Samuel
@samuel.fm
would anyone be interested in being able to turn on Reader Mode when opening links with the in-app browser?
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Samuel
getting some very confusing replies here. are you aware that there already is an optional setting for using the in-app browser? not proposing we change that!
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ǝuuɐſ
would love an option to open in reader mode, definitely. maybe not for everything though as I like links opening in my browser by default.
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eva (^_^)/
from a user perspective, yes but from a business perspective, I think that hides all ads on news sites and so it might be viewed as a hostile decision by media orgs, which could be bad if you’re trying to siphon professionals from twitter
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Samuel
hmm. thanks for the warning but Twitter does provide the optional in the a11y settings so it’s probably not that outrageous?
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eva (^_^)/
oh wait if this is screen readers then nvm, i thought this was something like safari’s Reader mode that hides distractions
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Samuel
this is safaris Reader mode. and yeah ofc would not be on by default so only a tiny tiny fraction of traffic would be affected
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Mary Branscombe
this was why I could never convince the browser team at Microsoft to put an 'always in reader mode for this domain' selector in the browser
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Sam Wilson
And pretty much everything I click on this app is an article so reader mode is a good default
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JamesDBartlett3
No, I mean, why does it need to even have an in-app browser in the first place? Why can't links just open in the browser like they do in literally every other instance?
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Samuel
I find it annoying to context-switch to a different app. also we showed this dialog the first time you pressed a link in the app, so if you don't like it then it's on you lol
"How should we open this link" dialog with three options: Use in-app browser, Use my default browser, Cancel 2 2 5
JamesDBartlett3
Why do you assume that I don't know how to use the app settings or read instructions? Of course I have the in-app browser disabled for myself. I was asking a question about UI/UX design, not asking for tech support.
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JamesDBartlett3
The fact that you personally find "context switching" between the Bluesky app and your browser "annoying" is unconvincing to me as a justification for the feature. I was asking because I thought there might have been some actual UI/UX research on the subject that influenced the decision.
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Samuel
it’s just a feature I like from other apps, the decision was not that deep
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jack
For people on older phones (like me) it's MUCH quicker loading a single page, rather than opening Safari (for example) with like 50 tabs open that it has to load... especially for a quick look at something. but there's always a button to open in browser anyways.
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Martin Laurent
The problem is more that it (logically) opens a new tab that you have to think about closing before switching back or else you end up with hundreds of open tabs (that's my case).
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JamesDBartlett3
My browser (Firefox) automatically closes the tab when I use the native Android "back" navigation function to return to Bluesky, but if I want to keep the tab open for later, I can use the app switcher instead.
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JamesDBartlett3
Wait... Safari automatically loads *all* of your tabs into RAM when it opens, rather than only loading each tab if/when you switch to it? Jeeeez, no wonder why y'all don't like using Safari. Maybe you should try Firefox. It only loads tabs into RAM when you actually view them.
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jack
not actually sure, but i can tell that safari is VERY slow, e.g. switching between tabs (or going into that view which shows them all) it takes a few seconds to load at times. i am running an iPhone SE (2020) on iOS 18 though..
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JamesDBartlett3
WTF, 2020 isn't even that long ago! What on earth is Apple doing with iOS that you can't run Safari smoothly on an iPhone that's not even old enough for kindergarten? Safari ran as smooth as butter on my iPhone 3GS back in like 2009, FFS.
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jack
well I use it a lot, the BH is pretty low. like 80%. on my Mac (mini, base model, 2023) Safari is blazing fast. even at the time, the SE was a budget device for like £400, which had the same specs as the 11 (2019) but worse camera and no Face ID
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JamesDBartlett3
Device usage frequency and battery health should have no bearing whatsoever on app performance, especially native apps like Safari. It's Apple software, running in an Apple operating system, on Apple hardware. They control the entire tech stack from top to bottom. It should not be slow, ever.
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jack
No, usage of a device over many years and heavy use will slow it down. I'm sure if I factory reset it and re-set it up it'd be faster. For quite a bit at least. If you want another example of this, Microsoft Edge on Windows is HORRIBLE from my experience... Safari is much faster
Retired-Gen-X
In-app browsers tend to be crap. I want links to open in my default browser. (and I never heard of "reader mode")
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Prose and Khans
Negative interest in an in-app browser. I don't care what it does, so long as I can avoid using it, in favor of the browser I already use on the device.
Samuel
this is SFSafariViewController, I’m just asking if we should give the option to initialise it in reader mode or not
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luizzeroxis
So having it on by default? That's still an option that should be in the browser. I understand extending lackluster native software, though.