Readability
Readability is a simple tool that makes reading on the Web more enjoyable by removing the clutter around what you are reading.
80 Responses to “Readability”
Readability is a simple tool that makes reading on the Web more enjoyable by removing the clutter around what you are reading.
Readability add-on does not work with No Script unless I allow the main site for the page (not really necessary to view most sites). The Readability bookmark does work with NS most of the time you just need to allow arc90.com. Can you fix?
I really like the Readability app.
Hi Paul,
Thanks for the bug report. I will look into the issue and will create a workaround for the problem if possible.
I really love the Readability concept; I successfully installed it as a bookmarklet, and then downloaded the Readability add-on in hopes that it might provide some sort of keyboard shortcut. Is there any chance you could add a keyboard shortcut to your add-on? (There doesn’t seem to be any way to assign a keyboard shortcut to a bookmarklet in Firefox, unfortunately.) Still, a nice add-on — thanks!
Hi Darin,
Next version will add a shortcut support for the add-on.
Hi,
Great little addon – thanks.
One problem for me: none of the settings for Style, Size and Margin are remembered after restarting Firefox. Should they be?
I’m using 0.4 with FF3.6b5.
Hi David,
Currently that feature is missing. Next versions will bundle that functionality.
Hi Baris,
That’s great. Thanks.
Happy new year!
I see you added keyboard support for Readability as promised in 0.4, though it took a bit of hunting to find it! (Option+Command+R for those who are wondering
Thanks!
Hi Darin,
Thanks for the tip. I added it to the How to Use Guide page for Mac users.
I just installed the newest readability and I can’t find the “R” icon for my toolbar in the “Customize” toolbar area. I have this icon on the Firefox on my desktop, but not the Firefox on my pc windows laptop.
Hello Ailien,
First time someone is reporting such a problem. Maybe one of the other add-on or theme you use is causing problem. Disable them and re-check.
One of the current annoyances for me is that I tend to close all of my tabs when I’m done with them. It leaves Firefox (or, in my case, Minefield) running, but with no open windows. Unfortunately, this appears to also reset the current instance of Readability, which means that the preferences I set during this session (font size and margin width) disappear, even though I haven’t actually shut down the application. Between this and Minefield’s frequent crashes, it leaves me having to fix the Readability settings — a lot. A version of the add-on that saved its preferences would really make it much more enjoyable to use! (I’m working around it by refraining from my long-ingrained habit of not closing the last tab, but I still have to deal with crashes and nightly build updates.) Still, nice work, and it’s much appreciated!
Hi Darin,
Yes the settings are not saved currently. I have scheduled the setting save support for version 0.6.
This is a great program. I have only one issue with it. When I read forum or article with comments, it doesn’t show the comments. Very often comments are very important and I think it should show them. The same is with Facebook too.
A note: when I read forum which comments are paginated, if the main article is not on the page nothing is shown.
Hi Raicho,
Because forum topics (even the main article like first post) are composed of comments, it is not possible to distinguish them as content. Readability checks for the content not the comments.
Hooray — selections are now permanently saved in 0.6!
By the way, I’ve made one minor improvement to the Readability functionality. I’ve installed the add-on “Stylish” and then added the following rule:
@media print
{
#readTools, #readFooter { display:none ! important; }
a { text-decoration:none ! important; color:black ! important; }
}
When printing, this turns off the Readability “link tools” (which have no use when printing), plus the oddly ugly footer, and makes all links appear like any other text.
I don’t know if there would be some way to incorporate this into the Readability add-on itself, or if overriding the Arc90 stylesheets would be presumptuous. (I’ve prodded them about these issues on my own; maybe they’ll do something about them and this can be incorporated into a future release of the Readability add-on.)
As always, nice work, Baris!
Update to my previous Stylish stylesheet for Readability; this helps it to play a bit nicer with non-Readability formatting by sticking #readOverlay in front of everything:
@media print
{
#readOverlay #readTools, #readOverlay #readFooter { display:none ! important; }
#readOverlay a { text-decoration:none ! important; color:black ! important; }
}
Hi Darin,
Thanks for the userstyles. Those userstyles can be added into addon but overriding footer may cause recognition problems with Arc90. The footer removal option should either be provided by Arc90 or Firefox users may try the Stylish method as you do.
Baris, I agree wholeheartedly that it would be ideal if Arc90 made suitable changes to their own stylesheets; it appears they’ve made some steps in that direction, which is a good sign. I have no problem giving credit where credit is due — such as the Arc90 footer — but their print media CSS rules are obviously just an afterthought thus far. Thankfully there are other extensions such as Stylish that can correct these shortcomings!
Hi Baris,
One small issue I have with Readability is the very large jump in font size between ‘Small’ and ‘Medium’. ‘Small’ is very small and ‘Medium’ is large.
Would it be possible to either fix this within your addon? Or offer an ‘Extra Small’ which is the same as current ‘Small’ and then create a new ‘Small’ which is somewhere in between current ‘Small’ and ‘Medium’?
Thanks.
Hi DavidC,
Sorry for the late response. Good idea. But actually you should send this kind of functionality feature requests to Arc90 by opening a new issue at:
—
http://code.google.com/p/arc90labs-readability/issues/list
> …you should send this kind of functionality feature requests to Arc90 by opening a new issue…
Thanks, Baris – I wasn’t sure if you were coding this in the addon.
I see someone has already made this request: http://code.google.com/p/arc90labs-readability/issues/detail?id=42
I’ll add a comment to that.
Thank you!
Hi again. Different problem.
I need to click the Reability icon twice to make the font-family change for this page: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/jan/27/james-delingpole-climate-change-denial
The problem is not present when I use the Readability bookmark.
Hi David,
From my experiments both the Add-on and Bookmarklet changed the font-family property at second trial. I think that page has internal problems that is slowing down the Readability script. Also style cascading may cause the problem. You may issue the page for Arc90.
Hi Baris,
Thanks for the reply. You’re right – it is happening with both bookmark and addon – not sure why I saw a different result yesterday.
I’ll report to Arc90.
Thanks.
David.
Yet another request: Right now, the Readability bookmarklet provides a way to restore the original page — by blindly reloading the original page. If my understanding of the Readability script is correct, all the original underlying HTML is still there, it’s just been modified by adding some additional CSS to the DOM. (Correct me if I’m wrong.)
Now, switching into Readability mode is -really- fast using Option+Cmd+R, but switching back to the original page is rather slow since it involves dumbly reloading the page.
Is there some way your Readability add-on could “undo” the Readability mode either by stripping the added CSS from the DOM or — probably simpler — caching a copy of the original DOM, and then restoring it when backing out of Readability mode? (Readability could use a pointer to this cached copy to know whether it’s in Readability mode or not; if there’s a cached copy of the DOM available, restore it when the user clicks Readability again. Basically, making the Readability button and its keyboard equivalent work like a toggle.)
Is this something that would be easy for you to address, or is this something that should be handled by the folks at Arc90?
Hi Darin,
This is Readability script related functionality. So it should be handled by Arc90 team. You can send a request to:
http://code.google.com/p/arc90labs-readability/issues/list
I’ve been using the Readability bookmarklet ever since it was introduced, but its adaptation as an extension is far better, more styles, faster. Beautiful achievement. My eyes ans myself are grateful
LOVE this. This is an ADHD DREAM!!!
Great add. I’m a Mac person, too, and have a menubar app called isolator that I really like which is like darkening anything except the focus window, kind of like hulu’s dim light feature. This is better though because it doesn’t feel like turning out all the lights, just putting on noise-canceling headphones! 
The following is a request for enhancement.
Some articles contain tables, which sometimes make the bulk of the article. Here is an exemple: http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/notepad-plus/index.php?title=IdeaTorrent_Summa . Using Readability v0.7 and Firefox v3.5.7, the text outside tables is properly displayed, buut nothing in the tables is. Please consider adding text table contents in text rendered by Readability.
An otherwise excellent, useful tool by the way.
CChrisry
Please make the keyboard shortcuts user configurable. I use the Ctl-Alt combinations for program hot keys and that overrides the use of Ctl-Alt-R for Readability.
Hi Ned,
That functionality will be added in future versions of the add-on.
Ok, thanks. I can use the status bar icon for now.
Sorry, noob question. How do you activate it from javascript? I tried the command “Readability.enableREADABILITY(event);” but it doesn’t work. I need the command so I can stick it in firegestures.
Thanks.
Hi,
Give a try this:
Readability.enableREADABILITY({button:0,target:{id:”readability-statusbar-icon”,nodeName:”radio”}})
hmm not working…
I think it needs to be something that can work in the address bar, like try “javascript: alert(0);”
Hey,
Readability executes the browser based code. If you use the address bar, the code is executed by web page. The web pages can not have privilege to access browser based code. So you can not run the suggested code in address bar because it wont work.
I did not tried the firegestures but if it uses the web page javascript codes then you will not get an opportunity to run the Readability by mouse.
Yeah.. I asked one of the devs on IRC & he said ‘you register the extension as a component and use the Components.classes to get a reference to it’
If you know how to do it I’d appreciate a patch ^^ but if not, i’ll look into it & maybe submit some code later.
Hi Baris,
Feature request: facility to add list of URLs that are automatically made ‘readability’ – with some method of removing the readability formatting if needed.
Hi David,
Thanks for suggestion. It is in the roadmap.
[...] Redeability es una aplicación sencilla de instalar (para aquellos que navegamos con Firefox), que elimina con un simple pinchazo sobre su icono todas las adherencias indeseables, mostrando el texto de manera escueta, a lo sumo con alguna imagen que lo ilustre, en una composición no excesivamente agracida, pero exenta de distracciones y más cercana a lo que Nielsen piensa que debe ser la usabilidad en la web. [...]
Readability is really great add-on.
Little error I have noticed – it doesn’t include the readability-print.css file into page header. And I have found out why:
In file readability.js you have that section, where the css files are appended into page, but var c (that print.css) is not appended – instead var b is appended twice.
Can you fix that?
Hello JanJ,
Great catch! I will definitely fix the problem for next version.
On my currently nightly build of Minefield (aka, Firefox Next) I can cause the browser to freak out (at least on the Mac) by hitting Cmd+Option+R twice really fast in succession — it goes into an endless loop of formatting. Very entertaining. I don’t know if this is a general problem of it’s specific to my particular setup, but you may want to test it on your system.
Hi Baris,
Left click does not work for Readability with https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1530 installed on 3.7 nightly.
Hello David,
I am looking into this problem.
Is it possible to change the shortcuts? Crtl+Shift+A is already used bei BriefRSS…
I am legally blind and trying to find Add-Ons that would make my internet business more “functional.”
Does Readability provide the benefits and support for the visually impaired?
Thanks!
Rev. Robert Anthony
Orlando, FL
Hello Robert,
Some visually impaired users find Readability tool as very useful. It strips out the unnecessary sections from a web page and leaves only the content section for better readability purposes.
Readability is recommended officially by Access Firefox, which is specially serve accessibility tools and tips.
http://www.accessfirefox.org/Readability.php
Give a try using the Readability.
Really like this add-on. I do have one wish… it would be nice if the same action (keystroke or menu button click) to turn Reader on or off. It feels clunky to do a different keystroke for each.
If reader on, click = off
If reader off, click = on
Thanks
This looks great, just concerned about privacy, I have looked at the arc90.com site and couldn’t see any information.
What is your take on this?
Oh and any privacy implications with using the add-on?
Cheers.
Hi SilverWave,
There is no privacy concern about the add-on. All information and functionality stays on the user computer.
Although not clearly stated on Arc90, I am in contact with the team.
Hello Baris,
I love this extention, but there are some features I missed:
- Twitter/Facebook integration (I don’t like Facebook, but for the others…)
- Picture view + zoom function
- export as PDF
- more ways to change the style (Fonts, backgrounds, colors)
- notes and user changes like underline, bold and italic (not changing the complete text)
- RSS button
I hope you will think about this ideas and add them to the next version. Thank you for this cool and smart add-on.
Dennis
Thanks for the addon
I’ve tried the same web page as in Apple Ad for Safari Reader (http://www.apple.com/safari/whats-new.html#reader) : http://www.spin.com/articles/qa-ok-gos-damian-kulash
but unlike Safari ad, the photo vanished
One thing I’d really like to see an option for disabling the status bar icon (I have too many of these as it is
).
As a NoScript user it would be nice if Readability could work even when JavaScript is disabled, if that’s possible somehow.
Other than these minor things this is a great extension and I’ll definitely be using it more than I did the bookmarklet.
I forgot two thinks:
At first it would be great to see Twitter pages through readability and to use it for YouTube videos only for the video and the description, maybe some comments. Hope to get some answers of you.
Again, thank you for this great application, Dennis
Hi Dennis,
Thanks for great suggestions. Some of them are already in the road map.
For Youtube and Twitter; Actually Readability is designed for readable content sections of the web pages. Because videos and twits (they are comment like sections) are non-readable contents Readability will not managing stripping down those web site pages properly. Readability checks for readable content sections in a web page. But if enough request is submitted we can add a functionality support for Youtube and Twitter, too.
what’s the relationship between this and the arc90 one (http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/) ?
Hello Louis,
The add-on is forked from Arc90 bookmarklet.
The Readability Addon doesn’t seem to work with some sites (e.g. NYTimes) yet the original Bookmarklet does. Can anyone else reproduce this problem? I have NoScript installed but both nytimes.com and arc90 are allowed in the whitelist.
Hi, I’m using readability since some times now and I’m loving it !
I was wondering if you’re considering porting that addon on Thunderbird. It’d be great to be able to read some long mail nicely formated like Readability does in Firefox.
@ Baris Derin : any idea about my former comment ?
In addition, regarding usability, i don’t think that the “reload” icon is a good metaphor for “desactivate Readibilty and go back to the ‘real’ page”.
To me Readability acts like a “print preview” functionality which means that the page i see through Readibility is not the same than the ‘real’ page therefore Reload is not logic to me.
User is used to “close” when using “print preview”. I think that having “go back” or “close” rather that “reload” would be more logical from a user point of view ?
Hello antistress,
So sorry, I missed your comment to give a reply.
Readability works at 95% accuracy rate. Now and then strange things occur like you described. Readability does its best to strip down the web page as accurately as possible and only tries to leave the necessary content section including the images.
But lets notice that many pages on the web are not well coded and contains many flaws. However, Readability process actually depends also on the web page very much. If the web page is created properly then Readability does its job on her side as perfectly. If the web page contains problems then stripping down of Readability will contain problems, too. In short, the problem generally relates to the web page not the Readability.
I am aware that most people do not like the Reload button logic. In future I may change the button to a more logical one.
Feature Request: Since lots of web pages are poor coded and make Readability unable to extract content properly. Why not let us to select the content that we need to read. Just like READABLE does.
I really believe this feature will enhance Readability much. Looking forward to your reply.
Hello hiforrest,
Sure. It is in the roadmap.
Unable to get Firefox to add Readability. Works fine in Chrome. Great add on. Thanks for making it.
Hi Baris,
Thanks for 0.9 – the custom font size is great.
P.S. I notice that there is a ‘Thumbs.db’ file in the chrome/content/style and chrome/skins/classic folders. I guess this is not needed.
Hi David,
Glad you liked it.
Yes Thumbs.db files are unnecessary. I forgot to delete them.
Spectacular Add-on!!!
Readability just made my on-line news reading much more pleasurable!
Thank you.
Readability is great! Thanks!
I noticed one issue that I often have: some pages are on multiple pages (i.e., there is “Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | Next” at the bottom, like in this article http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/21/verity_stob_roomba/). It would be really nice if there was a way to either navigate to the next page directly from Readability (to keep the next/prev. page links) or even to pre-fetch the complete article. Right now I have to go to the original article, scroll to the bottom, go to the next page and re-launch Readability.
But even with this limitation, it is a great tool. Thanks!
Hello Alex,
Thanks for the suggestion. Such a functionality is in the roadmap and will be available in future versions of the add-on.
Really love readability.
Id suggest some features to make it even better:
– custom selector to choose what is the main text (e.g. ‘#text’) so sites where the text is not found can be added by hand
– show the original page when i am inside readability and press the readability icon/shortcut again
– try to find the “Next”/”->” link on the page and add it to readability(possibly prefetch the content and append it)
Baris, it seems that settings are no longer remembered with the latest nightly builds.
Love the plugin, would like to echo the requesets above about showing page numbers.
Additionally, would it be possible to add the “Convert hyperlinks to footnotes” feature that was recently introduced in the original readability bookmarket?
Thanks for the great work!
Darin,
Thanks for the report. Firefox 3.7 has been changed majorly recently and some components need to be updated. Hope to fix it next version.
Hi,
If you like and it is possible I would translate Firefox Reader and Readability into German. Just mail me.
FYI, the Athelas, eBook and Inverse options all seem to be using the same sans-serif font in the Firefox nightlies (aka, Minefield). I know that in the past the Athelas theme was using a rather attractive and readable serif font.
Hi Darin, Right click menu is not rendering properly (becomes invisible) with certain type of Personas viz. have a fox dream (http://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/persona/230639).
Hi Himannshu,
Thanks for the report but it is actually a bug of Personas. You should send the bug report to either Personas skin author or to the Personas development team.
Hi Darin,
Thanks for reply. Plz guide me how do I do that.