Firefox Reader View gets a Narrate button, reads out text loud when you click. Mozilla has launched Reader View aka Reader Mode for Firefox browser with 38.0.5, with which you can able to remove background ads and other obtrusive elements and concentrate on reading the text. Firefox maker wants to give rest to your eyes and wants you to listen with Narrate feature, which adds a button to reader view toolbar that speaks out the text for you if click on it.
According to Mozilla’s Eitan blog post, the latest Nightly has it with Speech Synthesis being enabled by default, but it’s not there when we checked, even though the related preference media.webspeech.synth.enabled was set to true.
“As of today’s Nightly build, you will find an extra button in the Reader View toolbar: the Narrate button. Press play in the popup, and you will have the page read out aloud. You are now free to give your eyes a rest, knit, wash dishes, work out, play Candy Crush, whatever.”
- Firefox 38.0.5: How to disable or Remove Pocket and Reader View Features
- How to remove Firefox’s Reader View (book) icon in the Address bar
These days most of the desktop PDF Readers have Narrate or Text to Speech feature built-in and so is the case for e-readers like Kindle, they rely on Microsoft.
Though you can not test the feature in Nightly right now (might be a future update will likely make it available to you), why not check Web Speech Synthesis demo?.
Update: To test speech synthesis or Narrate feature in Nightly visit this link in browser, click on reader book icon in the address bar and click on Narrate icon in the sidebar, click on Play button to start.