Easy Reader, That's My Name

Caveat Lector introduced me to an interesting web-gizmo called Readability. It's kind of cool.

You install this little button on your browser bookmarks bar. Then when you come upon a hard-to-read page, just click, and Readability renders everything in straightforward, black-on-white, nicely-sized, Times-New-Roman-ish-fonted glory. (I'm not great with fonts; it looks a lot like Times New Roman, but I'm not positive it actually is.)

It's kind of like what a feed reader does for blogs (besides the syndication thing): you lose all the individual design of the various pages, but depending on how dramatic and exciting that design is, it can be a lot easier to read. 

I'm reasonably tolerant of odd fonts, interesting colors, distracting graphics, etc., at least in small doses, but I have certainly come across my share of pages that irritated my eyeballs and were just plain difficult to read.

I do kind of miss seeing the interesting pictures and designs people put on their blogs. It expresses something about the writer that you don't get with the plain text. Sometimes I'll click through for some reason, and think "wow, I never pictured this blog this way!" 

Kind of the way I'm sometimes surprised to see a photo of someone I've heard on the radio. It's as if I don't get the whole experience of the blog without the chosen theme, background and color scheme.

On the other hand, sometimes when I click through, I think "wow, I couldn't read this straight-up on regular basis!" Light text on dark background, for instance, is tough for me to read over any significant period of time.

Is my blog bad? I tried to keep it simple--boring, even--but come to think of it the blue on blue may not be ideal.

Anyway, if you have a hard time reading busy pages, you might give Readability a try. You might lose some of the character, but if you're reading for information, it may not really matter. 

It's a trade-off I generally make with blogs too. The information comes through...personalized presentation is nice but secondary.