Safari Reader: A Welcome Addition to Apple’s Web Browser
Apple has released Safari 5, the latest version of their web browser, and the program has added a number of interesting new features. In addition to extensions – similar to Firefox add-ons, but none are currently available – it adds Safari Reader, a great way to read cluttered web pages in an uncluttered layout.
Load a web page in Safari such as this one (if you’re reading this page on the main page of my blog, click on its title to load the page on its own). In the Address Bar, you’ll see a gray Reader icon; click this, or press Command-Shift-R. A page will display above the actual web page with just the text and in-line graphics. This means that you won’t see ads (especially those annoying Flash ads), extraneous links (such as my navigation sidebar), or any other content that is not in the body of the article. In addition, if an article spans several pages, Safari will load all the pages to display a single-page version of the text.
You can move your cursor to the bottom of the window to see a small control bezel which lets you change the font size, smaller or larger, e-mail the content (this inserts what you see into an e-mail), or print out the article.
This is a wonderful addition to Safari, clearly inspired by Readability, but the multi-page presentation is a big improvement on the original. I’ll be using this regularly, as I much prefer reading without distraction.
I was just checking that too, and I was wondering the technology behind, because it doesn’t work on all sites, off course. When does Safari consider a web page to contain an article, precisely.
This feature is great. Reading a whole page without ads and distracting Flash documents is fabulous. I use Safari as my main browser (I have Chrome- too limited and an ugly UI; Firefox- okay speed and not Mac UI; Opera- my 2nd favorite as it is quick). I use Chrome only to access a web site that google has plug-ins that other browsers cannot access. Where is all that openness of Google? Safari has just jumped up a lot of points in my opinion.
If you hate those “annoying Flash ads,” I highly recommend ClickToFlash. It prevents all Flash from loading unless you click on it, and also has an option to load Quicktime movie files in YouTube, which are way better at buffering.
Another thing: It looks like this replaces the RSS button. I hope there is a way to get it back; that was a very useful feature.
Ah, I see, you have to click and hold on the Reader icon, and it will show you the RSS links. You can’t know if a site with Reader has an RSS feed without clicking and holding, but I guess just about every site that has Reader will probably have RSS, too.
Right now, the only thing that is bothering my about Safari 5 is that pressing Command-l makes the bottom of the window move up to the top of the Dock level, even though I have the dock hidden, completely wasting about 30 pixels of screen real estate.
@Aaron Meurer
‘completely wasting about 30 pixels of screen real estate.’
I think I am seeing an evil trend here. What with this and the 26 excess pixels per inch most folk can’t discern anyway on the iPhone 4 screen, Apple seems to be doing a bank ’rounding-up’ job to claim them back.
Just what are they doing with all these pixels – that’s what I want to know?
Ahem, move the dock to the side maybe? there’s no overlap-the-dock problem behaviour there.