Mozilla Firefox is a free, open source web browser that brings a multitude of new and innovative functionalities to both its mobile and desktop clients.

Over the years, websites have become more cluttered with ads and other miscellaneous content that distracts the user from the main content of interest. Some browsers have implemented a reader mode, which loads a new view of a page, with all extraneous content removed. Most of these are plugins that must be downloaded and installed separately from the browser.

Produced with guidance from Mozilla Developers, our Reader Mode for Desktop Firefox provides a built-in reader mode for the desktop version of Firefox.

Reader mode can be enabled for a site by clicking the easy to find button in the address bar. When Reader mode is activated, the current page is replaced with a de-cluttered version of itself. A preferences menu allows the user to change the font, font color, font size and various other attributes of the page.

The Reader Mode button is written in XUL. The Reader Mode functionality is implemented with JavaScript and the Readability.com algorithm. The Reader mode page and general styling are done with CSS and HTML.