Readability

Thursday, Dec 30, 2010

Clear away secondary content for an easier online read.

Call-outs, promos, touts, and streaming sidebars help make Web pages relevant. But, in the end, they’re often secondary to what you really care about. When you just want to settle down for a nice long online read, wouldn’t it be great to sweep everything else aside and focus on your article? Sure thing. That’s just what Readability is there for.

After install, get started with the Readability icon in the far right of the browser. Left click to activate it for the page you’re currently viewing:

Right click to see options:

Here’s what a page looks like before Readability:

And here’s what it looks like with Readability:

You can e-mail or print the article, and it’s easy to go back to your standard view:

Take a deep breath and settle in for an enjoyable online read with Readability.

Post from Elise Allen, who has consulted on Mozilla Engagement projects since 2007. See all posts by Elise Allen.

5 comments

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  1. Matt Sayler

    Sadly, not compatible with 4.0bX

    December 30th, 2010 at 11:24 am

    Reply

    1. Elise Allen

      Hi Matt

      Thanks for reading Rock Your Firefox and using add-ons! Like I was saying to Alfred, all the add-ons we review on Rock Your Firefox work in the current version of Firefox — 3.6. Firefox 4.0 is still in beta, so not all add-ons have updated yet. But I hear you guys!

      Elise

      January 3rd, 2011 at 12:22 pm

      Reply

  2. Alfred Kayser

    Readability is indeed a very nice extensions, but I think with FF 4.0 real soon now, the focus of reviewing extensions (and themes!) should move to those that actually support FF4.0 (or at least a beta of it).

    December 31st, 2010 at 12:32 am

    Reply

    1. Elise Allen

      Hi Alfred,

      Thanks for reading Rock Your Firefox and using add-ons! All the add-ons we review on Rock Your Firefox work in the current version of Firefox — 3.6. Because Firefox 4 is still in beta, not all users, particularly the non-tech crowd, have adopted it. And many add-ons won’t update until after the beta stage. Rock Your Firefox will always review add-ons that work with the current version of Firefox, so when 4.0 releases, we’ll keep current.

      Best,
      Elise

      January 3rd, 2011 at 12:20 pm

      Reply

  3. Sean

    I prefer to use the bookmarklet instead of an extension just to activate the Readability feature.

    here is the code for the bookmarklet:

    javascript:(function(){readConvertLinksToFootnotes=false;readStyle=’style-newspaper’;readSize=’size-medium’;readMargin=’margin-wide’;_readability_script=document.createElement(‘script’);_readability_script.type=’text/javascript’;_readability_script.src=’http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/js/readability.js?x=’+(Math.random());document.documentElement.appendChild(_readability_script);_readability_css=document.createElement(‘link’);_readability_css.rel=’stylesheet’;_readability_css.href=’http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/css/readability.css’;_readability_css.type=’text/css’;_readability_css.media=’all’;document.documentElement.appendChild(_readability_css);_readability_print_css=document.createElement(‘link’);_readability_print_css.rel=’stylesheet’;_readability_print_css.href=’http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/css/readability-print.css’;_readability_print_css.media=’print’;_readability_print_css.type=’text/css’;document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)[0].appendChild(_readability_print_css);})();

    January 25th, 2011 at 1:42 am

    Reply

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