While graphic designers may hate this idea, one of the great things about standard HTML is the site visitor can adapt the content to meet their needs/preferences. Tools like AdBlock plus for Firefox help remove the advertising clutter. But for longer articles I find more help is needed for reading on the screen. It is nice to get rid of the sidebar menus, white text on black backgrounds and other graphical window dressing. When printing an web page a well designed site will provide a print-specific style sheet, but many don’t. So tools like TidyRead and Readability enter to help tame the presentation.
Neither of these tools is perfect. I like TidyRead a little better as it keeps images and embedded videos in its conversions — but it only seems to work with blog-type sites. Readability works on more sites, but often doesn’t convert all the text. Both tools work via a bookmarklet that you just drag to your browser tool bar. When on a site you want to convert you click the link, which sends a request to the service which returns a simplified page to your browser. Note that the more security conscious (paranoid) will point out that the service model means the sites can track browsing behavior. But neither service requires a registration, and there are already so many things tracking our browsing behavior I say what’s one more. Especially if it makes it easy to adapt the content to the end-user’s needs. Neither tool is perfect, but both are a step in the right direction.
TidyRead renders web pages with better readability as an-easy-to-read manner, similar to eBooks, by accurately extracting the context text and removing the cluttered materials. Read what you should and nothing else.
Readability
Despite the ubiquity of reading on the Web, readers remain a neglected audience. Readability is our popular bookmarklet that removes the junk around what you’re reading and displays a clean, readable view.
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Randall Rode's online home for thoughts, notes, and experiments with a wide range of technology topics. Visit the about page for info on my recent projects and professional background. I welcome your comments!
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