TidyRead (online resource)
March 17, 2009 by Paul Hamilton
Last week, I wrote about Readability, an application that effectively removes the clutter from web pages that can be so distracting for readers. I’m still enthusiastic about Readability, but thanks to a comment on my post about it, I’ve discovered an alternative that seems even better in some ways.
TidyRead is an application that strips distracting clutter from web pages so that readers can focus on the primary content. At the same time, TidyRead makes it easy to adjust the style, font size, and margins. These adjustments can be made right on the re-formatted web page. There is also a button that switches you back to the original page format.
Just like Readability, TidyRead is accessed via a bookmarklet that is very easily added to the web browser’s bookmark toolbar. Once this bookmarklet is installed, TinyRead is available to re-format any web page you may be visiting.
In Firefox, you simply drag the bookmarklet from the TinyRead site and drop it on the bookmark toolbar. (It can only be dropped on the bookmark toolbar, so it is critical that this toolbar be open!) The TidyRead site provides clear instructions for the variations on this process with the other major browsers.
Here’s what this blog post looks like when reformatted by TidyRead.
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Thanks Paul.
Paul,
Good find. I agree with you about the ability to customize the size of the font and margins directly on each page. But what was interesting was the comparison of the visual presentation between the two programs. I compared Readability and Tidy Read using the federal government site that detailed how federal stimulus money can be used on “high-quality AT” and professional development and much preferred the way Readability presented the text.
It’s probably great to offer both options as different URLs will present differently.
(here’s the site if you are interesting, but being in Vancouver, this does not affect you – http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/leg/recovery/factsheet/idea.html)
Great. Finally got one work for FireFox!
I’m also using CleanPage. Comparing the three, I like CleanPage best. It’s much more powerful, but it only has IE version.
http://www.ieaddons.com/en/search/?search=cleanpage