Do you ever wish that you could quickly read an article on the Internet without the ads that often appear in the middle of the article?… the ads which at times you may inadvertently click, or tap, landing you on an advertiser’s page? 

This has happened to me often, especially when I’m on my iPhone or iPad.  Imagine my excitement when my Tech Guru who came to fix something on my iMac pointed out how I/we can get articles only on many of the sites.  It is SO SIMPLE!!!

In the URL space in Safari, on any of the iDevices [computer, iPhone, iPad] many pages, particularly news, there is a “Reader View” option which I never bothered exploring. When Reader View is available, you will see 4 parallel lines on the far left in that space.

To demonstrate, I randomly selected the New York Post article page that came across my computer desktop, or iPad, yesterday. As you can see in the screen shot above, the page is quite busy and challenging for a quick read.

Conversely, when I clicked (or tapped on my mobile devices) the 4 parallel line image, the page altered to what you see below.

CHROME – Adding Reader View 
Although this option seems to be an integral part of Safari, and very easy to use, Chrome and Firefox offer Reader View also as add-ons. To add in Chrome Extensions on your computer, click on Reader View and you get the option to add Reader View.  

Once added the letter R will be added to the extensions bar.

Not all pages have Reader the View option. If the web page you are on does not have it enabled (independent of Chrome, I think) clicking on it will simply bring up a window which shows a lot of information about Reader View. It will show at the top that it has been ADDED TO CHROME.

When you are on a page which does have Reader View as an option, you will see the same 4 parallel lines as in Safari.

Clicking on it, will bring up a window with the article only as seen in the sample shown earlier in this post.

FIREFOX – Adding Reader
In Firefox the Add-On is called “Reader”. To add it go to
Add-Ons – Reader.  Click on “Add to Firefox” and an orange letter R will appear in Add-ons bar at the top right of the page.

Simply clicking on the orange R at the top will bring up the article as shown below. It even gives the estimated reading time.

I hope that you find this as enlightening as I did when I first learned about it on Safari and then went on to explore Chrome and Firefox for readers who use those browsers.

If you would like to learn more and get support or clarity with using technology, particularly on your mobile devices, please check out Technology for Seniors Made Easy coaching page on this site. Click on TECH COACHING.