When I bookmark a web page I find that some bookmarks are saved in Reader mode, so that I can easily read them and highlight passages if I choose to, and others just appear to save the link to the page, which means that I cannot highlight anything and it is not a distraction free reading mode.
I don’t know how the given page has been saved until I go to the Bookmarks page of my account.
Why does this happen? Is there something that I can do to make all pages be saved in Reader mode?
Ohhh, I’m just tackling with this exact problem right now. I’ve bookmarked a NYT page where I really want one para highlighted. It’s been ages now and the Reader mode still isn’t showing. By now I’ve done 50 other things and can barely recall what I wanted to highlight. One thing I’d really like is for the Bookmarklet to note anything I’ve selected and save that as a highlight.
I’ve been playing around with a couple of other Read Later apps which have Reader mode capabilities. I notice that only one of those apps appears to be able to save all articles (that I have sent it) in Reader mode. Some apps appear to struggle with some web pages. I don’t know enough about what’s going on here to know why?
My guess is Javascript. When you try and fetch those pages without loading JS or interacting, the content may not be loaded. But Reader views are designed to get around some of that stuff and then give you back the parsed, simpler, HTML. Just a guess though.
Yeah, unfortunately Micro.blog has trouble with some websites, especially sites with a paywall like The New York Times. Micro.blog downloads a copy of the web page without using the authentication you are signed in with. If it can’t download the page, the reader mode can’t be activated.
The solution will be to improve our browser extension so that it gets the web page text from your web browser instead.
