The Revenge Of The Readers
This intriguing title in my Netvibes reader yesterday, alerted me to what has got to be one of the best web tools ever: Readability. This is ” a simple tool that makes reading on the web more enjoyable by removing the clutter around what you are reading”. It’s simple to install you just choose your settings – I’ve chosen e-book (which gives a slightly off-white background and sans-serif font) , medium size and medium margin. You can watch the changes in real-time on the first page of Metamorphasis. Once you’ve chosen your settings drag the bookmarklet to your browser toolbar and this:

becomes this:

Now you’ll notice, in the first screenshot that I already block Flash and advertising and animations – this is because I use Camino which allows you to block all that stuff. But if I’m trying to read a long document, this little bookmarklet will come in awful handy.

I haven’t done extensive testing on browsers and platforms but a PC using friend to whom I sent the link yesterday had this to say:

When I tried to drag it to the short cuts in IE7 it did not work. When I did the same in Firefox, I have a script blocker that got in the way, but I think I have fixed that. Took some fiddling to figure out that I needed to get the settings I wanted and THEN put the shortcut on the toolbar.

What a treat for my ancient eyes!