RW Reader

The original client for the Reader's Web

Reader's Web is a new part of the World Wide Web where the presentation of web pages is determined by the reader, not the publisher. This extension only works on web pages that support new Reader's-Web-compatible data formats, so initially, there may be limited content to explore. A few examples are available via the link in the extension’s popup. You can create your own connected pages in two main ways: 1. Publish a page on your site that links to all its sources or just provides a commentary for another page (which may be on another website). 2. Enhance existing content—for example, take a public domain book and add a table of contents, maps, or other references. In that case, you would publish a connections document (CONDOC) on your site that links to the main document and all related materials you want to connect. When connecting to content you don’t own, legality depends on the specific use case. Enhancing copyrighted content may be considered a derivative work, while providing commentary is generally safer. The most legally secure scenario is connecting documents that you fully own. Why this extension is safe to use. We bypass the browser’s cross-domain request restrictions using a background script. This is safe because all scripts from connected pages are removed before display. Also, measures have been taken to prevent main page's script from highjacking cross-domain request functionality. Additionally, by default, the extension asks for confirmation before downloading a page from another domain. If that becomes annoying, you can disable this behavior in the settings. Since browsers don’t yet support visible connections, we introduce them through an extension. If visible connections become popular enough, there’s a real chance web browsers will eventually support them natively. When that happens, this extension will become obsolete — and that’s perfectly fine. The goal is to bring true hypertext to the World Wide Web. This project is inspired by the ideas of hypertext visionary Ted Nelson, and visible connections are only the beginning. Over time, we hope to explore more of his concepts as well. Source code: https://github.com/kgcoder/rw-reader-chrome-extension