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.

[Jay Hayman]

I see...

I see, so Apple giveth in one hand (iAds) and takes away with another (reader). Sounds like Microsoft to me.

[guybles]

Ah, sweet misunderstanding

iAds can be used in iPhone/iPod touch apps only. Developers of apps can choose to use them, if they wish. General internet browsing is entirely subject to whatever advertising the advertiser the site's owner has chosen to use.

But, y'know, don't let research or facts get in the way of your anti-Apple rant.

Now, if you happened to be Google, then you might have something to say...

[Anonymous Coward]

Misunderstanding? I think not, you typical brainwashed fanboi

The comment is valid and it wasn't a rant. This is a rant. Apple have just announced they're going to provide an advertising platform and at the same time they're allowing their fanbois (like you) to block other ads. It's just another move towards the Jobsian Apple-only world view and like a gullible fool, you can't see it for what it is.

Please wake up and smell the coffee (or do you only drink white plastic odour-free iCoffee(TM)?)

[RichyS]

Tried it...

...and liked it.

Works great as a 'boss key'. No, I'm not faffing around reading El Reg and other websites, I'm reviewing an important document....

[vincent himpe]

basically

he's going to flood the web with his iAd's and then sell us overhyped , over expensive appliance with a button to remove that junk. The man's a freaking marketing genius !

[Anonymous Coward]

iAds is for Apps

Except iAds is specifically for free apps on a single platform, the iPhone, and are functionally just a competitor to AdMob and that is all.

So, tell us how are Apple going to flood the web with them again?

[Lou Gosselin]

iAds

Having a standard ad serving mechanism in apps means that apple can charge users a fee to flip the kill switch so that premium users can disable all the ads showing up on their ipads.

Accessing this switch may be another reason users may wish to consider jailbreaking.

[vincent himpe]

well

The browser is an app right ?

click the button : strip all junk , serve stripped page and surround with iads....

ka-ching !

[vincent himpe]

oh, i forgot

i hate marketing types.

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox plugin?

I suspect it won't be very long before a plug-in is made for Firefox that does the same thing. Combined with Adblocker and Noscript, it could be very useful.

[The Unexpected Bill]

Great idea to build it into the browser...

I'd seen and played with Readability a few months ago and thought that "this would really be great in a browser". And then I promptly forgot about it, pushing it on to some mental back-burner. I didn't even try to see if an extension to put it in a browser was available.

I don't mind web advertising for the most part, not even those gyrating banners of days (hopefully) past were enough to put me off. No, what really just tore it all up for me were those pesky ads that would double-underline certain words in text and pop something up. I even let that ride until one day a Flash animation popped up in one of them. I was severely annoyed and wrote the editor of the web site in question. He basically rebuffed my concern and said that it was OK because those ads made more money.

Oh really? (heh...I once donated money to that site!)

And that, folks, was the day I finally installed AdBlockPlus.

(When one of your "daily driver" computers is an NCR P4 clocked at 1.5GHz (shut up, it works and it's paid for) you tend not to care so much about what makes the webmaster a lot of money, as not overwhelming your machine is more important.)

I was already working toward getting very tired of all the needless "cognitive toxins" that have become a part of the web browsing experience and that kind of a response just finished it off.

Aaaaanyway...I'm not the biggest fan of Safari but I would hope that other browser makers take note and include something similar. And yes, it runs fine on the previously mentioned hardware...much better than it does on a vastly more powerful Dell Dimension 8300.

[Tim Almond]

Compromise on Ads

"No, what really just tore it all up for me were those pesky ads that would double-underline certain words in text and pop something up. I even let that ride until one day a Flash animation popped up in one of them. I was severely annoyed and wrote the editor of the web site in question. He basically rebuffed my concern and said that it was OK because those ads made more money."

The problem is that if reader takes off, that's what you'll get more of. Not a sensible banner and reasonable sidebars from Google Ads, but embedded ads that beat reader (or sites will just find a way to spoof reader into thinking that it's not something to read.

[SteveK]

Here be aardvarks

I use the aardvark plugin on firefox to do similar things. Doesn't just have the one-click thing that this offers, but it lets me click to isolate (or remove) a particular block on the page (amongst other web developmenty things).

I mainly use that when I want to print content without wasting stacks of paper, ending up with a narrow column of content on the printed page, surrounded by navigation bars and blank spaces where ads would have been. Instead I get the relevant article nicely filling the A4 page...

Will have to upgrade Safari though and give this a try too.

[IR]

Paywalls approach

I wondered what the deal was with the iPad supposedly saving news organisations and the owners being relatively okay with it. Now it seems that the idea is to completely kill off ad-supported news sites and making them have a paywall in order to get any money for when you view their site.

I'm more surprised that no one has done a Firefox extension for this before now.

[LaeMing]

The idea is...

...to ensure that the only way they can get a revenue stream is via the iPad's own advertising streams.

[slack]

cognitive toxins

would be a great band name

[The Unexpected Bill]

Wish I could take credit for it!

"Cognitive toxins" is a phrase I picked up from somewhere along my travels on the web. It seemed especially fitting to use it here for some reason...

[Anonymous Coward]

Very good feature

As much as I dislike my Mac for doing any serious work, this one gets my stamp of approval. Funny enough, this is the first site i tried it on.

[Anonymous Coward]

T&Cs

I can't see how any T&Cs are affected by this because it's a local rendering issue. It's not as if the page is being rebublished or anything like that. It's a bit like saying adblockers violate T&Cs - all you are doing is NOT downloading the advert - you can't stipulate that you MUST download it!

[Matt Bryant]

Kicking Google in the family jewels?

Is this the latest move in the Apple vs Google war, maybe? Google depends on Web ad revenue, so if Steve gives users an option to remove all Google's money-making ads the minute a page has loaded, how big a dent will he put in Google's profits? Especially as most ad-blockers are not installed by default, you actually need to know a bit technically to find and turn them on, whereas Apple have just given users a nice, big, one-click buton solution (i.e., the average luser will be able to use Reader whilst not even knowing ad-blockers exist). Heck, most users don't even know how to block pop-ups in Firefox! So what if M$ and Mozilla follow suit and add ad-removal buttons as standard, how much ad revenue would Google stand to lose.....?

[Ben 4]

Let's get back to DOS!

Fabulous, let's get rid of all those nice graphics, the fun interaction, all those WEB2.0 features, the jQuery etc... Yep, we've spent years making the web capable of some amazing things but absolutely, let's go back to the old days. Why stop here? Why no go back to the lovely green glowing text on a black background?

[vincent himpe]

YAY !

the good old days of ASCII - Art ! when real programmers wore beards and suspenders and could toggle in the bootloader on the switches from memory.

[The Unexpected Bill]

Oh, so you have used Lynx!

Everything has its time and place. I could be weird, but I sometimes *enjoy* the austerity of a text console and the promptness of a command line.

Mine's the one with a copy of Lynx on CD in the pocket...

[Renato]

Not DOS, but unix!

At least a green text on black screen won't chew my battery off. And if you spent years making the web capable of eating CPU cycles and RAM just to do something "funny" which could be simplified and optimised you should have an wrist slap at least.

What is the amazing thing on the web you say? What all the fuss about those rich internet applications is? If you want to make a user interface with ease, you should have gone for at least XUL, which _is_ a user interface markup language. HTML is a markup language created for formatting *text* and displaying images. JavaScript was introduced later for doing simple things.

As a simple test, I have created a Word document on Office Live, typed some words cursing RIA and as I typed, it ate 100% CPU and reached 88MB RAM usage, on MSIE 8. Then I opened Word 2010 Beta: max 8% CPU and 20MB RAM usage while monkey typing. This on Windows 7.

Another test: Outlook 2010 Beta eats ~50MB to display inbox+email, while a single message on Gmail needs 95MB, on IE 8 and a little less on Firefox with AdBlock. Apple OS X's Mail uses 61MB, while Gmail on Safari uses 130MB. I won't test it on Firefox/OSX because I have lots of plugins installed. Oh, and I can also read my mail when I'm without internet connection.

And I leave a question: how those cloud/RIA applications would do any better than any native application on netbooks/internet tablets/smartphones if they are such resource hogs?

[David Webb]

Ads

It's not actually removing the adverts, it has to load up the page (with adverts) and then you click the button to show just the text, you are still downloading the adverts and the entire webpage.

It'll make it's way into the iWhatever though as a nifty "function" but, odds are when you press the button it'll display the text AND an advert supplied by Apple, that'll be the next "feature" they add.

[Maty]

I see a problem here

If this catches on, then content providers are going to rebuild their pages in such a way that - for example - the javascript that shows the ads also shows the text. I can think of several ways to build a web page that will turn it blank white if certain features are blocked.

So if enough people start using features like this, content providers are going to rebuild their websites in a more complex manner that will bollox other features on people's browsers.

Of course they could start building websites where the advertisements are interesting and relevant, and displayed unobtrusively enough that people wouldn't bother with the Reader feature in the first place ... but nah, they'll bollox their sites.

[The Unexpected Bill]

After so much, they'll leave...

You can only bounce your web viewers around so much before they'll just leave and find what they want (or as close as they can get) somewhere else.

Technically-adept types who know how to implement things to make the web work for them will be the first, and then word will slowly get around until the average web browsing member of the public knows...maybe not why or even what the problem is, just that someone they know and trust said there was a problem and not to visit said site any more.

[DZ-Jay]

Re: I see a problem here

That's only a problem if the Reader engine merely analyses the page source. I believe it does much more than this: I think it works on the generated output of the page render (recall that this is not necessarily an application-level enhancement to Safari, but to the WebKit framework itself).

-dZ.

[Anonymous Coward]

Puzzled...

...and confused. Usually any story about Apple on the Reg is full of commenttards whining about how bad/Evil/sinister Apple is and how lovely/trustworthy/great Google/Microsoft/Adobe is in comparison. And here I was thinking my day couldn't get any weirder.

[LinkOfHyrule]

Title goes here

I've already done two posts on another story taking the p**s out of Apple and Steve, that's why!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice enough, but not as important as

the return of the blue progress bar in the address field! Yes! At last!

[Player_16]

Hey...

...I didn't notice that! Wicked!

[Ron Luther]

Bet it doesn't work ...

.. on apps that use the new ad model!

Which would, of course, mean that any advertiser wishing to reach an audience using St. Steve devices would have to pay St. Steve for that privilege. Wooot. Nice 'feature'.

[Marlan]

The truly extra advantage is in printing ...

If you notice there is a fade-in menu at the bottom of the reader page and a print button - this means you can print out articles now without all the web page gubbins getting in the way - I shall be using this all the time now!

[Kay Burley ate my hamster]

El Reg ads

Great, I won't have to ever see that IBM multicoloured multi-mouse-pointer brain-ache inducing ad on El Reg ever again, or any of its friends. :D

[Someone Else]

Hallucinate title here

You don't have to see them now...can you say "AdBlock Plus"? I knew you could....

[Joshua Murray]

I like it!

I just updated my Mac to Safari 5 to try this out....

Took a minute to work out that the button is in the URL field, not on the toolbar (d'oh!).

I really like this feature, it makes reading articles so much easier on the eyes and I think I'll make use of it a lot.

Thanks for pointing it out!

[A J Stiles]

So it's like eLinks or w3m, then?

Console-based web browsers have been doing this since forever.

By the way, if there are adverts on The Register, my DNS must be misreporting where they are served from.

[Someone Else]

You trying to blind me?

If I can't change the foreground and background colors to suit me (and given the recent spate of Jobsian control freakery, I'm sure I can't, because these would be **my** choices, not **his**), then I'm not interested.

[Petrea Mitchell]

So how do they reconcile...

...their ad-selling program with their ad-wiping capabilities? Or does Apple only mean to make the Web readable, and not its wonderful, magical, etc. newpaper-reading app? Or if you buy ads from Apple, does that mean your ad is deemed non-annoying by Safari? And if you can read free Web news (or even Web news behind a paywall) with all the annoying stuff removed, aren't even the fanbois going to decide the Web browser offers a superior reading experience?

[NightFox]

Don't Forget...

In people's rush to install ad blockers and welcome features like this, there's the danger that we'll lose sight of the fact that advertising pays for much of the Internet. Many web sites are reliant on click-throughs and advertising revenues for funding, hide or obscure those adverts and in the short term the site gets less click-throughs, then in the longer term the ad providers aren't going to pay as much due to the diminished effectiveness of their ads.

It's pretty much like what's happening to commercial TV these days, the ads have become much less effective due to the shift in the way we watch TV, with many people now recording TV and fast forwarding through the adverts. Companies are no longer investing the same amounts of money into TV advertising and commercial TV is suffering as a consequence.

Yes, I have little interest in the adverts on a web page, but find it quite easy to ignore most except perhaps the pop-ups. It's a price I'm willing to pay for the "free" Internet. However, banish those ads and I think the Internet will be a poorer place for it

[Joel 1]

Killing the goose....

I'm afraid that the sites have only themselves to blame. It was actually El Reg which drove me to first install AdBlock Plus with the annoying ads they had which get out of their box and obscure the content - there was some annoying BT woman on a chair who pushed back across the whole page (and a dragon at some point).

This was taking advertising beyond a joke, and so although these might have paid more, it has hurt the bottom line because it irritated me enough to take action. I'm actually pretty light on blocking ads, only blocking the really irritating ones, as I realise that advertising pays for the site. However, many people driven to blocking ads may decide to go the whole hog.

All the browsers now have an option to block pop-up windows. That was a reaction to a similar bout of advertising overkill. It is a fine line for advertisers - if they get too in your face, they get a punch in the chops.

Advertising used to be based on persuasion (or seduction)....

[Matt Bryant]

RE: Don't Forget.....

True, to many good sites depend on ad revenue, but if you are a regular user of such sites then you will leave the ads on (you may even click a few just to send some revenue). But, if that same site starts hiding the info you need behind dozens of po-ups or pop-unders, flash ads or embedded ads, then you may get p*ssed-off visitors switching on the ad blockers. So, strike a balance, make sure you have each page carry an embedded message such as "This webiste is funded by advertising, if you value our service then please visit our sponsors by clicking on the ads", should balance out nicely.

On the flip side, you can do what some webscum did to my brother's company - take his money for a click-through ad on their website, then set a farm of zombies that regularly imitated clicking on the ad so they could take his money. He couldn't understand why his ad costs were going up but he wasn't getting any more business, until I pointed out his hit-rate was far too constant, even at weekends! The hoster pretended the zombies were nothing to do with them.....

[Geoff Campbell]

Yes, they get paid on click-throughs....

....which is rather the point. Surely anyone who is likely to install an ad blocker would never click on an ad anyway? So, no lost revenue.

GJC

[Michael Brown]

Pulse RSS reader back in AppStore

"Yesterday the Pulse RSS reader was booted from the App Store after the New York Times claimed violation of its terms of service."

It was also put back again pretty quickly (yesterday) and is currently available.

[Z 1]

Eh? This isn't new?

Been doing this in Opera since, well, forever.

[Joe Cooper]

Love it

n\t

[CC]

Nice it it quit crashing

Would be a decent browser if it would quit crashing.