We have already discussed how to enable the Safari Reader in Safari 5 . Lets see how does the Safari Reader actually work .
In words of Apple
Safari Reader removes annoying ads and other visual distractions from online articles. So you get the whole story and nothing but the story. It works like this: As you browse the web, Safari detects if you’re on a web page with an article. Click the Reader icon in the Smart Address Field, and the article appears instantly in one continuous, clutter-free view. You see every page of the article — whether two or twenty. Onscreen controls let you email, print, and zoom. Change the size of the text, and Safari remembers it the next time you view an article in Safari Reader.
Lets make it simple
While browsing the web, we visit ‘n’ number of websites which may range from News websites like CNN, Forums , Image Sites like Flickr , Blogs like ours, Social Media websites like Facebook to Video Sharing sites like YouTube. All of these websites are a combination of the following three things in different proportions.
1. Main Content – which may be article , blog post , picture or a video .
2. Advertisements – most of the times related to the content.
3 .Portions of Template: Webpages are composed in templates . These templates contain header , footer , sidebar and other essentials pieces , which donot form the part of the main content.
Whenever you browse a webpage with Safari 5, it detects if you are on a webpage with an article. If you click the Safari Reader icon in the Address Bar, it will bring up the article part of the webpage to the front. The rest of distractions ie Advertisements and Portions of Templates will be discarded .
The article would be displayed with the images, in white background and with black text. All the pages in the article will be displayed in one flow ie Even if the article is divided into pages all pages will be presented as one single flow.
If the article contains video, only the snapshot will be displayed. You cannot play videos in the Reader Mode. You can also access the on screen controls like Email, Print, and Zoom and changing the font size. To enable on screen controls, simply hover your mouse over the lower center portion of the screen.