Read Ability
Though it wasn’t mentioned in yesterday’s WWDC keynote, Safari was updated to version 5, and now has a faster JavaScript engine, Bing support, and a cool new plain-text article view based on Arc90’s excellent ‘Readability’, called Reader.
The Arc90 team distributes the core Readability script as open-source under the Apache 2.0 license. I just happen to know about that, don’t ask me why. Which means Apple was able to integrate it into Safari with little effort and no collaboration with Arc90. In fact, Arc90 didn’t know Readability was being used until after Safari 5 was released:
We’ve since discovered that Safari’s “Reader” feature is, in fact, based upon our own Readability.
Apple does acknowledge Arc90/Readability in Safari’s acknowledgements, which is cool. It’s just funny to me that Apple didn’t even notify them.
So anyway, hypothetically, if there was a beautiful iPad browser that, among other cool features, had a ‘Reader’ view, would you want it to [continue to be developed and] be released, even if Mobile Safari will likely have said ‘Reader’ view in the future?
I was unaware that the core of Readability was released as open source. I’m curious as to why Instapaper doesn’t take advantage of this. Or, does it?
§ Pat · 08 June 2010
Never seen Readability before, but I like it! Am even going to un-hide my bookmark bar to try it out more often. =)
§ Ben Carlson · 08 June 2010
Ben, if you are using Safari, you can hit CMD+a number corresponding to a bookmark’s position in the bookmark bar. So, for instance, if you put the Readability bookmarklet as your first bookmark, you can hit CMD+1, and it will load that bookmarklet. No need to see your bookmark bar all the time!
§ Pat · 08 June 2010
Thanks Pat. Wonder if there is something similar for Firefox, as Firefox goes to a tab on CMD+#
§ Ben Carlson · 08 June 2010
Couldn’t say, but I suppose that’s one more reason to go with Safari ;)
§ Pat · 08 June 2010