Reader feature in Safari 5 doesn't work

Kurt --
Try this link.
http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/reviews/entry/apple-iphone-4-16gb-32gb

When it opens, do you see the "reader" icon in the right hand side of the URL bar?

Try this location: http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20100602/online-help-for-parents-who-volunteer/

It didn't go into reader automatically, but the "enter reader" command works there, and you can see what it looks like.

I haven't had it do any auto entries for me, either.

Hi Kurt

Adding to Bee's helpful post, seems only those web sites meeting specific content criteria show the Reader option in the Address Bar. BTW, this new feature works really well. Very clean and easy to use. to try (MacWorld article for iPhone 4).

Let us know if "Reader" shows up when accessing the suggested sites.

Hi Kurt

Just saw your post. Have to be fast around here, it seems. 😉

Reader does appear for Apple Insider articles. Try this one - note, Reader does not appear on article summary pages, only on the page where the entire article appears.

I have wordpress-based articles that Reader cannot read... After some tests, it seems that in order for Reader to work, the articles must be longer than the height of the browser.

Message was edited by: Lukum

Would love to know specifically what the criteria are for triggering the Reader Function. I'm guessing since we are guessing, there's no exact info from Apple?
The text being longer than the page is highly likely, but what else? Perhaps an HTML 5 tag like <article> ?

Hi Mike

Have a look here.

@Hawaiian_Starman, that's great, thanks. Already some serious testing being conducted, I see. Would be nice if Apple would actually publish the details themselves, but this is very helpful.

Looking at arc90's code in their .js file, I see this comment:
"Using a variety of metrics (content score, classname, element types), find the content that is
* most likely to be the stuff a user wants to read. Then return it wrapped up in a div"

Their regular expressions definitions are revealing:


regexps: {
unlikelyCandidatesRe: /combx|comment|disqus|foot|header|menu|rss|shoutbox|sidebar|sponsor/i,
okMaybeItsACandidateRe: /and|article|body|column|main/i,
positiveRe: /article|body|content|entry|hentry|page|pagination|post|text/i,
negativeRe: /combx|comment|contact|foot|footer|footnote|link|masthead|media|meta|promo|rela ted|scroll|shoutbox|sponsor|tags|widget/i,
divToPElementsRe: /<(a|blockquote|dl|div|img|ol|p|pre|table|ul)/i,
replaceBrsRe: /(<br[^>]*>[ \n\r\t]*){2,}/gi,
replaceFontsRe: /<(\/?)font[^>]*>/gi,
trimRe: /^\s |s$/g,
normalizeRe: /\s{2,}/g,
killBreaksRe: /(<br\s /?>(s| ?)){1,}/g,
videoRe: /http:\/\/(www\.)?(youtube|vimeo)\.com/i,
skipFootnoteLinkRe: /^\s*(\[?[a-z0-9]{1,2}\]?|^|edit|citation needed)\s*$/i
},

Check-out this article. I think it describes it well in non-technical terms. 🙂

http://woowoomac.com/blog/safari-reader-tips-for-safari-5.html

Message was edited by: jackiepanpan