FF: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/visited/ & greasemonkey. uBlockO (optional)
Chr: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mark-all-as-read/hocgdeifbnjnhhjiphmooojohmahocdl & tampermonkey. uBlockO (optional)
I'll pull pieces/examples together here if wanted.
I'm not even sure what a bulk article read is, to be honest.
Processing article sites sorta like rss feeds, with some crude tools to manage what you've read.
Combine the above 'Mark All As Read' extension with the following script and you can grey out articles you've previously read or marked. Works on Consumerist, G News, G serps, and reddit, and whatever you regularly read by adding an @include.
// ==UserScript==
// @name Stylize Visited Links
// @namespace http://tampermonkey.net/
// @include https://consumerist.com/*
// @include http*.google.com/search*
// @include http*news.google.com/*
// @include /https?:\/\/[a-z0-9._-]+\.reddit\.com\/r\/[a-z0-9._-]+\/?/
// @grant GM_addStyle
// ==/UserScript==
GM_addStyle ( "a {border-bottom: 1px solid blue !important; background: ivory !important;} a:visited {border-bottom: 1px solid lightgrey !important; background: lightgrey !important;}" );
Got it. Between Pocket and Feedly, I'm rarely reading articles from my browser these days
I'm also mostly reading in Feedly these days, and that just shows whatever is in the RSS feed. Nice and minimal.
That might be handy for Reddit or Hacker News sites.
>Reddit or Hacker News sites.
It is. Or any site that you read regularly that presents articles in a list format. You'd be surprised how many new headlines you miss on a visual rescan.
Works great on serps, too, when you're clicking thru on a bunch of sites that might have what you're seeking.
I did use your suggested 'Mark all read' Chrome extension suggestion for a bit, but then I dropped using Chrome for quite a while and was on FF almost exclusively. I recall it being particularly handy on Hacker News.
I've now upped the background color contrast between unvisited/visited links to gold & grey. With an hour or so of eye-track retraining, you can fly though a page, even G news.