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Readable: A more readable version of "readability"

readable.tastefulwords.com

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Re: Readable: A more readable version of "readability"

#31

Post by tastefulwords »

shiven wrote: post #30

I still don't get how/why is this different/better than the firefox readability extension? The commercialized readability was a step back from the bookmarklet, but this firefox extension seems to work as well if not better. Could someone more experienced please explain this to an ignoramus ... [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/readability/

Readable doesn't really want to be "better" than Readability. In all, they're actually very different beasts.

And I honestly don't consider Readability to be my competition. Readable first started because of my own desire to have text formatted a certain way, no matter what website that text happened to be on.

Unfortunately, Readability beat me to the launch by 2 weeks -- otherwise you would all now be talking about Readability as a version of Readable :)

The only reason I didn't kill Readable after that, was that it was different enough from Readability to diverse it's own shot -- plus, I love working on Readable's text-parsing algorithm; it's a very cool problem to solve.

P.S. The extension you pointed to is based on the first Readability bookmarklet -- and it's made by a guy who also made an extension based on the first version of Readable.

Re: Readable: A more readable version of "readability"

#32

Post by tastefulwords »

telemachos wrote: post #29
tastefulwords wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I browsed around for less then ten minutes, before deciding on Creative Commons for the code -- and I did so only because I previously saw source-code under various Creative Commons licenses. I did not know that it wasn't recommended; thanks for letting me know. I'll be sure to study the issue more thoroughly and re-license the code.

Open Source Licenses[1] is a good place to "shop" for licenses, though you might find the "by name" view a bit overwhelming. Maybe start with from the "Licenses that are popular and widely used or with strong communities" section on the "by category"[2] page. [1] http://www.opensource.org/licenses/index.html [2] http://www.opensource.org/licenses/category

Thank you.

Re: Readable: A more readable version of "readability"

#33

Post by tastefulwords »

Sephr wrote: post #27
beaumartinez wrote: post #18

A great improvement over Readability! It's bookmarklet has been replaced, at least on my bookmark bar: it's faster, has increased customization options and justification, and is open-source... Add hyphenation to that mix and you've got a solid ten out of ten service. (Justification and hyphenation were the two features I always wanted Readability to have, and it always seemed odd to me that something branded "readabi…

Why would you want justification in something that's supposed to make something more readable ? Justification might make text look nice, but it's terrible for readability, and people with dyslexia often struggle at reading it, and the same usually goes for hyphenation.

"Readable text" does not mean the same thing for everyone.

I look at it as the long tail of text formatting preferences; and I think it's everyone's right to have text look exactly the way they want -- no compromises. That's why Readable is so incredibly customizable.

So don't worry: justification is optional; and hyphenation will be too.

Re: Readable: A more readable version of "readability"

#34

Post by palish »

tastefulwords wrote: post #14
j_baker wrote: post #4

"Legally, Readable's source is under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license." Erm... Why? Correct me if I'm wrong, but Creative Commons wasn't made for code. There are plenty (even too many) open source licenses to choose from. Why not one of those? EDIT: Yup, using cc for source code is not recommended: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ#Can_I_use_a_Creative_Com...

Honestly, I browsed around for less then ten minutes, before deciding on Creative Commons for the code -- and I did so only because I previously saw source-code under various Creative Commons licenses. I did not know that it wasn't recommended; thanks for letting me know. I'll be sure to study the issue more thoroughly and re-license the code.

Why not release it under the MIT license?

http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php

Re: Readable: A more readable version of "readability"

#35

Post by Sephr »

tastefulwords wrote: post #19

I'm Readable's author. If anyone has any suggestions for improvements, or even feature requests, I'm all ears. I'm not promising I'll implement them; but I'll definitely listen and consider them carefully. P.S. jbm, thanks a lot for posting this -- I've tried posting Readable to HC myself (twice), but it didn't stick.

Why do you strip quotes? Specifically, you're doing:

    blockquote, q {
        quotes: "" "";
    }
and

    blockquote::before, blockquote::after, q::before, q::after {
        content: "";
    }
You'd be better off completely removing this to begin with, as even if you did specify the quotes (which should only be on , not
, and it makes no sense to include
in that rule anyways), you would have to re-define the quotes for every single language (q:lang(...)).

If this wasn't intentional, you should really pay attention to what your CSS reset does and make sure to explicitly define everything it resets.

Re: Readable: A more readable version of "readability"

#36

Post by tastefulwords »

Sephr wrote: post #35
tastefulwords wrote: post #19

I'm Readable's author. If anyone has any suggestions for improvements, or even feature requests, I'm all ears. I'm not promising I'll implement them; but I'll definitely listen and consider them carefully. P.S. jbm, thanks a lot for posting this -- I've tried posting Readable to HC myself (twice), but it didn't stick.

Why do you strip quotes? Specifically, you're doing: blockquote, q { quotes: "" ""; } and blockquote::before, blockquote::after, q::before, q::after { content: ""; } You'd be better off completely removing this to begin with, as even if you did specify the quotes (which should only be on , not , and it makes no sense to include in that rule anyways), you would have to re-define the quotes for every single language (q…

This is a bug; thanks for catching it. It will be corrected.

As for the intentionality of that CSS rule: it was intentional -- but some time ago; when quotes were redefined in another part of the CSS.

Blockquotes are included because some browsers quote the content of that element too; don't ask which browsers though, as I honestly don't remember -- but older versions of one browser or another definitely did this.

Re: Readable: A more readable version of "readability"

#37

Post by tastefulwords »

palish wrote: post #34
tastefulwords wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I browsed around for less then ten minutes, before deciding on Creative Commons for the code -- and I did so only because I previously saw source-code under various Creative Commons licenses. I did not know that it wasn't recommended; thanks for letting me know. I'll be sure to study the issue more thoroughly and re-license the code.

Why not release it under the MIT license? http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php

As soon as I get a few free minutes, I promise I'll look over licenses more carefully and re-release the code.

In case anyone is interested in using the source code right this second, just come back to the site tomorrow and you'll find the new license explicitly stated.

If you have any cool ideas for what to do with the code, let me know -- I like hearing cool ideas.

Re: Readable: A more readable version of "readability"

#38

Post by tastefulwords »

beaumartinez wrote: post #18

A great improvement over Readability! It's bookmarklet has been replaced, at least on my bookmark bar: it's faster, has increased customization options and justification, and is open-source... Add hyphenation to that mix and you've got a solid ten out of ten service. (Justification and hyphenation were the two features I always wanted Readability to have, and it always seemed odd to me that something branded "readabi…

As for the license the code is under, I say "Yes and no" and detail them both. The "no" part address the fact that Readable's code isn't (and probably won't be) in any public code repositories.

If you're interested in the code, though, you can find the bulk of it here: http://readable-static.tastefulwords.com/_r/bulk.js

And, yes, it is open source; currently under a variation of the Creative Commons License; but, as detailed further up in this thread, that'll probably change by tomorrow -- as, apparently, Creative Commons isn't recommended for source code.

Re: Readable: A more readable version of "readability"

#39

Post by arkitaip »

tastefulwords wrote: post #16
arkitaip wrote: post #8

It's nice that you can customize it because the default - serif - font isn't that readable, atleast not on win7+opera. Also, I think they need to update the default font families because calibri and other post Vista fonts are as commonly used as Arial & co.

If you have any suggestions, I'm very open to them. As a matter of fact, if you're up to it, you can design your very own theme -- I'll let you name it, and give you full credit. Or, if you just have a couple of quick suggestions, feel free to list them here, or get in touch ( http://readable.tastefulwords.com/about-and-contact/ ).

Design own theme? Sure, why not. How does this work?

Here's a bug report for you. Using Win7,32bit/Opera 11.10, the text field for specifying custom font families doesn't really show because the borders aren't visible. Screenshot http://i.imgur.com/gwb2O.jpg

Re: Readable: A more readable version of "readability"

#40

Post by tastefulwords »

arkitaip wrote: post #39
tastefulwords wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have any suggestions, I'm very open to them. As a matter of fact, if you're up to it, you can design your very own theme -- I'll let you name it, and give you full credit. Or, if you just have a couple of quick suggestions, feel free to list them here, or get in touch ( http://readable.tastefulwords.com/about-and-contact/ ).

Design own theme? Sure, why not. How does this work? Here's a bug report for you. Using Win7,32bit/Opera 11.10, the text field for specifying custom font families doesn't really show because the borders aren't visible. Screenshot http://i.imgur.com/gwb2O.jpg

Well, just customize Readable (http://readable.tastefulwords.com/?setup) to your heart's content. Then, get in touch, and send me the custom options you used.

If the theme is awesome, I'll add it to Readable's selection of themes (http://readable.tastefulwords.com/?setup#explain-style-theme...). Did you try those out, by the way?

If you know CSS, you can also heavily customize Readable via the "More CSS" option.

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