to cover our Reading List has begun. A new folder which contains our saved articles has been added to the Bookmarks menu. More steps are needed to include all of the same functionality that the Bookmarks Lists currently offer.
Some additional points of discussion included ideas for testing some of the functionality of Reader Mode (see Bug 786638) as currently there is little testing for Reader Mode on Android. Android has made several changes to the (Android) Reader Mode since the Desktop project has begun, but no major conflicts have arisen.
Imminent changes:
- Wait for
aboutReader.htmlto load into new tab - Write content to
aboutReader.htmlusingaboutReader.jsfunctionality (see_showContent) - Add ability to save an article to the new menu item (Reading List) in Bookmarks
- Hide Reader Mode button once the Reader determines that an article is not able to be parsed using Readability API
Reader Mode view will be fully functional within the week and the team will begin to clean-up the style/display/etc. of our Reader Mode articles. Beta presentations will begin in 2 weeks, at this time Reader Mode and Reading List should both be fully implemented.
JAWS 
Shouldn’t the button only *display* after parsability has been determined as is done on Android (and iOS’s Safari)?
The only alternate UX that comes to mind would be a button that becomes enabled & disabled, but this rather conflicts with Firefox’s desire for an increasingly minimalistic approach.
I’m curious has security been taken into account in the design?
Sorry, not trying to be negative, I’m pleased that this feature is on its way.
Keep up the good work!
@Caspy7 the button should be hidden by default and will display only when the parsing is complete and the data (article content) is meaningful. The way that I worded that note is probably poor, but right now we hope to implement the same concept that Android uses.