Format Content Online to Look Like an eReader

Give your eyes a break by re-formatting online content into the simple format used by eReaders like the Kindle. Save a bookmarklet like Readability to your browser (drag and drop the link into your browser's bookmarks, and click on Readability when you are reading a page you want to reformat. Before you save the bookmarklet to your browser, you can customize how Readability reformats the text. You can select extra-large font if you wish, change the margins, and select the background color (newspaper style produces a white background, novel style a tan background, eBook a gray background, and terminal produces a dark green background with lighter font). Get Readability here. Another bookmarklet, Readable does the same thing.

There are a couple of drawbacks. One, Readability deletes the pictures in the article--not always a good thing--but you can reformat a slideshow with Readability and retain the pictures. Two, Readability doesn't always work on a page (but sometimes Readability or Readable will work, but not both). And three,  readability deletes the comments at the bottom of an article or blog post--again, not always a good thing.

Hat tip to David Pogue's Cleaning Up the Clutter Online post. -- Guest blog post by Iantha Haight, Cornell Law Library.

Editor's Note. Guest blog posts are always welcomed on LLB. Just email Mark or me your copy in the body of an email and we're reply back with a note saying when it will be published. Sure we reserve the right not to publish something, but we'll be happy to work with you if we do and if you want to offer a re-write for publication. Our emails are available in the left sidebar of the blog. [JH]