Evernote Clearly

A great new tool has just been published by Evernote for use (at present) with the Google Chrome browser only. You do not need an Evernote account to use it. 

What it does is to remove all the clutter from articles on the internet and present them in a reader-friendly format. 

For instance here are the instructions for SuperFocus in Clearly format, followed by the normal view. Click on the images to see full size:

Get Evernote Clearly from the Chrome Store (Make sure you are using Google Chrome when you do so)

Comments

[Bogdan]

Thank you, I'll try it out! Any other extensions you're using?

[Mark Forster]

Just the Evernote Web Clipper itself, for which of course you do need an Evernote account.

[therevisionguy]

There's something similar on the Kindle's web browser called 'article mode' (I think). Unfortunately the browser isn't very usable.

[acedia]

There is an app called Readability which does the same thing for Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, or Chrome. I have been using it for a while now and find it very helpful, especially as so many websites seem to be getting more and more cluttered!

http://www.readability.com/

An interesting blog article about Readability, which explains it better than I can:

http://aphasiacorner.com/blog/computer-tips/reducing-clutter-on-websites-101

Recommended!

acedia xx

[Mark Forster]

therevisionguy:

Yes, article mode on the Kindle does something similar, but as you say the browser on Kindle is hardly usable anyway.

acedia:

I had a look at the video and Readability looks very similar in result. I see it's also got a "Read Later" button which would be useful. With either program you could just clip it to Evernote for reading later.

[bryane]

There's a firefox extension called aardvark which allows you to remove what you don't want (or keep only what you do) before saving a web page. It's not as automatic as you describe, but it works quite well.

In addition to chopping up the document tree, you can also force "black on white" and "remove all width limitations" to make for a much nicer hard copy (or capture, I guess)

[Stever Robbins]

And let us not forget that Safari has had this built in for quite some time. When you are viewing a page that Safari can figure out, the word "reader" appears in the URL field. Clicking that word then brings up just the page content without distractions. This works for Safari on the desktop and on iOS.

[Mark Forster]

Stever:

I almost never use Safari so hadn't picked this up. Coincidentally there was an update which I downloaded this morning, so I must go and have a look!

(Later) That's really quick and convenient, and you can add pages easily to a reading list at the same time. Nice!

[Mark Forster]

Just a thought but doesn't the proliferation of these devices tell us something about webpage design these days?

[Will]

Very nice indeed. And, as an added bonus, a reminder of Pixar on the button: what more could one ask for?

[acedia]

< Just a thought but doesn't the proliferation of these devices tell us something about webpage design these days? >

Yes! It's been very noticeable, especially this year - too much info, too many ads, too many distractions on the screen - I am not a minimalist by nature, but I wish website owners would think more about simplicity in design.

[Zane]

Instapaper is "A simple tool to save web pages for reading later" but has a bookmarklet that allows you to see a webpage real-time and uncluttered. Articles can be read later at your PC or on your iPhone, iPad, or Kindle.

Instapaper
http://www.instapaper.com/

[Mark Forster]

With a sigh of relief I've been able to leave Chrome and go back to my beloved Firefox, since Clearly is now available for it too.

[moises]

Mark,
Thanks for the information. I used to have a program to clean up my pages in Firefox, but every time Firefox would put out an update, my cleanup programs stopped working. I am looking forward to Clearly being updated regularly.

[David]

Shame it's not available on OneNote. I've used Evernote and OneNote and I find the latter significantly better for organisation than the former.