Monday, September 04, 2017

Directly launch a web page in the Reader Mode of FireFox.

I have created another app. Basically it solves the two problems I had.


1. I need an option to open a web page directly to FireFox's Reader Mode

For example, I use Google's News & Weather app. My default web browser was set to Chrome, so it opened the news in Chrome. But I thought it was an in-built article viewer. It had a "Share" icon so that I can send the URL to another app. But unfortunately, FireFox had only "Add to FireFox", which shows an additional cumbersome menu, and even then it did not open the page in Reader Mode. I had to wait until the page is fully loaded (because the Reader Mode button only appears then) and then tap the Reader Mode button. Repeating this was very annoying.

My app, "Reader launcher for FireFox", solves that. If I choose this app instead of "Add to FireFox", it will launch the article in the Reader Mode directly, without waiting for the page to be loaded. Boy, you cannot imagine how convenient it is for me.

2. My default browser is Chrome, but I open only the URL's from specific apps with FireFox's Reader Mode.

Then I found out that News & Weather does not have its own article viewer. When I click an item, it just opens the article with the default browser. My default browser is Chrome, and I do not want to change it to FireFox. My app can also solve this problem.

My app registers itself as a web browser. So, if I click an article in the News & Weather app, it asks me to choose the default browser. My app has a setting for specifying the apps so that only the URL's received from those apps will be opened in the Reader Mode. Otherwise, the URL's will be opened in the default browser, such as Chrome.

With my setting, when I click an article in the News & Weather app, the article is instantly and directly opened in the Reader Mode of FireFox, but if I open web links in other apps, they are opened in Chrome. Now I can conveniently, and pleasantly use the News & Weather app.

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