Reading view

  • Article

Internet Explorer on Windows 8.1 provides a reading view for a more streamlined, book-like reading experience of webpages, without the distraction of unrelated or other secondary content on the page.

Reading view can be toggled on or off from the Switch to reading view / Leave reading view (book icon) button on the address bar (or with Ctrl + Shift + R).

Important  This feature is not supported in Internet Explorer 11 on Windows 7, or Internet Explorer for the desktop on Windows 8.1.

 

IE extracts the following information from a webpage for display in reading view:

  • Title
  • Byline (author)
  • Date
  • Dominant image(s)
  • Captions of dominant image(s)
  • Main text content of the page
  • Copyright

Users can then customize their background style and font size from the Reading view settings found in the Options tab of Internet Explorer Settings (from the SettingsCharm on the side of the Internet Explorer in the new Windows UI screen). The Reading View Guidelines page on the Windows Internet Explorer testdrive site offers best practices for web developers to enable their users get the best experience with Reading View. See Reading View Guidelines for more info.

Opting out of Reading View

Page owners who feel their content is not a good fit for Reading view can use the following meta tag to opt out of this feature:

<meta name="IE_RM_OFF" content="true">

With this tag, the Reading view icon will not appear in the address bar when your users view your page. For more, see Introducing Reading View in IE11.