Published by marco on
If you spend any amount of time reading online, you know how difficult it sometimes is to get the text into a format that makes for comfortable reading. All the more so for those doing their reading on portable devices. Web sites have several tools at their disposal to ease both online reading and printing:
Though many sites offer one or more of these fine, paper- and eye-saving tools, many do not. To the rescue ride the following two tools:
As an example, here’s a simply atrociously formatted page from the New Scientist[2]; as you can see, the left margin is non-existent and half the page is consumed by advertising and headers that are distracting for online reading and waste paper when printed.
The screenshot below is of the page above in the PrintWhatYouLike interface after a few clicks have isolated the content, widened it and removed some unwanted text. With the “remove” button, you can also easily zap advertising that is embedded in the text of the article itself. It’s actually kind of fun to re-shape the page to your liking.
The screenshot below is of the page above after having pressed the magic Readability bookmarklet. Without any user input other than your having set your initial preferences for style, font-size and margins when creating the bookmark, Readability automatically creates this wonderfully legible version of the page that is eminently easy on the eyes.
I’ve found that I use both tools; I generally try Readability for online reading, but use PrintWhatYouLike for a smaller font when printing. Readability doesn’t always work, though it often does a good-enough job; you may have noticed that the author’s name was dropped in the example above, though that hardly seems important for reading. A simple refresh of the page restores it to the original version. Readability works with a single button-click, which is great but not fun; PrintWhatYouLike requires much more interaction, but is kind of fun. Both tools belong in your arsenal against unfriendly formatting online.