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Readability - Uncluter what you're reading

lab.arc90.com

11–20 of 24 posts

Re: Readability - Uncluter what you're reading

#13
post #2

I absolutely love reability. Not only does it remove distracting ads and styling but it allows me to decrease the number of words per line which is great for improving my speed reading.

I totally agree. I love the beauty of your blog, folks, but when I actually want to read your blog, I use readability. I wish there was a way to track the use of readability on a site actually. Would be good feedback for web designers.

If you embed a readability button you could adjust it to capture those metrics for you.

Re: Readability - Uncluter what you're reading

#17
post #2

I absolutely love reability. Not only does it remove distracting ads and styling but it allows me to decrease the number of words per line which is great for improving my speed reading.

Agreed re: words per line, but removing ads is wrong. If you don't like ads (excluding offensive or animated ones), don't visit sites that make their money from them.

Re: Readability - Uncluter what you're reading

#18

Can pg or someone put a link to this in the header? It seems to be reposted every two weeks or so. (It is awesome, though)

pg only links nepotistically in HN, with the one exception of that CO2stats web bug bullshit that he pays for without having invested in (which frequently times out and blocks the page rendering).

pg is constitutionally incapable of not pushing the products of YC companies, no matter how incompetent they are. Witness the link to the abjectly useless webmynd firefox plugin in the footer, and his absolute refusal to publicly acknowledge the existence of the amazing http://searchyc.com

We're mostly assholes here, and fittingly pg is the biggest of all by far. I could see him blacklisting readability, and for once I'd actually support him in his capriciousness -- people constantly karma whoring links to it in every thread are really damn annoying.

Re: Readability - Uncluter what you're reading

#19
I built a little hobby poetry editor on Heroku in my spare time and I was really concerned that, although I have no ads or anything, the poems were hard to focus on with everything going on around them. So, I made a little button called "Reading Mode" that hides every element on the page except the poem text and a button to return to full mode.

I think it definitely improves things--at least for the types of people who actually read poetry. Would love to see this approach on a lot more sites. I'm sure there are great examples out there.

Here's the URL: http://poetry.heroku.com

EDIT: Heroku currently has a DB issue, which they're working on. Link still down, but hopefully up soon.

Re: Readability - Uncluter what you're reading

#20
post #4

I wonder if you can add a "Readability Button" (instead of Print button) to your site, so that if people wants a nicely formatted version to read they can just click a button. Should be easy? I have to look in to it.

Overall, I think it's a good idea, but presents a bit of a paradox. If you're someone who cares about the readability of your site, you'd probably already have a pretty easily read site/font/layout.

"Shouldn't we all be using the same CSS?"
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