Because it isn't worth it, basically. It's a relatively simple economic decision - making a text only backup version takes time, programming, adds an extra possibility for failure, etc. etc. - and the people who want a text only version are an extremely small minority.
I know that sounds a little heartless and "not caring about the web", but it's the reality.
It depends on the site, but it's really not that much effort for any site that a viewer would WANT a text-only mode.
Sites with lots of text content invariably use a CMS to manage that content. It's not hard to build a text-only template, and in fact many sites actually do this - if you browse on mobile Safari, it's called "Reader Mode". I don't know if Android has an equivalent, but I would assume so.
I think you've acquired a mistaken picture of Reader Mode.
Reader Mode (like the Readable and Readability bookmarklets) presents an alternative rendering of the same set of files from which the standard view is rendered: it does not cause the server to serve an alternative set of files.
Reader Mode and the Readable and Readability bookmarklets fail often even on "text-centric" pages such as blog posts.
Comments
Because it isn't worth it, basically. It's a relatively simple economic decision - making a text only backup version takes time, programming, adds an extra possibility for failure, etc. etc. - and the people who want a text only version are an extremely small minority.
I know that sounds a little heartless and "not caring about the web", but it's the reality.
It depends on the site, but it's really not that much effort for any site that a viewer would WANT a text-only mode.
Sites with lots of text content invariably use a CMS to manage that content. It's not hard to build a text-only template, and in fact many sites actually do this - if you browse on mobile Safari, it's called "Reader Mode". I don't know if Android has an equivalent, but I would assume so.
I think you've acquired a mistaken picture of Reader Mode. Reader Mode (like the Readable and Readability bookmarklets) presents an alternative rendering of the same set of files from which the standard view is rendered: it does not cause the server to serve an alternative set of files.
Reader Mode and the Readable and Readability bookmarklets fail often even on "text-centric" pages such as blog posts.