Readability

http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability

by niyazpk • 16 years ago

132 48 16 years ago

lab.arc90.com

Roridge2• 16 years ago

My first impression was "that's pointless"... then I tried it... I can see me using that on lots of pages actually. So simple, but so effective.

Would like to be able to change settings once the page has been loaded though.

wheels• 16 years ago

I use it so often that I have it bound to a Quicksilver hotkey. I must use it at least 5 times a day.

Even in the cases where the layout isn't particularly bad the consistency of reading things formatted in a way you're used to makes stuff easier to read.

Roridge2• 16 years ago

Until today I always used to CTRL+Scroll and highlight text... NO MORE :)

I have it on my FF bar now... would love the feature to change the style it while looking at the page.. different pages need different reading styles for me.

semanticist• 16 years ago

There's so many websites with tiny text and colours with really poor contrast, especially people's blogs about their business/start-up experience, I've found.

Most of them are just about readable on my 24" iMac, but on my tiny little netbook, if it wasn't for Readability I'd miss out on them.

Of course, in an ideal world we wouldn't need Readability as much because people would consider small screen sizes and poor eyesight when picking the site design.

mildweed• 16 years ago

Previous thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=501970

nfg• 16 years ago

I saved the bookmarklet with the keyword 'read', so when I'm a site that could benefit from it (which happens a lot) it's a simple: Ctrl-l read <return> away

sp332• 16 years ago

Google Chrome plugin version: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/jggheggpdocamnea... It's faster than the bookmarklet.

hockeybias• 16 years ago

Nice!

ivankirigin2• 16 years ago

readability plus http://instapaper.com are how I read anything of length online.

I.e. when I'm ready, and how I like it.

grinich• 16 years ago

Readability is awesome. It's actually a new feature in the Hacker News iPhone App I built and makes a huge difference when reading pages.

Before —> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4595/hn-readibility-menu.jpg

After —> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4595/hn-readibility-done.jpg

The update is scheduled for release on Monday.

fpeyre• 16 years ago

sweeet.... looking forward the release of this one!

JMiao• 16 years ago

instapaper is one of the few web apps that's changed my internet behavior in a big, pleasantly unexpected way.

pbhjpbhj• 16 years ago

How is it different to bookmarks, sounds like very well marketed minimal bookmarking?

ivankirigin2• 16 years ago

The iphone app is what makes it really useful.

pg• 16 years ago

I use this and highly recommend it.

AndrewHampton• 16 years ago

I've been using this since the last time it was posted on HN and highly recommend it as well.

gchucky• 16 years ago

There's a Firefox addon as well. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/46442

aw3c2• 16 years ago

I just use Opera's built-in accessibility mode.

callmeed• 16 years ago

Readability + Print to PDF + email to kindle = awesome

beh• 16 years ago

All packaged into a "Send to Kindle" Service on Snow Leopard = awesome++

grumpyfart4• 16 years ago

Maybe not everyone is aware so I want to point out these issues:

1. Don't use it if the page is over SSL (it'll include external JS over HTTP which means that you are vulnerable to MITM)

2. Don't use it if the website carries "sessionid"s over URL

3. Keep in mind that arc90's JS can actually read the cookies (I'm not saying they are but they can). That means if someone hack into their systems they can access to cookies in used websites. (think XSS). Obviously by using it you trust instapaper guys with your account in the active website.

Developers of Readability should point out these security issues clearly in their website.

nixme• 16 years ago

s/instapaper/arc90/g ?

grumpyfart4• 16 years ago

you are right, edited.

MHordecki2• 16 years ago

With Readability Redux (extension for Chrome) JS is stored locally, so it probably addresses those issues.

grumpyfart4• 16 years ago

Sounds nice, I'll look into that.

Tekhne• 16 years ago

There's an alternative to the Readability tool called Clippable: http://brettterpstra.com/2009/11/03/clippable

adriand• 16 years ago

I've actually written a Ruby library modeled on Readability (quite closely modeled - I read the source code of the bookmarklet and based my library on what I learned) that is excellent for screen scraping - like Readability, it is pretty good at finding the element on a site that holds the content, and once you have that, it's trivial to pull the content out.

If that sounds useful to you, let me know, I can probably open-source it.

larrywright2• 16 years ago

I'd be interested in that.

cbryan• 16 years ago

Seconded, I'd love to see this as a library. GitHub it maybe?

AnneTheAgile• 16 years ago

Thirded :).

goodness• 16 years ago

I did something similar in Java, though it was for a company so I can't open source it. FYI, I noticed that the script changed drastically between (roughly) December and January. The new script works a lot more reliably in my experience. It now has a multi-pass algorithm that relaxes various criteria if it can't find anything with the strictest settings. It also looks for content DOM nodes and assigns points to parent and grandparent DOM nodes. It used to only assign points to the parent, which would give the wrong results in some cases.

In any case, I was just thinking that I would really like to get a python library that does the readability thing for a personal Google App Engine project I have in mind. If anyone knows of anything, I'd love to save some time. Otherwise, I'll probably start from Beautiful Soup and try porting readability on top.

Your Ruby code might also be useful if you end up open-sourcing it.

Concours• 16 years ago

I second you on this , will love a python port of it for GAE.

greyman• 16 years ago

I use this as well, but I wish someone would do a chrome extension which allows to apply Readability without needed additional click (for example they could display a tiny clickable icon behind every link, which will open the article in Readability mode).

Question: Don't you know if Readability can be used programmatically? I would like to have a script, which would automatically save a Readabilite'd version of a web page.

MHordecki2• 16 years ago

IMHO it would be pretty burdensome to have an additional element after every link, but the aesthetics probably depend on how often you're using Readability.

As of your question, you can inject <script> tags pointing to Readability into the DOM. If you want to do it without the browser, WebKit is your friend.

steveklabnik• 16 years ago

You can bind the bookmarklet to a keyword, as someone suggests above. Then you can just "control-l read enter" and it'll apply it.

larrywright2• 16 years ago

Readability, as well as Instapaper's similar Instapaper Text bookmarklet(http://www.instapaper.com/extras), have made reading online so much better.

The thought of being able to use this on an iPad makes me tingly in all the right places.

evanrmurphy• 16 years ago

Most browsers let you control font size, and unless the site design is frozen with terrible margins, you can fix that by resizing the window. It still offers some help with the font and color scheme, but I guess I need to play with it more to understand the value.

brandnewlow• 16 years ago

Ah, the war against advertising-based business models rages on.

joshwa• 16 years ago

I'm trying to apply these usability lessons (based on my multiple-times-daily use of readability + instapaper) to my apps.

There's a lot to be said for clear, large, readable, high-contrast text, either where there's a big block of text, or a critical label used for skimming the layout of the page. If you want your users to be able to quickly find the element on a page that's important to them, give it a big fat text label.

I sometimes give advice to the web editor at a consumer magazine-- their body text is small, tightly spaced, and low contrast. As a result their average time-on-page and bounce rates are quite depressing. Unfortunately, as is the case in many large orgs, making the content (remember, they are in the content business) more accessible to the site's visitors is not necessarily high on the larger organization's priority list (they seem to only be interested in pageviews, thus boosting their ad inventory so they can qualify for larger ad networks).

Estragon• 16 years ago

Strange things happen when you apply Readability to a Hacker News thread. Only a fraction of it shows up.

caffo• 16 years ago

A couple months ago I coded a server side version of the readability bookmarklet. I made it to be able to link to a page and have it converted by the script. http://cold-sunrise-39.heroku.com/

There's also a bookmarklet there so you can easily process urls.

tiredandempty• 16 years ago

Is the source code available on the web for the sinatra app?

Pistos2• 16 years ago

A similar little project I undertook recently: http://purepistos.net/thankful-eyes Still needs polish, but I use it often instead of browser zooming or Readability. Feedback or patches welcome.

vladocar• 16 years ago

I also love good reading on Internet. I use Readability and Readable. Here is Readable project: http://readable-app.appspot.com/setup.html?better_web_readab...

tectonic• 16 years ago

I recently contributed heavily to a Ruby port of Readability, online here: http://github.com/iterationlabs/ruby-readability

isleyaardvark• 16 years ago

I'm curious about when you would use a Ruby port of Readability.

Readability

Related Stories