Today, Apple announced a new version of their flagship Web browser, Safari. Among the features highlighted is Safari Reader. In essence, the Reader feature transforms a Web page into a single “clutter free page.”
We couldn’t be more excited about the path Apple has taken. Our own Readability led the way by empowering users and hinting to content creators that the experience around Web content is poor and oftentimes painful.
For us, the most exciting aspect of the announcement is that content display is being addressed on the Web. While content packaged “apps” litter Apple’s own iTunes app store with the promise of a better reading experience, it’s great to see the Web get its due attention.
Content on the Web can be all the things we’re looking for: an enjoyable clutter-free reading experience coupled with the unmatched capacity to touch and share content that only the Web can deliver. We’re thrilled that Apple has taken Safari in this direction. We’d love to see the other leading browsers along with publishers and content creators continue to improve how Web-delivered content is displayed and consumed.
It’s high time we fixed the reading experience…right on the Web.
Update: We’ve since discovered that Safari’s “Reader” feature is, in fact, based upon our own Readability.
Nirmal Patel said:
It will be even more exciting if this feature gets into Mobile Safari.
Jim said:
Well said. The clutter on many popular sites is egregious (especially newspaper sites), yet people readily appreciate the clarity that comes with focusing on the text. For instance, today I introduced a colleague to Readability – and, being a voracious reader, he was immediately delighted.
Crispin said:
Yes this is a great step. I have enjoyed ‘Readability’ for what feels like a number of years now and to have it integrated into Safari seems long overdue.
I guess the alternative would be decent web design, but then good driving would be a good alternative to more roads here in New Zealand ….
Thanks for Readability.
Neil Hodgson said:
Since this will affect revenue streams (or at least it will be thought that it will) there is going to be a huge amount of push back on this. There will be a scramble to produce ‘reader breaking’ techniques (similar to frame breaking) and an arms race between sites and browsers. This hasn’t occurred in the past for Readability as it was only ever used by a small minority.
Prashant Vaibhav said:
I’ve been a Readability user for a while now, and appreciate that Safari now includes it natively!
I don’t know if you are aware, but Safari Reader is based on arc90 Readability itself. If you go to Help > Acknowledgements, the 2nd item acknowledges this -
“Arc90 ( Readability )
Copyright © Arc90 Inc. Readability is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.”
Neon_Tango said:
Just contemplating…I wonder what it says about me that I decided to read this particular book review using Readability — http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/books/review/Lehrer-t.html?nl=technology&emc=techupdateemb1
I’m a cybernaut of the first order, a sales and marketing biz whiz, social media are my Tinkertoys, I play Turkish rock loud enough to melt my Bose earphones, and am a 5-shots-of-espresso-on-ice junkie, yet, when it’s time to focus my attention on the work at hand or I want quiet time to read my daily devotionals, I count on Readability to clear out the visual noise and clutter.
I’m a Mac-er, and when the time comes to d/l Safari 5, I will. But I rather doubt anyone at Apple HQ thought beyond the Steve-way to build in the “little” touches you did. For example, I appreciate the ability to personalise the formatting and background to what I find soothing: I’m newspaper/medium/wide with a soft vanilla background, quiet footnotes instead of blinking hyperlinks. I like the simple, self-evident icons for Re-load, Print, and Email and the Email interface itself — plain, to the point, never fails, provides space for remarks to the recipient. In fact, the email is so prompt, I have occasionally used it to dash off a quick note to a colleague rather than using SMS, GoogleVoice, or Gmail.
So, whatever fallout develops from Safari Reader, count on me to keep my focus trained on Readability. To you folks who created it, my sincerest regards and gratitude. Huzzah for Plain Vanilla!
Patrick T said:
Readability was the first thing I thought of when I heard about Safari’s new ‘reader’ feature. I’m so glad it will get a wider appreciation through Apple’s adoption. As it is, Readability rocks; putting it into Safari will only make it better.
Jaime Iniesta said:
Thank you guys for having created readability, it was a great idea to make our life simpler. It’s great to see now major browsers incorporating your technology.
Thanks!
Scott Schwartz said:
Imitation (or leveraging your open source) is the sincerest form of flattery. :)
Barry Levine said:
Readability does, indeed, work fine in Mobile Safari on my iPad; however, you’ll need to use another browser to actually copy the javascript as Safari won’t let you do this. I used Atomic Lite to set up the parameters and then held my finger down on the “Readability” button until the “Copy” choice came up. I then switched over to Safari, created a bookmark (of any page), and finally edited that bookmark to paste in the javascript and change the name of the bookmark to “Readability”.
Thank you for providing such a useful tool. I’m using it on my iPad and my iMac (in both Safari and Firefox).
Phil said:
Sweet job, guys. Thanks.
alangenh said:
I like that Apple is also trying to glue together multi-page articles.
One feature I’d like to see is the inclusion of the url at the bottom of the page. I often use Readability to print, and while I don’t want a footer on every page (which the browser print preferences can provide), I do wish I wouldn’t lose the original url in the pdf file or printout.
Peter said:
I wouldn’t be without Readability … You know, I had thought this was another case of Apple being inspired by someone else’s good idea .. (remember Windowshade in System 9? … and other examples). – P_
KT said:
Great idea for Readability!
As @AlanGenh mentioned, I like the stitching of multi-page articles. I’m using your Readability button in Opera v10.60 alpha 4, and works great…except for the lack of multi-page formatting.
Hope you can add that enhancement soon. ;)
FP said:
Thanks a lot for creating Readability! I’m using it almost everyday.
One question: is it possible to add the functionality of automatically loading more than one page just like what Safari 5 does now? It’s very useful for websites that split a story into multiple pages and require users to click on “next” multiple times.
Thanks again!
harvey said:
Yeah! Safari 5 have a great feature automatically loadingmultiple page!
I wish readability will support it soon.Thank you for your great work!
Ed Marshall said:
Multi-page stitching is definitely a boon; I have to admit, Safari’s take on Readability is shockingly good.
Tan The Man said:
Kudos.
aleemb said:
I am really happy about this. I discovered Readability only a few weeks ago and since then I have been fascinated by how well it works and how clean and readable the code is.
Readability could easily be made extensible if it accepted a literal object with custom regex/rules. It would be good step toward community outsourcing.
tb said:
Speaking of readability, how come when I scroll to the right on this web site it’s just all black and unreadable?
gigabook said:
great readability！
Laurent said:
feature request: could you make comments readable too?
Many commenting platforms (e.g. disqus) add lots of icons, time, and other elements that distract me from reading and easily browsing the comments.
It’d be nice to have a paging metaphor for navigating comments: I could quickly scan by mousing my mouse cursor from left to right on a slider.
Each comment would appear at the same location, making it easier to quickly scan all of them.
Ralph Dratman said:
Readability is a great thought completed by a great design. Thank you arc90.
Jesse Joseph said:
First time I have heard about “Readability”. When will Apple 5 be available? And, at what cost? Thank you.
Neil Murphy said:
Readability makes we reading a pleasure instead of a chore. Amazing bit of code