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The Safari Reader Arms Race
JimLynch writes "Apple, by adding Reader to Safari 5, is essentially trying to force an e-book style interface onto the web reading experience. It will never work out over the long haul because web publishers will resist and the end result will be an arms race, with publishers on one side and Apple on the other." Another unmentioned issue is that sometimes it doesn't work. I've found pages where content is omitted from the reader UI.
I wasn't aware someone was forcing me to move the cursor up to the address bar and deliberately click the 'READER' button. I rather thought it was me choosing to do that, mostly to get rid of the junk that appears on these multipage articles.
I'm using the feature heavily. Totally by choice, not by force.
Cheers,
Ian
Come on, you're making a mountain out of a molehill here.
80% of Mac users won't use the Reader function, because they either don't know what it does or can't be bothered to click it. The other 20% probably use AdBlock or some other ad-blocking solution anyway.
Besides, as others have pointed out, if people want to use Reader on your site's content, then there is something wrong with your design. Either clean it up, or decide you don't care. There is no "arms race" that you can possibly have. What, you're going to stop serving content to Safari? Good luck with that.
I'm always amused by stuff like this.
Apple does it: Apple is trying to force an ebook readeresque format.
Firefox does it in an extension: Firefox is allowing users a cleaner, less intrusive reading environment.
Embrace, extend, extingu... oops, wrong evil empire
Call me a conspiration theorist but Apple displaying news content without the embedded ads on the web while at the same time trying to establish their own ad-platform and taking 30% of all ads served on the iPhone is a convenient coincidence, don't you think? Cutting off the publishers' revenue streams while at the same time pushing for a new revenue model on mobile phones and tablets sounds like a plan.
My point is that the web was *exactly* designed for a quiet reading experience, because it was originally supposed to be for easy dissemination of scientific research. That may not be what it is today (and it's perhaps lesser because of it), but "was never meant to" is precisely wrong.
In my not-so-humble opinion, the former of those two reasons is dramatically more important to the website author than the latter. I'd go so far as to say the latter was a desperate justification for the former. The author apparently thinks so too, because when challenged to reverse his policy (put everything on one page and have a button to split the article into multiple ones), he demurs.
Now, I'm not against websites making money from advertisers. If that's your business model, all the more power to your elbow, but there are sites out there that extract the proverbial urine, and I'm equally supportive of methods to defeat that. The website absolutely has the right to serve adverts. Equally, the user has the right to work around that if (s)he is sufficiently motivated to. Advertisers seem to want to motivate users to do that, these days, is all I'm saying.
I'm far more likely to read an article on arstechnica that's spread out over multiple pages specifically because each page has a lot of relevant content and it hangs together well. I'm far less likely to want to read a multi-page article where each "page" is a 40-word paragraph - *those* are the sites that Safari Reader will be a blessing for.
It's also not clear to me that this is a doomed battle for Reader. HTTP is a simple protocol, and it's relatively easy to forge a user's browsing habits programmatically
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
"But what apple now has done is unfair..."
This from a crowd that rabidly defends its "right" to use AdBlock and FlashBlock and NoScript and Greasemonkey.
All of which are add-ons designed (in part) to strip web sites of their ad-based revenue streams.
At least with Safari's reader mode the page loads first -- with the ads. You then make a conscious choice to click the Reader button and just see main body text.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
I don't see a huge problem with this. Anybody who publishes on the web knows that a client may choose to render the content in arbitrary ways. My browser doesn't have to pull all the images and frames.
I can see this being a big deal for people using screen readers. Apple should market the reader function as an accessibility feature. Why would you block a technology developed for your blind readers?
Cory
"There is a reader option on Safari 5." Would be a much better article than the one posted, while sharing the same information and NOT sharing false info. It doesn't always work 100% is truth, but at the same time I'm not being forced to use it, and it's not by default (the most important). This is a poorly written and misleading article unfortunately.
Some of us GPL defenders are hoping to one day see the end of copyright. Yes that will kill off the GPL, but the GPL is unnecessary and needlessly restrictive anyway at that point.
...and that would result in exactly what most GPL proponents claim is the core of GPL (that the code will stay open) is lost. Without copyright protection, all source will be treated like BSD licensed code more or less. Take any source you want, release binary only, obfuscated into oblivion.
Sure, reverse-engineering is theoretically possible, but not feasible. It is not the preferred form of editing.
All of which are add-ons designed (in part) to strip web sites of their ad-based revenue streams.
While I grant your point inasmuch as it's "in part", I think the main appeal of these add-ons is the freedom from the truly annoying ads. I don't mind ads on some sites but the darned instant sound and video ones are absolutely going to go. I use the add-ons then white list sites I trust to not annoy me.
Also not a minor issue is the prevalence of infections coming about via ads lately. This is on the rise and is rather difficult to prevent shy of NoScript (a pain) or an all out ad blocker. I find it somewhat amusing that ad blockers can be viewed as security software to a small degree.
You know the thing about UDP jokes? I don't care if you get it or not.
Some of us GPL defenders are hoping to one day see the end of copyright. Yes that will kill off the GPL, but the GPL is unnecessary and needlessly restrictive anyway at that point.
The heart of this matter is "bundling" and the questions that arise from it.
1) If two products are distributed as a "bundle", should it be permissible to unbundle them and consume them separately?
2) If products in a bundle are "locked" together via some technological means, should the distributor be forced to make available the means to "unlock" the bundle.
3) What should happen if the consumer breaks or bypasses the "lock".
Many people think the answers to these questions are so obvious that the questions themselves are pointless. Unfortunately, those people don't agree on what those answers are, usually because they are thinking of difference example cases. Can I remove the ads from the web page my browser displays? Can I remove the Solvent Red 26 from my fuel oil?
The GPL itself even (ab)uses copyright law to enforce the bundling of the license with the code in the case of redistribution. Let's say I wanted to create my own version of the GPL for my own original code that included the clause "this license must be presented and accepted by the end-user before this software can be used". Should my new license be enforceable? Should I have recourse if developers use my code without adhering to my terms? Copyright laws only cover distribution, but I'm trying to enforce a restriction on usage.
The ramifications of the answers to these questions quickly get complicated, and many debates on the topic never accomplish anything because the participants are not carefully defining what they are talking about.
...Or embedding advertising in the main text block, like it used to be.
The ______ Agenda
Ads which are shown for the brief period it takes to activate Reader are less exposed than those that appear on a page while it is read, and so must eventually pay less
Hello, I only said it's not ad free. The FACT is that the user DOES SEE ADS. It might be less than they would otherwise but it is not ad free. You are just being pedantic.
Publishers will earn less revenue, which is what all this is about.
Some iApps are newspapers, which compete with the websites of these papers. Reader is a Safari feature that can only tamper with websites.
Which is my main point. I guess you didn't realize that Instapaper specifically goes to great lengths to try and INCLUDE ads in the articles it scrapes for later reading? Or that, again, you have to actually VISIT THE SITE and thus SEE THE ADS in order to USE instapaper?
Name something else if you were thinking of another product, but I'm 99% sure you were going off what you imagined Instapaper did rather than reality.
I hadn't heard of Instapaper. I was thinking about the iPad apps of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Times, and The Australian.
Ads on the web are vulnerable and competitive, while those on Apps give Apple a tamper-free monopoly.
Complete And Utter Bullshit, because a developer can use any other ad framework they like. It's not like none existed before iAds.
The monopoly to which I was referring was the App Store. Other than the new restrictions on analytics data, iAd is not currently a monopoly.
I suppose iAds could be blocked using a proxy if on Wi-Fi, but how could it be done on 3G?
The final straw, you are complaining about Reader only letting you see ads briefly, and then seeking to block them altogether - and finding you can't, thus in fact proving my point that iAds and web advertising have zero in common.
Again, there is no reason at all to be "suspicious" of Apple introducing iAds and reader at the same time, because they are totally unrelated.
Sorry, I can't work out what you're saying here.
Reader is probably not an Apple conspiracy, but it does have the effect of making their mobile offerings more attractive to publishers, particularly if it spreads to other browsers.
I'll let you have the last word because I know you'll be forced to defend your position, no matter how untenable - I'll let the reader make up their minds as to which is more logical.
Calm down.