A browser extension to make Medium more readable

https://makemediumreadable.com/

by exolymph • 8 years ago

168 153 8 years ago

makemediumreadable.com

ericpauley• 8 years ago

Read and change all your data on the websites you visit

Better luck next time.

samschooler• 8 years ago

You can build it from source if you would like. It needs to do that because some (most) medium posts are not on the medium.com domain.

https://github.com/thebaer/MMRA

sus_007• 8 years ago

When I want a readable Medium, I simply toggle the Firefox's built-in Reader View(Ctrl+Alt+R). It's readable enough for me.

spraak• 8 years ago

Can it make Medium not ask me to pay for a subscription after N (3 at this time) articles?

stephengillie• 8 years ago

In what ways could Medium have financial income without transferring the wealth from us?

slig2• 8 years ago

Asking its publishers to pay? Like WordPress or Ghost does.

anant903• 8 years ago

Opening in incognito is usually good enough to bypass Medium's paywall.

terragon• 8 years ago

Shh. Lest they fix that bug.

otras• 8 years ago

Every time this pops up on my radar, I always consider taking a stab at adding the “make articles with gifs better” feature mentioned in the github issue, but I always end up too busy with other work. I’ll carve out some time this weekend to give it a shot. My workload stars are aligned for some open source, and that would be a great feature!

r3n• 8 years ago

In Safari you can ask it to load certain websites with reader view automatically. If you do so, Safari will change to reader view as soon as it can render the page.

This how I deal with the annoying stuff in Medium.

larkinrichards• 8 years ago

This is a nice feature!

Edit: for those wondering, visit a website and long press the reader button on the left side of the address bar to enable.

nichos• 8 years ago

Firefox on mobile does this too. Can't live without it on my phone.

ziotom78• 8 years ago

Really? How do you do this? I continuously switch to reader mode for a few sites I read regularly, I would love to make this switch automatic.

craftyguy2• 8 years ago

This how I deal with the annoying stuff in Medium.

I deal with it by avoiding medium. Seriously, why support them in any way with page views/whatever if you disagree with their presentation method?

blaqkangel• 8 years ago

I would be interested in moving on from Medium but haven't found a serviceable alternative. Do you have any recommendations?

pmontra2• 8 years ago

I don't follow regularly anything except the HN homepage. However there are many blogs with their own domain that are actually Medium and they get linked to HN every now and then. I wonder if that extension is smart enough to process them too. I use uBlock to hide the Open in App button and the sticky bar, in case the same site will get linked again.

krylon• 8 years ago

In Safari you can ask it to load certain websites with reader view automatically.

That is nice. Firefox has an extension called "Open in Reader View" that adds an item to the context menu for links. But one still has to use it explicitly. (AFAIK, at least.)

Froyoh• 8 years ago

What's with everyone using the "Make X Great Again" phrase?

arbie• 8 years ago

I take it you're not from North America?

infinityplus12• 8 years ago

They are mocking Trump

minitech• 8 years ago

Yeah, it’s too bad about the name because this extension otherwise seems really good. (Just a minor annoyance, but as you say, one that comes up constantly…)

hprotagonist• 8 years ago

I use the Unobstruct ios app to dedickbar medium. Works quite well.

https://medium.com/@tgaul/introducing-unobstruct-230e4e95cf5...

ronjouch3• 8 years ago

I use Unobstruct on iOS too and would love an equivalent in my browser. Does anyone know one? (uBlockOrigin-usable blocklist or extension)

rainbowmverse• 8 years ago

I don't know if the mobile version of uBlock Origin has it, but there's an eye dropper button if you click the uBlock button on the toolbar. You can use that to build block rules automagically. It reminds me of the API spies people used to make for Visual Basic 6.

shabbyrobe• 8 years ago

Unobstruct is awesome!

On the desktop, Unstick for Firefox gives you a little nuke icon that gets rid of any dickbars anywhere you happen to find them: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/unstickall/

That, plus uBlock Origin's "right click, block element" feature for things I visit regularly, gives me a significantly better Internet experience than I'd otherwise be stuck having.

Cofike• 8 years ago

I just have a bookmarklet that removes any sticky elements.

wtallis• 8 years ago

I've been doing something similar for years, though the implementation method has changed some as my preferred browser and the set of available extensions has shifted. I want to browse the web with a white-list approach to which pages are allowed to display elements that are anchored to screen coordinates rather than scrolling with the page. Generally speaking, the only pages that should be permitted to pin an element in front of the main content are web apps, but most of the pages I visit are (or should be) purely document-oriented.

ravenstine2• 8 years ago

Open in App

To all sites that do this(I'm looking at you, Reddit), no, I do not want to install yet another app just to continue reading. The web is already designed for reading. You hear that?

cowpig• 8 years ago

I honestly don't understand why sites do this. Can someone explain it to me?

scruffyherder• 8 years ago

Better information on the users, you can harvest their actual location, phone number, contacts, email etc...

Instead of being restricted to a browser, you are on their device, with whatever access you want.

muppetman• 8 years ago

Because if they can get an app on your device, they can push messages at you easier. Track your usage of the app, assign it a unique ID etc.

The app will auto-update, so as new features/tracking/things are desired, they can push these out to devices.

Basically, they get more control of the end user.

tbiteteitb• 8 years ago

Analytics. They can get a boatload of data from the app that can't be obtained through the browser.

chipperyman573• 8 years ago

Websites are sandboxed and make it much harder to gather data about your users (To sell them ads).

Apps have much wider permissions off the bat and can request more as necessary.

I'd assume (though I have no data to back it up) that your service would get used more if the user has an app downloaded as the barrier to access your service is much lower

r3vrse• 8 years ago

If they get you using an app that evades in-browser ad, tracking blockers etc... so $$ is the primary reason, basically

infinityplus12• 8 years ago

To gather more details about you from your phone. It's about data and eye balls. You will get more and notifications to increase user engagement.

mhneu• 8 years ago

Surveillance capitalism. https://plus.google.com/+GregLinden/posts/TWiGesiztbj

(I'm not sure exactly if this is the present motivation. But it's the motivation for a lot of apps. Data can be sold / used for ads when collected in very large numbers, and apps collect more data than websites. So there are strong business incentives to move to an app, for many sites.)

benatkin• 8 years ago

An app is sort of like a physical object, like a flyer. It reminds you of them. The place on iOS or Android's home screen has this effect. It's kind of similar to how Windows apps added themselves to the Start Menu, the desktop, and the taskbar.

abhiminator• 8 years ago

2 things -- Tracking and Ads.

Using the web version of the product is disadvantageous from the developer's POV as it gives a lot of control to the user over what personal data of his can be shared. Web browser extensions also allow the users to block ads and other annoying content -- this is sub-optimal for the company as it trims their ad revenue, and as a result, potential future advertisers.

It's all about controlling what the user sees based on data collected from tracking, imo.

jtokoph• 8 years ago

Ads and tracking as others have said, but also push notifications. People accept push notifications without thinking.

andrenotgiant• 8 years ago

They (e.g. reddit the company) want you to do more than read. They want you to subscribe and follow and user-generate content (and not block ads.)

They build an app because apps.

Then they compare behavior between app and website.

And there's a stupid, stupid analytics datapoint that shows "Users of the app browse/subscribe/follow/post 2x more!"

That only happens because the only people willing to download and use the app are the power users. But they just worked hard creating an app, and nobody questions analytics data that tells them their hard work was worthwhile.

So now, armed with their supporting data, they begin pushing people to the app because they think it will lead to more pageviews/subscribes/follows/posts and eyeballs on ads.

smudgymcscmudge• 8 years ago

Ten replies in ten minutes. Looks like everybody wants to explain this.

anant903• 8 years ago

Besides everything else, Push Notifications is usually the top reason.

politician• 8 years ago

Apps are like TV channels. They are a broadcast medium whose content is entirely controlled by the broadcaster.

Unblockable Ads, In-App microtransactions, Push Notification-based variable reward schedule reengagement dark patterns are the result.

dredmorbius3• 8 years ago

Stickyness, as well as tracking & ads.

zrobotics• 8 years ago

Aside from the reasons andre provided, i think the biggest driver is ads. I block ads for most sites, but without a lot of work i can't block ads using the site-specific app.

Although i wonder how many app users only real benefit from the app is a button to launch the site from the home screen, and how many of those users would switch if they were aware of how to add a browser bookmark to their home screen. Anecdotal data, but I have had several friends with this problem, two specifically complaining about the reddit app being less readable than a browser but wanting a single button to press to launch the site.

skizm• 8 years ago

https://i.reddit.com

quirkot• 8 years ago

Banner text for me reads "TRY REDDIT'S MOBILE WEBSITE". There. is. no. escape.

colordrops• 8 years ago

commenting is horribly broken on mobile.

wslh• 8 years ago

The web is already designed for reading.

Not only that, these apps just have an embedded browser inside!

brchr• 8 years ago

One of the most crucial parts of my reading workflow is opening things in new tabs. (It allows one to explore a topic by BFS rather than DFS.) Asking me "Don't you want to use our app?" is like asking, "Don't you want your browser to only support a single tab?" The answer is no...for all the reasons browser makers discovered in the 1990s.

dvfjsdhgfv2• 8 years ago

For the same reason hijacking links to other pages via JS is an abomination that should be cursed and banned. Each time I click a link to open the link a new tab and see about:blank instead the designer should receive a slap on the wrist.

naibafo• 8 years ago

To be fair, there are a few single-tab browsers out there, where you then defer tab management e.g. to your window manager on linux: * https://www.uzbl.org/ * https://surf.suckless.org/

mi_lk2• 8 years ago

Came here to say this. It’s so annoying that I would probably pay for the plugin to get rid of those pop-ups on reddit mobile sites.

gnicholas2• 8 years ago

To what extent do plugins exist for mobile? My understanding is that on iOS there are Share Extensions and Action Extensions for Safari, but these have to me manually triggered on every page where you want them to run.

On Android, Firefox supports addons (but practically no one knows they exist) and Chrome doesn't have extensions.

Are there other options? I hope I'm wrong here since it would be great to have browser plugins on mobile!

awinder• 8 years ago

That and linking rile me to no end. It’s so needlessly user hostile that I might want to share a link to something I find interesting, which is a well-supported and ubiquitously accomplished task in browsers, that completely falls by the wayside in these degeneate apps.

Deimorz• 8 years ago

Recently reddit has also started making its official app generate links to posts via the domain "reddit.app.link", instead of normal reddit.com urls. These new links automatically send everyone on mobile to the app store to download the official app, even if they clicked from inside a third-party app.

As far as I can tell, the only way to make the links work on mobile is to install the official app (once you do, they'll open the linked post inside it).

ravenstine2• 8 years ago

I could never work for a company that wanted me to implement anything like that.

city412• 8 years ago

Medium is especially cruel as they offer no way to make it go away.

thinkingemote• 8 years ago

There must be a Firefox extension to block these, if not, ive got my weekend project!

trishume• 8 years ago

I want to install this addon, but it asks for permission to view and modify data on all sites.

Both for security and loading javascript on every page I visit reasons, I wish there was a version that only bound to medium.com. I know I could compile one from source but that's a hassle.

gok2• 8 years ago

agreed

thebaer• 8 years ago

Then it wouldn't work on Medium-powered sites like hackernoon.com. There is an open, up-for-grabs issue to fix that permission [0] if anyone wants to help us solve this!

In the meantime, there isn't anything crazy you have to do to make it only work on medium.com -- just clone the repo to your machine, change this one line to "https://medium.com/*" [1], and then load the extension in your browser.

[0] https://github.com/thebaer/MMRA/issues/15

[1] https://github.com/thebaer/MMRA/blob/master/manifest.json#L2...

thecatspaw• 8 years ago

is there no way to ask for these permissions after having the plugin installed allready?

I seem to remember that the Reddit enhancement suite does that

hoistbypetard• 8 years ago

The proposed fix is a good idea. Reddit Enhancement Suite uses optional permissions that way[1] and the prompts the first time it wants to act on one of the optional sites are not irritating at all.

[1]https://github.com/honestbleeps/Reddit-Enhancement-Suite/blo...

dredmorbius3• 8 years ago

An alternative is ... to install onlyone extension that tracks allyour activity everywhere (Stylus), and write or apply CSS stylesheets to fix annoyances.

The set I use.

https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/hFzKwoir...

Firefox's Reader mode also works well. (It's among the targets I've restyled.)

pmontra2• 8 years ago

You can also use uBlock to hide parts of a page. It's much easier to use on a phone. Pick the area on screen, possibly select a parent or children in the list on the popup, preview, confirm and it's gone.

amelius• 8 years ago

Would Firefox "containers" solve this problem?

dzonga• 8 years ago

Medium, is now full of clickbaitish articles + content marketing from various people pandering their online courses. Way different from the medium, I fell into when I discovered it. Recently deleted the mobile app.

tandav• 8 years ago

Medium golden age was 2015-2016. Then it started transforming to clickbait-y, ugly garbage.

My experience: personal blogs (github.io/whatever) has the most amount of insights, 'a-ha moments', usefull info.

java_script• 8 years ago

A browser extension to make Medium less annoying.

So this just blanks out the articles or what?

Gatsky• 8 years ago

This gave me a good laugh. In my domain (healthcare), the articles on Medium are rubbish.

drngdds2• 8 years ago

They're not all that great in the software field, either. 75% of them are just content marketing.

jasonkostempski• 8 years ago

I went one step further and made myself an FF extension to blank out any links to Medium (and other useless sites) from any page. I forget they exist until I come across one of the countless posts complaining about the suck. Or I realise the reason images and other content arent showing is because it's a custom domain hosted by medium, then they get added to the list.

cyberferret• 8 years ago

I miss the old medium, with it's "Collections" that allowed me to read (and post) articles in specific interest areas.

Somehow the nature of the content back then was much more engaging too. It was as raw as seeing a new band perform for the first time in some dive bar. Now it is just a sanitised pool of sophisticated marketing brochures masquerading as articles.

dvcrn• 8 years ago

I think it's interesting that the author bought a domain just for this extension

AgentOrange1234• 8 years ago

Thank you so much for this. I loathe the pardon the interruption window.

okket• 8 years ago

If you use Safari there is no need for an app or extension.

Just right click (macOS) / long press (iOS) on the "Reader" symbol and activate "Use Reader Automatically on 'medium.com'". Same procedure for any branded domain that uses Medium.

bluefin• 8 years ago

FF also has a "Reader Mode" (F9), though it gets rid of all images.

Kalium• 8 years ago

Firefox Reader Mode is the thing that I find makes Medium an enjoyable experience. It's so much nicer than Medium ever was.

They should try that design.

dreamcompiler2• 8 years ago

It's a shame that almost every decent website (this one being a notable exception) eventually succumbs to the temptation to go to war with their users on behalf of their advertisers. Radio stations and podcasts are doing it too by upping the percent of the *cast dedicated to ads in hopes of generating more revenue.

This never ends well, especially since so many cord-cutters are less tolerant of ads than people have ever been before.

Oh well. It's a nice opportunity for disruption, and the cycle repeats.

dawnerd2• 8 years ago

Youtubers too. Filler unboxing video with no real content still gets a pre and post roll ad. (On top of whatever ads YouTube inserts). What’s even better is the tech youtubers that do a paid review and still include their normal ads.

MrEldritch• 8 years ago

To be fair, ads got way less profitable for Youtubers recently. After the so-called "Adpocalypse", it's a total crapshoot whether any given video will be monetizable, so it makes sense that videomakers would resort to adding more paid-by-the-sponsor ads directly into the video rather than relying on revenue from Yoututbe's own ads.

listenallyall4• 8 years ago

I'd argue that in many cases, the users go to war first. Ad blockers, paywall bypassing, incognito mode, etc. make it virtually impossible for most sites to survive on a straight ad model. The company has to find a way to survive, so it tries memberships, click-bait, nag screens, gathering user data, and in response an extension like this is built, and it keeps going back and forth with anti-ad-blocker, anti-anti-ad-blocker, etc. Medium is far from blameless here, their Twitter feed is repetitive and far too low on quality articles vs junk. And yes, their nag screen and 3-article limit suck. But they need to do something, don't you think?

If you are a user of ad blockers and additional strategies, what do you envision as the endgame? No ads, ever? What kind of content are you expecting at that point?

PurpleRamen• 8 years ago

Not really. AdBlockers were a reaction against the toxic ads. And even today only a minority of users (<10%) are using adblockers.

flukus2• 8 years ago

The company has to find a way to survive

No it doesn't. Closing the business when they can't turn a profit is a perfectly viable (maybe inevitable) course of action. When a local restaurant is losing money do you expect them to close or to start padding the meals with sawdust? Much of digital media has reached the point of charging you for the sauce on your sawdust.

What kind of content are you expecting at that point?

Much better content on average, less clickbait crap. You could halve the quantity tomorrow and no one would notice.

dreamcompiler2• 8 years ago

Whomever starts it, it always turns into an arms race because the backers of the website want constant growth; they are never content with steady performance.

So be it. I have better things to do with my time than participate in 100 arms races. Such sites simply become dead to me and I move to the next one that's friendlier to its readers.

some_account• 8 years ago

The endgame is for sites to provide content that users want to pay for.

If you would ban ads on the internet, only sites actually being useful to users would remain. The rest would die off, along with the ad industry on the internet. Sounds like a dream to me.

criddell• 8 years ago

I think it's the nature of advertising. Ideally the relationship between audience, producer, and advertiser would be symbiotic but it almost always ends up being parasitic. I think the incentives are just don't align. I've been running a tracking blocker (which is effectively an ad blocker) for years and feel absolutely no guilt for doing so.

ErikAugust• 8 years ago

I remember maybe 4-5 years ago looking at Medium’s CSS in order to emulate their readability.

Things change.

saudioger• 8 years ago

Remember when Medium was supposed to be the height of readability?

vvpan• 8 years ago

Yes, this is highly ironic.

Traubenfuchs• 8 years ago

Was it ever?

I only ever knew it as a showcase of ui&ux anti patterns / dark patterns.

rhizome31• 8 years ago

I've always despised Medium.

pmlnr4• 8 years ago

Remember when blogging systems allowed you to choose a theme? Or that running your own site allowed you to make the site without ads, nag bars, etc? Yeah, maybe, but just maybe, when the next medium comes along with the promise of saving the web, just stick to having your own site, where you're in control.

I know this extension is to read, not to write, but if most writers just have used, say, Hugo, we'd not be here.

slig2• 8 years ago

We can only hope it goes the same way as posterous did.

Accioni• 8 years ago

Pepperidge farm remembers

reciprocity• 8 years ago

Please put more substance in your comments.

southerndrift2• 8 years ago

It comes down to chrome not supporting various css styles per site [1]. Other browsers have a menu option to load alternative styles if a site provides them.

[1] https://www.thesitewizard.com/css/switch-alternate-css-style...

pmlnr4• 8 years ago

sorry, what? you can just include the <style> on the server side, where you render the page. Or do what I did, <style media="none"> and turn it on with a js click, store the value in cookie/localstorage for which <style> needs to be on.

I also don't really understand how this connects to the topic.

known• 8 years ago

Change browser user agent general.useragent.override.medium.com to Opera/9.80 (Android; Opera Mini/20.1.2254/37.9178; U; en) Presto/2.12.423 Version/12.16

OoTheNigerian• 8 years ago

Using Brave browser is how I tackle this.. With it you can selectively disable Javascript, ads, etc on any or all sites you visit.

strikeX• 8 years ago

I just use a bookmarked script which I came across on some thread here.

javascript:(function()%7B(function () %7Bvar i%2C elements %3D document.querySelectorAll('body *')%3Bfor (i %3D 0%3B i < elements.length%3B i%2B%2B) %7Bif (getComputedStyle(elements%5Bi%5D).position %3D%3D%3D 'fixed') %7Belements%5Bi%5D.parentNode.removeChild(elements%5Bi%5D)%3B%7D%7D%7D)()%7D)()

I have bookmarked it and whenever there is an annoying pop-up or long headers and footers just run the script. Very useful for these kinds of websites.

For those who don't know how to use the above script: Bookmark this page -> go to all bookmarks and replace bookmark address/url with above script. Click on this bookmark with medium website open and you will see all the crap go away.

beilabs• 8 years ago

Does anyone else have issues with images on medium being slow to load, always fuzzy and then taking ages to actually render? Seems like a constant problem for my part of the world.

vezycash• 8 years ago

Question:

Would adblockers and mods this extension still work when ad networks and sites like these embrace webassembly?

Would it not be a crime to "reverse engineer" their code?

iicc• 8 years ago

What "should" authors be using instead of medium?

drngdds2• 8 years ago

Literally any other blogging platform

amaccuish• 8 years ago

Still haven't got Medium to log me in properly. Keep getting signed out, I assume it's because I block third party cookies...

the_imp• 8 years ago

I've put together a Chrome extension that does the same thing, but it requires no permissions and works on all other similar sites as well: Kill-Sticky adds a keyboard shortcut (Alt+K or Cmd+K) that removes all sticky content, and re-enables scrolling.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kill-sticky/lekjlg...

ZachSaucier• 8 years ago

Why just Medium? Make all articles readable (along with other features) with Just Read: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/just-read/dgmanlpm...

Full disclosure, I'm the developer of Just Read.

s_trumpet• 8 years ago

Just Read is great, and I would be using it a lot more if I wasn't a Firefox guy. Great work, though!

ronjouch3• 8 years ago

Firefox users who either dislike the requirement for permission on all sites, or don't want an additional extension: know that you can achieve about the same with a few lines in your userContent.css [1]

  @-moz-document domain(medium.com), domain(backchannel.com), domain(hackernoon.com), domain(mondaynote.com), domain(artplusmarketing.com), domain(codeburst.io), domain(logrocket.com), domain(slack.engineering), regexp("https?://medium\..*") {.js-postShareWidget, .overlay, .overlay--lighter, .postActionsBar, .js-postActionsBar, .metabar, .js-metabar, .postMeterBar, .js-meterBanner, .highlightMenu, .highlightMenu--active, .popover, .js-popover, .popover--dark, .butterBar--privacy, .js-stickyFooter {display: none !important;}}

Obvious gotcha: incomplete list of domains, now you have to add medium domains when you meet them and restart Firefox.

[1] http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.php?title=UserContent.css

newscracker• 8 years ago

The creator (and maintainers) of Medium ought to crouch in a corner with shame. People (including prominent voices on Twitter and the web) have complained about Medium’s issues for some years. This extension is like one more slap in the face for a platform that started with the premise that:

"There's been less progress toward raising the quality of what's produced." [1]

Quality? Are we going to talk about quality in all its dimensions?

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_(website)#Background

dethos• 8 years ago

Why not just use the "reader" mode of the browser? (at least in Firefox this works quite well)

mbowcutt• 8 years ago

I haven't used the Medium app on my Android device for some weeks now. Today I got a notification about some article and swiped it away. Then later I got another and realized: Wait, I don't normally get Medium notifications!

Not sure what changed but it was a nice reminder to delete the app.

Also, I was unaware that people found Medium to be a suboptimal reading experience.

A browser extension to make Medium more readable

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