Where do you stand on the Safari 5 eBook Reader arms race?

[gunug]

Who knew that most web content can be experienced as an eBook using the Safari Reader?

http://jimlynch.com/index.php/2010/06/14/t...ms-race-begins/

How about a poll on who even uses Safari 5?

Let me know if Safari Reader is something you've tried; my older son, who sometimes uses his roomate's iMAC wondered if I was being fair!  I'm not sure I'm seeing the results, if any, of using Safari Reader!  I've now installed it and I can't see anyway of deploying it; it seems like there isn't a lot you need to do but maybe there is something that I've missed:

QUOTE

It works like this: As you browse the web, Safari detects if you’re on a web page with an article. Click the Reader icon in the Smart Address Field, and the article appears instantly in one continuous, clutter-free view. You see every page of the article — whether two or twenty. Onscreen controls let you email, print, and zoom. Change the size of the text, and Safari remembers it the next time you view an article in Safari Reader.

Not finding any of this now!  Start off with what website you're looking at when you see what it is you're seeing!

[Xairbusdriver]

Uhmn...how about this here site/page?

[attachment=1886:Safari_Display.gif]
[attachment=1887:Reader_Display.gif]

As I understand it "Reader" is not a way to 'see the web' as much as a way to read 'articles' on a web page. Designers often use different tags/methods to display text in the way they want, but not necessarily the way the viewer wants. One person may want the text bigger. One person may not want to scroll sideways. Etc.

What Reader does is take what it recognizes as mainly the text on the page, headlines, sub0heads, body, even quotes and retains some of the styling to help keep most of what the writer wanted for emphasis, but removes all the 'glitz', images, Flash, etc. At the same time, it increases the size of the text while placing it in a window that doesn't need horizontal scrolling (the bane of viewers with narrower screens or mobile devices or those who simply tire of l . o . n . g lines of text or stretched windows).

Notice the two images are both 800 pixels wide, but the Reader version is much easier to read, with my eyes, anyway. It's rather like html email, in reverse. Do you want to read the message or look at all the styling?

I love it! And I hadn't even tried it here! I first saw/used it at a site that used really small font sizes and had very little graphics, just a very long text article. Reader made it so much easier to read! And, if you don't want to use it, no problem! It only displays stuff when you ask it to. It's not a always ON or always OFF feature. What's not to like?

[daryl66]

[quote name='Xairbusdriver' date='Jun 14 2010, 09:17 PM' post='174950']


I love it!


Me too.  A great additiion

[gunug]

Before I turned in last night I did finally "notice" a little "reader" tag in the right had side of the line where the browsers URL line lives.  I then noticed some differences in the way the webpage was being displayed; they were "very" understated but perhaps that was the whole point.  Isn't tagging like this the way that Wiki's work?

[Paddy]

Interesting - I don't get the Reader tag on TS forum pages. Just an RSS tag. So how did you do that, Jim?? (Yes, I'm using Safari 5) I do get the Reader tag on things where there is a big block of text (news article etc.).

[Xairbusdriver]

Here's a much simpler explanation of the feature from the latest TidBITS:

The primary user-focused feature in Safari 5 is Reader, which extracts the text from recognized articles and displays it without ads, site graphics, or other visual distractions. Plus, on sites that break longer stories into multiple pages, such as the New York Times, Safari Reader automatically follows the necessary links to present the entire story on one long scrolling page.

Hope that helps.

QUOTE

Isn't tagging like this the way that Wiki's work?

The 'tags' I was referring to are html 'tags.' Usually seen in the source of any web page, it's the things that the browsers use to determine what to display, where to break a line, what font to use, what text is bold/italic/underlined/etc. It's the stuff that's been around ever since web pages were first started. Can't be more than three dozen different 'tags' and half are never used, anyway. They are almost exactly the same 'tags' used at TS and most other forums for putting basic 'styling' in a post. Here, if you want a letter/word/paragraph to be bold, you surround a "b" with square brackets "[" and "]". In an html document, it would be the same letter but with "<" and ">" on each side. Same goes for the other 'tags'.

Many web sites allow one to enter terms that are stored with a post that are then used to find the post with a search for those terms. Those are also called "tags," I think. Is that what you mean? It's a user-devised/edited sorting method.

Another form of "tagging," is when an app (in many different types of devices) captures the lat/long and stores that in the meta data of the file it creates, usually an image.

Oh yeah, there's tag football...and the play yard game..."You're it!"

[kimmer]

Okay, I've taken Safari 5 for a few spins and I like it!

The reader is very cool, especially when I'm reading a news article that's busted up onto several 'pages' (so they can get ads in more often?). Plus I like that I can print something out and it looks like the reader page, not the site page -- especially when the site page has itty-bitty fonts.  

Most of all ... I the way Safari now properly opens new pages in tabs instead of my having to "right click > open in new tab". Also love the new "undo" feature when I accidently close a page.

I'm totally in with Safari 5.