Joliprint, a service that lets you create PDFs from web content, just added special support for Read It Later users.
Their conversion outputs a nicely formatted PDF, complete with images, that looks great on paper or in an ebook reader with PDF support.
You can get the Joliprint Read It Later bookmarklet and learn more here:
If you are using the Read It Later Firefox extension, I’d love your help in testing an upcoming version of the add-on.
In preparing for the upcoming Firefox 4 release, I had to make a number of big changes to the extension’s backend. From the user perspective, nothing new should have changed. This is what I’d like help testing.
Even if you are not using the Firefox 4 betas (and are still on 3.5 or 3.6), I could still use your help. Just install the beta (linked below) and make sure that no functionality has broken or degraded.
Thanks!
Please report any problems that you run into at Read It Later Support. Be sure to say you are using the beta.
I just submitted version 2.3.1 of Read It Later for iPhone/iPad to the app store. December is always a hard month to get app updates approved (Apple has their hands quite full), but I’m hoping this will get approved before the Holidays.
I just completed rolling out some updates to the new Article View. Using reports sent in from users I was able to make a number of big improvements that takes accuracy even further. I also managed to speed up the parser in some cases by 10x.
Thanks to everyone who sent in reports. Please continue to do so, even if it’s just for a minor imperfection. I’m being ruthless about keeping the Article View as clean as possible.
Hope you’re enjoying the new view!
Note: If you find an article that doesn’t give you the option to report, you can use Share -> Email to email the link to support@readitlaterlist.com and I’ll use it when testing.
Read It Later 3.0 will be made up by 6 major releases. Today, I’m releasing the first: The 3rd generation Text View (now named the Article View), which lands alongside version 2.3 of Read It Later for iPhone/iPad.
The new Article View is without a doubt, the most advanced and accurate text parser on the market today.
Distilled. The new Article View is the cleanest text parser available. It’s highly skilled in presenting just the article in its purest form, with none of the extraneous page content you’ll see in similar parsers.
Images. View all the images from the article, including any captions and even photographer’s credits.
Videos. Includes all embedded videos within the article.
Meta. Includes information about the article like date published and authors.
Fast. It’s fast. Really fast. Even with images, downloading is faster than ever.
The Article View allows great content to be read the way it was meant to be: with a focus solely on the words themselves. But writing great content is hard work, which is why I’ve worked hard to ensure the new Article Parser maintains credits to authors and photographers.
No other text parser makes any effort to preserve attribution to the author of the content. (When they do, it’s surrounded by junk content from the header of the page because the parser failed to grab the content accurately.) The connection an author has with their readership is of the utmost importance and the new parser does everything it can to preserve that. Authors are always attributed and their names are linked to their bio (when available).
You’ll notice that I am no longer referring to the Article View as the ‘text view’. The first reason is simply because the Article View now offers images and video, not just text. The second reason is because calling it the ‘text view’ leads to some incorrect assumptions about what it is suppose to do. While working on the new parser, I went over 2000+ reports from users of when they found a text view that didn’t work. A lot of these were of non-article content like bus schedules, homepages, pdfs, etc. For non-article content, you should be using Read It Later’s incredibly accurate full-web view/downloader. (And this choice just got a lot easier).
You’ll find that the parser works on an amazing number of sites. It’s built on natural language detection and therefore works with some of the ugliest code and layouts imaginable. It does not rely on specific site rules (ex. “if nytimes, use this section”, etc). I also will never ask a publisher to use proprietary tags or modify their site’s layout to make it work with my parser. There are very few instances where Read It Later’s Article Parser should have a problem finding an article, but in the rare case it does not, it’s the parser to blame, not the publisher.
iPhone/iPad Users:
All new items downloaded after upgrading to version 2.3 will use the new parser. To get the new Article View for any of your previously downloaded text-views, you’ll need to redownload them. (See How-To Redownload)
While text views in Read It Later Free will utilize the new Article Parser for text, viewing images and embedded media is a Pro-only feature. If you haven’t already upgraded to Pro, here is what else you are missing.
Web/Digest Users:
The web interface will utilize the new Article Parser for text, but viewing images and embedded media is a Digest-only feature. To view images and embedded media on the web, you’ll need Read It Later Digest. You can learn about Digest here.
Browser Extension Users:
The updated Article Parser will be coming to your extensions very soon.
Version 2.3 of Read It Later for iOS is available today and it brings a number of new features centered around the new Article View: Read about the new features in version 2.3 here.
New Article ViewThe biggest update to to Version 2.3 is the brand new Article View (formally named the text view), which now includes images, video, and more.
It’s a big enough update to warrant its own post, which you can read here:
Check out the Insane New Article Parser.
Read It Later is now smart enough to know if an item would look best in the Article View or the Full Web Page View. Enable this option and RIL will pick the best view to download for each item in your list. This ensures the best offline experience possible.
The Article View is the ideal way to read blog posts and long-form content, but if you’re like me, you are not only saving articles for later. You may have saved the homepage of that cool new app you want to learn about, a forum post you want to come back to, or a photo gallery you want to peruse. None of these pages would ever work in a ‘text view’. That’s why Read It Later offers the ability to download complete webpages as well.
Previously, in order to make sure you always had a way to view every type of page offline, you had to download both the full web-view and text view. This was wasteful and slow. But now, by using the new Auto-Pick option, RIL will download the full web view only when it needs to and get the Article View for everything else. This results in fast download times and the added benefit that you’ll never be offline without a way to view a page again.
These are the kind of changes that the 3rd generation of Read It Later will be made up of. My focus is on making the experience faster and smarter, with less input required from the user. I want your only task to be saving and reading. I’m working on improving everything in between. I want actions that take two clicks to take one. And actions that take one click to just know what you want to do and simply do it for you.
The Article View, unlike the full web view, is not zoomable (you wouldn’t want it to be). The only problem this causes is when the article has images that you want to explore (like graphs) or view full-screen (like great photography). In version 2.3, you can now tap on any image within the Article View and it will expand to full-screen. From there you can zoom, pan, and even swipe left/right to go through the other photos in the article.
Photos from Stan Bouman/Boston.com and Matt Rix/Struct.ca
Evernote sharing has been dramatically improved. A native interface makes sharing to Evernote faster and smoother than before. More importantly, sharing to Evernote now works offline too!
Note: The update may take a few hours to appear in the app store. If it’s not there yet, check back soon.
Longform.org now supports saving to Read It Later.
If you are looking for a great source of articles to fill your reading list, Longform.org is a must. It’s a curated feed of long-form content edited by Aaron Lammer & Max Linsky.
In your browser: http://ril.longform.org
On Twitter: @longformorg
Side note: Wondering how to add Read it Later buttons to your own site?
I wanted to give an update as you may have noticed things have been quiet on the ole RIL blog and Twitter feed. When I’m quiet, that’s a good thing. It means I’m back in the batcave feverishly working away.
Version 3.0 of Read It Later is coming. It includes a ton of new and improved stuff across all of RIL’s platforms, apps & API.
This release will be different from the way I did the 2.0 release last year. Instead of a massive update on the same day, I’m going to be releasing each part as it comes off the press. You can expect the first piece to appear very soon.
Stay tuned. Things won’t be quiet for too much longer.
A team of 34 designers and developers recently got together for a one-day hackathon put on by webOSroundup. The goal was to design and build an entire WebOS app in a single day. I’m honored to say they decided to create an open source Read It Later client which is now available in the Palm Market. It’s called Relego.
As a solo developer who works on all of RIL’s apps/platforms, I have to say trying to imagine getting 30+ people in sync and building an entire application in the course of a single day blows my mind. Congrats to everyone involved, it was an impressive feat. And a big thanks for choosing Read It Later.
If you are using a WebOS device, you can get Relego here:
If you’d like to learn more or help contribute, work is still ongoing:
Update: Please see this post instead: Read It Later 2.1 Beta
Version 2.0.7 of Firefox is now available for public testing.
The major change in this version is support for Firefox 4.
A number of other improvements are in this version as well:
Please report any problems that you run into at Read It Later Support. Be sure to say you are using the beta.