Readability bookmarklet
March 27, 2009
To ensure a more enjoyable reading on the Web, Arc90 Lab (external link) developed Readability (external link) - a tool that tries to extract the main content of the page, wiping out all sorts of clutter around the text you are reading. A simple style is applied to make the page easier to read.
The script studies all paragraphs in each section of the page and finds the chunk that has the best score (a score is determined by things like: number of paragraph tags, commas, special classes, etc.). It removes DIV's that have more non-paragraph elements than paragraph tags.
Readability isn't 100% effective. It works well with pages, where the main content is organised in paragraphs that are placed in one common section instead of being divided in several separate sections using DIV's, lists, etc. For example: 1.) If the main content consists of separate divisions, Readability shows only the division with most paragraphs; 2.) If the page includes one section containing an article and another containing comments, Readability chooses the section with more paragraphs (sometimes, this is the section with comments).
Anyway, Readability works with most modern browsers and has been tested on many news sites and blogs. Generally it succeeds surprisingly well and makes reading much easier.
Readability is a browser bookmarklet, which you can install by visiting the Readability setup page (external link).