DON'S FREEWARE CORNER -- JUN 2013
READABILITY AND PRINT UTILITIES

This page was last updated 2014-05-30
Underlined titles are links.
To Google search these notes and subpages CLICK HERE and enter your search terms.

Return to Don's Freeware Corner Page or Don's Family History Class Notes Page . =============================================================================================

DON'S FREEWARE CORNER  2013-06
READABILITY AND PRINT UTILITIES

©2014 Donald R. Snow

My Freeware Corner Notes are printed in our Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group monthly newsletter TAGGology and posted on my Family History Class Notes webpage http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html , sometimes with updated information there.

READABILITY AND PRINT UTILITIES
This month I'll describe three free programs that I use to reformat websites, primarily so I can copy and paste all or parts into a text file, email, or, more often, into my Evernote file.  They help cut out the extraneous parts so you get a good readable copy for your notes.  If the article goes on to multiple pages, these programs usually include the entire article, so you get all the pages.

1.      PRINT FRIENDLY
Available from  http://www.printfriendly.com/ .  There are two ways to work with this program:  (1) copy the URL into it and let it reformat the webpage, and (2) drag the Print Friendly button onto your web browser so you can just click on it when you are on a web page that you want to reformat.  I use it both ways, but I use (2) more.  The icon is green with a small printer inside and is usually placed in the upper right hand side of the browser.  I use this to get a more "printer friendly" version of a webpage so I can copy and paste it into my Evernote file.  The print friendly reformatting takes out the ads on the sides, etc.  Sometimes it takes out too much and then I try a different program or else just copy and paste the page directly into my Evernote file.  Bret Petersen told me about this freeware program a couple of years ago and I've used it a lot since them.  If you don't like the looks of the reformatted page, there is a button to click on the top right that takes you back to the original webpage.  There are programs that copy webpages directly into your Evernote file and I sometimes use them, but they don't always copy the page the way I want, so more frequently, I try these other programs first.

2.      CLEARLY
Available from  http://evernote.com/clearly/ .  This is another program that helps do the same thing as Print Friendly.  It comes as a separate program and as an extension in Chrome.  When it is installed on your browser its icon looks like a small table lamp and is placed in the address bar on the upper right or left, depending on the browser.  When you click on it, it reformats the webpage leaving out the ads and extraneous stuff.  It sometimes gives better results than Print Friendly and sometimes not as good, so I use whichever one does the best job for me.  Then I copy and paste that into my Evernote file or into an email or wherever else I want to put it.

3.      READABILITY
Available from  http://www.readability.com/ .  This program is mainly for reformatting the webpage for easier reading, but that's what I need to copy and paste into my Evernote file.  The icon looks like an overstuffed chair.  It has several modes including Read Now and Read Later.  I've found that the Read Now mode makes some webpages look better so I can then copy and paste them into my Evernote file.  And, like the others above, if I don't like the way this one reformats the page, I click on the "go back to the original" button and try something else.

I have found that the results I get from these depends on the browser and the webpage and none of them always gives me results the way I want.  With some browsers and webpages, I have found that the copy and paste directly from them doesn't work, but after reformatting with one of these programs, it will always copy.  Also, I have found that most of these programs don't copy the comments and Q&A at the end of articles and there are frequently good comments and new programs mentioned there.  So to copy those sections I usually have to copy them directly from the webpage itself without using one of these programs and then paste it below the other part.  You might try these programs and see if you like the results you get to copy and paste webpages elsewhere.

==================================================================================
Return to Don's Freeware Corner Page or Don's Family History Class Notes Page .