Apple adds 'make the web go away' button to Safari 5

Steve Jobs didn't get around to mentioning Safari 5 in his WWDC keynote last night, but it rolled out anyway shortly after he finished up, and today publishers throughout the world are surely beginning to wonder, 'hang on, what's this Reader thing?' Safari 5 has a nice little button next to the URL that effectively kills the …

[Luke McCarthy]

Readability

So basically they made Readability a built-in feature...

[ThomH]

Talent imitates, genius steals

Usually Apple pays for its acquisitions, as per the GUI from Xerox, multitouch via Fingerworks, even the usability nightmare that is Cover Flow, but stuff like this and Sherlock 3 all that time ago show that it's not above just taking ideas.

[Richard IV]

Yup, only without the options

Looking forward to Fry tweeting that it's all the clever chaps at Apple's idea...

[Daf L]

Readability

Have used the Readability extension for a while I can recommend it. It does pretty much the same thing as this Safari button, allows for customisation of the look of the page and works with Chrome, Firefox and Safari (no installation required, just drag and drop the button).

http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

Reading articles is so much easier.

[CD 1]

Used it

And liked it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Readability

Indeed, which is great. I'd love it if Opera did something similar.

I haven't tried it in Safari yet, but I like the idea of it automatically linking multi-page articles which isn't great in Readability. However, I like the customisable format - a non-white background is easier on the eye.

[Robert Carnegie]

Opera has some relevant tricks, but not the whole thing.

In Opera you can: fit to your screen width; fit to small-screen format; ignore web author's CSS formatting and use your own. I don't remember if you can still disable table rendering...

Most of which still doesn't add up to analysing a web page containing interesting text surrouded on all sides by masthead, menu, section shortcuts, archive article links, andnadverts, adverts, adverts - but a lot of the time, it helps. When you're not participating in a web site designer's creative visual experience, but fighting against it.

As for Safari's tool, it will be interesting - and funny - to see which web pages are presented as having either the wrong content as the point of the page, or none at all.

[Giles Jones]

Useful

Especially useful for people with sight problems who use screen readers.

Now if the iPhone Safari can do this it would be handy.

[Player_16]

Indeed you can.

http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

If you're running Safari on your computer, just follow the instructions as per the site, then let your phone sync. When done, go to your Bookmark Bar in your iPhone and you'll see the Readability Bookmark: tap it and presto!

[h 6]

Readability works great on iPhone!

http://hermgreider.posterous.com/use-readability-on-iphone-to-convert-web-page-0

I did "choice 2" to get the functional bookmark set on my iPhone and it works swimmingly!

Tho I'm sure Mobile Safari in iOS 4 will have the read function built in.

[Small Wee Jobbie]

Just tried it...

and was surprisingly impressed.

I do miss the links to the comments at the bottom of the page, but apart from that looked good to me.

Legally - if you have already downloaded the page and this just re-renders it I can't see Apple having a problem

[lasthunter]

cool i like this

haha funny that this is the first article i read with the reader and i chose it at random just to see exactly how the reader worked.

[Anonymous Coward]

zaktly, luke

http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ - for people who have never tried it, it's nice.

[Dave 142]

bad design

Seems like a way to fix other people's bad web design too.

[Mick F]

How long

before web sites block Safari?

[Martin 71]

Does safari allow you to change user agent string?

If so, that would render the question irrelevant

[AlanR]

User agent string

Yes, it allows one to set the user agent if the Developer menu is enabled.

[Disco-Legend-Zeke]

More Intelligently, Webmasters...

...would check the user agent and deliver clean text pages.

[Aaron Em]

Nah

Javascript browser detection is harder to fool; Opera does an okay job, but it's the only browser I know of that implements the feature natively. I don't know how extensible Safari is, but I can't imagine it being all that likely that either a) it's extensible enough to let you work over the guts of its Javascript implementation in such a way that they're no longer recognizable, or b) Apple's going to implement a "mask as Internet Explorer/Firefox" feature like what Opera has.

[AlanR]

When?

When web site owners decide they don't want to show up on the iPad.

[Anonymous Coward]

... then...

...Safari will just pretend to be Chrome, or Firefox...

[Anonymous Coward]

Safari pretending to be another browser?

I doubt the cult leader will allow that... statistics would report a decrease in usage for Safari.

[James O'Shea]

Now you're being silly

Should I wish to, I can make Safari show as MSIE 6, 7, or 8, as Firefox 3.6 or 3.5, (Mac or Windows) or as Opera 10.5 (Mac or Windows) with a mere click of the mouse. I use that feature fairly often when some site or another has a quote problem unquote, said problem vanishing softly silently into the aether as soon as I change the user-agent about 99.99% of the time, indicating that the 'problem' was merely because someone didn't like Safari.

I find it quite amusing to set Firefox on Windows to report to be Safari on OS X and visit certain sites just to view the resulting freaking out.

But, hey, do carry on with your irrational hatred. It's so amusing.

[James O'Shea]

easily done

'..Safari will just pretend to be Chrome, or Firefox...' Or Opera. Or MSIE. Very easily done.

[TheCodeMonk]

Hope never...

I do not use Safari, nor will I try Safari 5. However, I really hope that they don't block this feature because I think it's great. I use ad blockers and it really changes the browsing experience. Having this next step in which everything but the text is taken away would be great and I hope it continues. The amount of advertising on the web today is atrocious, but unfortunately the only way for these companies to make money.

[Parsifal]

Not That Long

Most of the web sites make their money from advertising , if people aren't able to see the advertising then the sites loose revenue. This is going to blow up in apples face, either there will be lawsuits aplenty or sites will refuse Safari connections.

If people want to view websites without ads perhaps the sites would be better opening a subscription method were they pay to view the site without adds.

If the new functionality in Safari is allowed to continue expect to pay for access to more sites, or see less and less choice in sites to view since many will go out of business due to loss of advertising revenue.

This seems more like an attack on Google than a tool being issued for the benefit of all mankind.

[John Lettice]

Re: Not That Long

It rather depends on where Apple intends to go with it, if anywhere. As it is, it's a piece of user-controlled functionality within a minority browser, and it's not worth publishers bothering about while that remains the case.

If it got bigger it might be an issue, but I'd guess that it would gain functionality and flexibility as it did get bigger. Presenting new content in some kind of book chapter format is kind of meh, IMO, so that would have to change.

For what it's worth, our tech people have had a look at it, and it looks like it could be blocked if that's what a site wanted to do, or (heh) ads could be inserted in it if that's what a site wanted to do.

[James O'Shea]

but blocking it might be a Bad Idea(tm)

Blocking it could tend to irritate those who use it. True, it'd be a small percentage of a small percentage, but still...

And inserting ads would be counter-productive. If, for example, El Reg were to do that, I would make careful note of the ads inserted and make sure to _not_ purchase anything so advertised. And, if the ads were particularly noxious, I might go so far as to contact those being advertised and let them know that they won't be getting any business from me, and why.

But that's just me. For some reason there are those who say that I have a bad attitude. Can't imagine why this could be.

And, in any case, I usually run with AdBlocker active, anyway, so odds are that most ads wouldn't show up, anyway, and those which did would, as above, be carefully noted and reported back to the AdBlocker people so that they could make sure to block them. There's a nice new version of SafariAdBlocker out this morning, just for Safari 5, too. And it kills some ads which had leaked through with the old version. Ah, bliss.

[Drunc]

Yeah,I can't wait...

...till The Reg, SlashDot and all your other favourite advertising-funded websites have gone out of business and you're ranting on some no-name/don't care blog about the poor quality of journalism compared to what it used to be, or crying about how unfair it is that you have to pay for it.

Call me when you're part of the solution, not part of the problem. Until then...

[James O'Shea]

ads

If you put in ads which don't blink, strobe, and generally scream at you, if you don't have pop-up (or, worse, pop-under) ads, if you don't flat out lie in the ad, if you don't produce ads which insult the intelligence of the would-be consumers, then perhaps ad-blockers wouldn't be so popular. As marketting morons mostly try to attract attention by whatever means possible, I go way out of my way to avoid seeing _any_ ads. When I watch tv, which is not often as I don't have the time, I use my DVR to store shows for when I have the time to watch them, not the time that the TV execs want to show them. And then I use that same DVR to fast-forwards past the ads... unless, of course, as I go past an ad it looks interesting. In which case I have a look at _that_ ad. Ads in print publications are ignored, unless I'm specifically looking for something... and then I'll look at the ads for exactly long enough to see if it's about what I'm looking for. And, finally, if in the past I've bought something from a certain company (HP, Sony, Asus, Dell, Lexmark, I'm thinking of _you_) and it's been a problem and then customer non-support have been twats about fixing the problem, then _nothing_ that any ad says will _ever_ convince me to buy anything from you again. (#1 on the FAQ on the Lexmark site for the old Lexmark Z23 printer: "Why is my printer so slow?" Glacial, I would say. #3 on that same FAQ: "Why did the Z23 ship with only the color (Merkin site, Merkin spelling) cartridge?" Yes, they really shipped with just the colour cart so that you had to either go and buy a black cart or live with muddy brown text output while at the same time sucking down the already inadequate ink in the colour cart. No, I've not bought anything from Lexmark since, and never will again.)

Now, if the ads are interesting and actually relevant to what I'm reading, and don't get in the way, well, that's different. It's also damn rare. If you fix your business model and reign in the mad marketters then attitudes towards ads may change. Until then... bite me.

[Drunc]

ads--

Ah, people like you make me laugh. Full of idealism, without a clue how the things you consume come about. I bet you were shocked when you found out your Nikes came from a sweatshop in India, eh?

Do you honestly think that large and ethical businesses just appear? Do you think that we wake up one morning with a million pounds from The Business Bunny (tm) that lets us create a sales team with advertising standards and guidelines? No, small businesses and start-ups have to chose a compromise between editoral integrity and feeding our children. I personally draw the line at pop-ups, pop-unders, crazy frog, and a bunch of other things, but when you're growing sometimes you just have to lube up and take one for the team in the hope that one day you can tell someone with a flash video ad in blue and purple to take a hike.

And please - stop with the "change your business model" crap. There IS no other viable business model. Either come up with one yourself, or just shut up and ignore them (the ads) while you enjoy your content like every other non-moron out there.

Every time you whinge about the injustice of ads while you're getting free content that someone else has paid for (in time or money), baby jesus kills a kitten. Fact.

[James O'Shea]

ads again

1 not an idealist. Merely a cynic.

2 don't wear Nikes. They cost too bloody much.

The rest of your screed was even less accurate than the first paragraph.

[Version 1.0]

RE ads

I prefer the approach of simply ignoring the ads - the company then pays the web site and I get the content that I want. What - distracting you say? No more so than driving downtown... Hell, I've even been know to click on ones I hate just to extract the extra $ ...

Given the vast number of ads on the internet - does anyone actually believe that even 5% of them really work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm

Isn't this what Lynx does?

[joejack]

@Isn't this what Lynx does?

No.

[Flocke Kroes]

Yes - pretty much

Lynx is extremely readable because it ignores the site's fonts, sizes and colours. It also loads really fast because it ignores pictures and it does a thorough job of ignoring javascript malware.

I used it until my internet connection was quick enough for pictures, then I switch to konqueror with javascript disabled and a user style sheet that fixes the vast majority of web designers' font+colour insanity. AFAIK, other browsers support user style sheets, but well done Steve for making it easy for Apple-munchers to see the web as Penguinistas have for years.

[Thom Sanders]

Seriously

because it obviously isn't possible to run Lynx on a Mac. Or disable javascript in Safari. Or specify a user style sheet in Safari.

Where do people get their ideas of what OSX can/can't do? I moved from Debian a few years ago and have found almost nothing which I can't run on my Mac which I used under Linux.

Some 'Penguinistas' could do with looking around outside their little bubble occasionally to see what is going on on other platforms.

[jonathanb]

Tried it

It has some benefits, but it is a bit fiddly, and cuts out the comments section. I notice it doesn't recognise RegHardware as a news site.

[DelM]

YAAC

Yet Another AdBlock Clone :-)

OK, so Firefox's AdBlock also tries to pre-filter, which doubtless annoys the dickens out of any site - including El Reg - that has advertising. But I do wish site owners could see how clean and readable their sites tend to be sans ads.

So: how many sites actively block Firefox with AdBlock enabled? Can they even tell?

[The Indomitable Gall]

Clean and readable...

...yet unsustainably unprofitable...

[Ed Blackshaw]

That's alright

They'll just decide to increase profitability by adding their own ads down the sides. Just you wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm…

Ad blocking existed long before Firefox even existed, so it is hardly an AdBlock clone. E.g. iCab when it was first released for MacOS 8.x, included regex ad filtering and Javascript filtering controls that far exceeded anything available even today. I would be surprised if other browsers, such as Opera, also didn't have equivalent features long before Firefox as well.

[Frank Bough]

Indeed

...as any long time user of Omniweb will attest. Still, this is a nice feature and will be a boon when it hits the iPhone version of Safari (please tell me it's in iOS 4...).

[Big-nosed Pengie]

letters and/or numbers

It actually looks as if Apple may have got it right for once - this seems to be a step beyond AdBlock and NoScript. I look forward to a similar add-on for Firefox.

[sholby]

How about Mail?

I've tried it and loved it also. I can see how content providers might not be thrilled if we can just skip all the ads on page #2, 3, etc., but whenever you come upon a web page that uses a font point size of about 6.5, which isn't uncommon, this is truly great.

However, that particular issue is actually much worse with e-Mails, so i hope they also implement it in Mail at some point (and automatically, at that).

[riparian zone]

@Giles Jones

yup, the idea is ok for screen readers as you say, but the tool for the job is webbie, which incorporates viewing a page with and without links, and a shortcut straight to google search...can't get much better than that..http://webbie.org.uk/

[AlanR]

Very nice

Works great on The Register.

[Mike Flugennock]

A little late, there, Steve-O...

Firefox/AdBlock/NoScript, FTW.

[Anonymous Coward]

flashblock

those 3 make the web usable again i agree, but i do like to also use flashblock to kill off any remaining epilepsy inducing adverts that may slip by, they're firefox's holy trinity.

-although i did see the 3 amigos again last night..

[Adam Starkey]

Terms and conditions?

Are they insane? When I navigate to a site, unless there is some obnoxious landing page, in which case I'm going to navigate clean away again, I don't ever see a TaC page. How can they expect me to be bound by something that I would in all legitimacy never have seen?

I don't block ads (except flash ads because they're just bad) because I accept the right of the publisher to make money. I'm not in anyway legally beholden to view those ads though, and there's a reason why a web browser is a called a 'user agent' not a 'service client'.

This looks like a nice feature, well implemented, and I'm looking forward to trying it out. Especially on multi-page articles it could make browsing much more pleasant. The NYT needs to get a grip.