[Sith_Apprentice]

Anyone been able to enable the RIM reader mode from within an app, more specifically from within the webview control?

[bbquincar]

i heard there is a work around but i haven't seen any actual code for it yet.
Id love to get it also for my app some of the webpages don't load as nice as they could.

[Thunderbuck]

What may work is to invoke the browser as a card.

"Reader mode" is a browser feature, not part of the native HTML stack (or I'm pretty sure it isn't, anyway)

[Sith_Apprentice]

I've seen snippets of code that remove the chrome from the window but that isn't the same with the text capabilites etc.
Someone with Twitter, can you tweet @blackberrydev?

[peter9477]

Thunderbuck is correct, "reader" mode is not a property of the WebView, but something they implemented on top of it in the browser. You'd have to reproduce it from scratch...

[Sith_Apprentice]

Thunderbuck is correct, "reader" mode is not a property of the WebView, but something they implemented on top of it in the browser. You'd have to reproduce it from scratch...

that is well beyond my pay grade. I wonder if it is something that RIM can release, perhaps a sample. Or even integrate into the webview in a future SDK release.

[Thunderbuck]

As I say, invoke the browser as a card and it would appear to the user to be within the app. Don't know for sure that it would bring Reader Mode, but I believe all browser features come over with the card.

I've got my own browser invocation issue I'm struggling with, but I'll try this out to confirm.

[Sith_Apprentice]

As I say, invoke the browser as a card and it would appear to the user to be within the app. Don't know for sure that it would bring Reader Mode, but I believe all browser features come over with the card.

I've got my own browser invocation issue I'm struggling with, but I'll try this out to confirm.

I guess a bound invocation would be invisible to the user right? I have only used unbound before, and it prompts for a selection.

[big bb]

As I say, invoke the browser as a card and it would appear to the user to be within the app. Don't know for sure that it would bring Reader Mode, but I believe all browser features come over with the card.

I've got my own browser invocation issue I'm struggling with, but I'll try this out to confirm.

In a webinar they said that the browser could not be invoked as a card, has that changed.

[bbquincar]

I don't think the invoknig a card is the way to go RIM needs to add this as a feature we can use just like refresh and forward and back in browser options.
should be a seamless as possible.

[Brian Scheirer]

I've never seen a way to invoke the Browser as a card.

[Thunderbuck]

I guess a bound invocation would be invisible to the user right? I have only used unbound before, and it prompts for a selection.

Bound invocation is definitely seamless. However, if it can't be invoked as a card the transition is still pretty obvious.

[Sith_Apprentice]

Bound invocation is definitely seamless. However, if it can't be invoked as a card the transition is still pretty obvious.

So no way for reader mode within an app, at least at this time. I'll have to push to the browser then. Thanks all!

[Thunderbuck]

So no way for reader mode within an app, at least at this time. I'll have to push to the browser then. Thanks all!

Sorry. I've actually got a project where this would come in handy, too. Now debating whether I want to push to a browser or add in another page with a WebView.

EDIT: just to add to that, it looks like the reason you can't invoke the browser as a card is that the browser does not EXPOSE a card to invoke. If anyone's writing an alternate browser, this could be an interesting opportunity...

[mikeo007]

Wonder what the chances are of RIM opening up some of the source for the BB10 browser? You could just lift the reader code if they were to do that. Actually, since the entire browser front end if HTML/CSS/JS anyway, maybe you could just pull the source code right out of the OS files...

[Thunderbuck]

Wonder what the chances are of RIM opening up some of the source for the BB10 browser? You could just lift the reader code if they were to do that. Actually, since the entire browser front end if HTML/CSS/JS anyway, maybe you could just pull the source code right out of the OS files...

At its core, Reader Mode is essentially one huge regex thing to pull the text out.

As it stands now, I'm just thrilled I finally got WebView working on a sheet so I can build my little newsreader thingie I've been working on. Refining it into Reader View might be a subsequent step.

[Martin Green]

I know this thread is pretty old but I wanted to dispel a common misconception about how a Reader Mode is implemented. Although many people just assume it is done with a RegEx, it is most certainly NOT done this way since it is impossible to do more than trivial parsing of HTML with RegEx (read the perl regex docs if you don't believe me... it can't be done because of the way elements are nested in HTML). After a lot of research I figured out how to create a Reader Mode for WebView that looks and behaves almost identically to the one in the BB10 Browser. Since this feature gives my app a competitive advantage I'm not going to divulge the algorithm here, but I will provide a hint. The page must be loaded into the WebView, and then your code must walk the DOM tree, deciding which elements to keep and which to dump.

[RodgerLeblanc]

Use this URL scheme and you're good to go :
http://www.readability.com/m?url=http://www.whatever.com

[Martin Green]

Use this URL scheme and you're good to go :
whatever.com ? www.whatever.com ? Readability

...which is fine if you don't mind branding the Reader Mode in your app with Readability's logo and style, but I wanted Reader Mode to look and work identically to the one in the BB10 browser, so I implemented it with JavaScript. If you use the Readability API you are also giving them the right to sell and divulge information about you and your browsing habits. No thanks!

For casual use the Readability service is fine, but if you want to add Reader Mode to your app it is more professional to implement it yourself.