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Reading tech part II
And it’s time for....
The second piece of technology that has radicalized the way I read online is a set of similar sites for stripped-down bookmarking/site saving. The first of these I tried out was Instapaper. Other major players in this space are Read it Later and Readability. As of this weekend, I’m hoping to move completely from Instapaper to Read It Later.
As a bit of background, all three sites provide the same functionality: bookmarking an article or post there gives you a stripped-down version of the site with no fancy formatting, no comments, no borders, no nothing. Just you and the text. All three offer a relatively simplistic web view for reading the content, as well as mobile applications with significantly higher feature set, including things like exporting to other bookmarking sites, tilt-to-scroll, a history of where you are in the middle of a document, etc. Fundamentally they’re a way to turn any article you read into an ebook that appears on your e-reader when you want it and vanishes from your reader as soon as you’re done with it. Like magic.
Instapaper has absolutely changed the way I surf the web. I have two different modes now, trawling for content to read later, and leisurely panning through my to-read list for things I want to read. It’s like having Google Reader for the entire internet, and I love it. Suddenly the power is in my hands--I can read fic when I want, in the typeface and color scheme I want, with the entire story filling my novel-shaped ereader screen. It is perfection, of a kind. Which means that when Instapaper didn’t meet all my needs, I was devastated.
Instapaper has apps for iPhone and iPad, and an option to automatically transfer to-read items to the Kindle.
Readability actually uses the Instapaper iPhone and iPad apps, so it supports those two and apparently has a fuller feature set in its web browser version.
Read it Later has apps for iPad/iPhone, Android, and a dedicated Chrome interface.
There is a big problem that stands in the way of using any of these apps with LiveJournal and Dreamwidth, and that is the Adult Content Issue :(
In brief, every one of these apps sends its own little dedicated webcrawler out to grab the sites you bookmark and put them into your account. You have not logged into that crawler, which means the crawler can’t access flocked posts. More dire than that, it means the crawler automatically gets bumped away from any posts that are marked for adult users only because that setting relies entirely on per-browser cookies to allow you to see adult content. And the crawler stores no cookies at all.
(Man, if my biggest problems are the fact that I don’t have enough cookies for my porn, my life can’t be all bad, can it?)
EXCITINGLY, Read It Later gives you the ability to log into individual websites within their dedicated browser and set cookies appropriately. However, it looks like this feature does not work with LiveJournal or Dreamwidth yet. I’m not 100% sure why (although I’m suspicious of the fact that it said "ok, I will now work correctly with www.dreamwidth.org" -- maybe it means that it will only work on the www domain, which is why it still isn’t working?)
Anyway, I have filed a support request on the subject, and they promise me that they’ll be testing to make sure this works for the next release. Um, also, they responded to my support request 23 minutes after I made it. On a Sunday. I feel like I am going to like using this tool. A lot.
(My weekend felt a bit like that FORTUNATELY.... UNFORTUNATELY... book I had when I was a kid.
UNFORTUNATELY there will never be an Android app for Instapaper because the developer thinks that Android people are just not the users he wants :((((((
FORTUNATELY there is an Android app for Read it Later and it is sexy :)))))))
UNFORTUNATELY the Read it Later app still has the adult content problem :((((((((
FORTUNATELY they have the log into websites feature :))))))))))
UNFORTUNATELY it doesn’t work on LJ or DW :(((((((((((((((((((((
FORTUNATELY they are the most responsive to support requests ever :)))))))))))))))))))))))))
This is a useful visual representation of the way my quantity of emotions on the topic changed throughout the day.)
(There is a similar issue on the Archive of our Own, but you can get around it there by appending ?view_adult=true to the end of the URL before you bookmark it.)
Here are some things that make reading a given story much easier for Instapaper and Read it Later users. (My attitudes towards LJ vs. the AO3 vs. individual users’ sites have changed radically as a result of my wanting to be able to use everything with Instapaper or RiL. Seriously I have fallen so in much more in love with the AO3 since I stopped having to interact with its ugly design.)
I know there’s an ongoing discussion on the balance between a writer’s ability to control how people read their fic and a reader’s ability to control the way they read fic. As is evidenced by this post, I sit VERY FAR on the reader control side of the fence. If you are on the other side, I welcome your feedback, but I should warn you that you aren’t going to change my mind--I enjoy reading fic a whole lot more when I can strip down the presentation to its bare minimum, just me and the story, and in fact overly complex presentation that keeps me from doing so is more likely to drive me away from a story than not.
- o -
The main thing that sets Readability apart is the fact that they claim to track all bookmarks on a given site and distribute a fraction of their subscription fees to authors who sign up with them. While I admire that goal, given the strong moral wait given to not earning money for fanfic within the online community, I’ve decided that Readability is not the solution for me.
I am not every Instapaper/Read it Later user. I think I am something of a power user given the way I keep making support requests to both products, but I’m really interested in knowing how other people are using it. How do you optimize your queue within the apps? I haven’t spent a lot of time figuring out how to do that, myself. Are you using Instapaper folders or RiL tags? Tell me please, I hunger for the knowledge!
Fanfiction Reading Technology part II: reading later
The second piece of technology that has radicalized the way I read online is a set of similar sites for stripped-down bookmarking/site saving. The first of these I tried out was Instapaper. Other major players in this space are Read it Later and Readability. As of this weekend, I’m hoping to move completely from Instapaper to Read It Later.
As a bit of background, all three sites provide the same functionality: bookmarking an article or post there gives you a stripped-down version of the site with no fancy formatting, no comments, no borders, no nothing. Just you and the text. All three offer a relatively simplistic web view for reading the content, as well as mobile applications with significantly higher feature set, including things like exporting to other bookmarking sites, tilt-to-scroll, a history of where you are in the middle of a document, etc. Fundamentally they’re a way to turn any article you read into an ebook that appears on your e-reader when you want it and vanishes from your reader as soon as you’re done with it. Like magic.
Instapaper has absolutely changed the way I surf the web. I have two different modes now, trawling for content to read later, and leisurely panning through my to-read list for things I want to read. It’s like having Google Reader for the entire internet, and I love it. Suddenly the power is in my hands--I can read fic when I want, in the typeface and color scheme I want, with the entire story filling my novel-shaped ereader screen. It is perfection, of a kind. Which means that when Instapaper didn’t meet all my needs, I was devastated.
Interoperability
Instapaper has apps for iPhone and iPad, and an option to automatically transfer to-read items to the Kindle.
Readability actually uses the Instapaper iPhone and iPad apps, so it supports those two and apparently has a fuller feature set in its web browser version.
Read it Later has apps for iPad/iPhone, Android, and a dedicated Chrome interface.
The Adult Content thing
There is a big problem that stands in the way of using any of these apps with LiveJournal and Dreamwidth, and that is the Adult Content Issue :(
In brief, every one of these apps sends its own little dedicated webcrawler out to grab the sites you bookmark and put them into your account. You have not logged into that crawler, which means the crawler can’t access flocked posts. More dire than that, it means the crawler automatically gets bumped away from any posts that are marked for adult users only because that setting relies entirely on per-browser cookies to allow you to see adult content. And the crawler stores no cookies at all.
(Man, if my biggest problems are the fact that I don’t have enough cookies for my porn, my life can’t be all bad, can it?)
EXCITINGLY, Read It Later gives you the ability to log into individual websites within their dedicated browser and set cookies appropriately. However, it looks like this feature does not work with LiveJournal or Dreamwidth yet. I’m not 100% sure why (although I’m suspicious of the fact that it said "ok, I will now work correctly with www.dreamwidth.org" -- maybe it means that it will only work on the www domain, which is why it still isn’t working?)
Anyway, I have filed a support request on the subject, and they promise me that they’ll be testing to make sure this works for the next release. Um, also, they responded to my support request 23 minutes after I made it. On a Sunday. I feel like I am going to like using this tool. A lot.
(My weekend felt a bit like that FORTUNATELY.... UNFORTUNATELY... book I had when I was a kid.
UNFORTUNATELY there will never be an Android app for Instapaper because the developer thinks that Android people are just not the users he wants :((((((
FORTUNATELY there is an Android app for Read it Later and it is sexy :)))))))
UNFORTUNATELY the Read it Later app still has the adult content problem :((((((((
FORTUNATELY they have the log into websites feature :))))))))))
UNFORTUNATELY it doesn’t work on LJ or DW :(((((((((((((((((((((
FORTUNATELY they are the most responsive to support requests ever :)))))))))))))))))))))))))
This is a useful visual representation of the way my quantity of emotions on the topic changed throughout the day.)
(There is a similar issue on the Archive of our Own, but you can get around it there by appending ?view_adult=true to the end of the URL before you bookmark it.)
How to optimize fic for reading later
Here are some things that make reading a given story much easier for Instapaper and Read it Later users. (My attitudes towards LJ vs. the AO3 vs. individual users’ sites have changed radically as a result of my wanting to be able to use everything with Instapaper or RiL. Seriously I have fallen so in much more in love with the AO3 since I stopped having to interact with its ugly design.)
- Do not mark your content as adult. This is probably a bad request to be making, because there is value to everyone but Instapaper/RiL users to having adult content marked properly as adult. ALSO I AM A HYPOCRITE HERE, THIS VERY JOURNAL DEFAULTS TO ADULT AND SO THIS POST ITSELF IS NOT INSTAPAPERABLE.
- Post your fic in as few sections as possible. All these tools bookmark only the page that has been saved, so if your 80k fic is spread across 5 LJ posts, that means I have to bookmark them separately. Or really, it means, I read the first section in the happiness of RiL and then jump back to the LJ for the rest of the post. [ETA: Oh em geee, this is totally not an issue in RiL, which lets you click on links while still viewing in stripped-down format. I am in LOVE.]
- Seriously, re: the above? The feature of the AO3 that lets you view multi-chapter fic either chapter-by-chapter or all-at-once? Dream come true. If you post in both LJ and on the AO3 please put a link to the AO3 version of your fic, where there will be fewer weird import errors.
- Give your fic posts very literal titles. The title of your journal and post are what people will see in Instapaper and Read it Later. “author: Title of Fic” is so much easier to find in my queue than “In-joke journal title: GUYS I ACCIDENTALLY A FANFICTION!” Best of all, of course, would be something like "author: Title of fic (Pairing, rating)." This is another area where my own DW behavior was less than optimal before Instapaper changed the way I viewed the internet. (Another awesome thing about the AO3 is the way it lets you customize what shows up in the page title tags.)
- Clearly define your scene divisions. Parsers are crotchety and somewhat random when it comes to figuring out what is meant when there’s a lot of random extra whitespace, and they will mostly push it together. It is far safer to have a row of *** or ---- or SOMETHING between scenes so they don’t get unexpectedly pushed together
- This is edging into super-pushy territory, so feel free to ignore this one at will. Minimise inline images. For the most part this is totally fine, but a couple of times I got burned by the Istapaper parser thinking that an image marked the the end of the story when it did not. No idea what actually happened there, since there were multiple images in the story before that that did not cause a problem. WHO KNOWS? IT IS A MYSTERY.
Broader fannish discussion
I know there’s an ongoing discussion on the balance between a writer’s ability to control how people read their fic and a reader’s ability to control the way they read fic. As is evidenced by this post, I sit VERY FAR on the reader control side of the fence. If you are on the other side, I welcome your feedback, but I should warn you that you aren’t going to change my mind--I enjoy reading fic a whole lot more when I can strip down the presentation to its bare minimum, just me and the story, and in fact overly complex presentation that keeps me from doing so is more likely to drive me away from a story than not.
- o -
The main thing that sets Readability apart is the fact that they claim to track all bookmarks on a given site and distribute a fraction of their subscription fees to authors who sign up with them. While I admire that goal, given the strong moral wait given to not earning money for fanfic within the online community, I’ve decided that Readability is not the solution for me.
Feedback? Tips & Tricks?
I am not every Instapaper/Read it Later user. I think I am something of a power user given the way I keep making support requests to both products, but I’m really interested in knowing how other people are using it. How do you optimize your queue within the apps? I haven’t spent a lot of time figuring out how to do that, myself. Are you using Instapaper folders or RiL tags? Tell me please, I hunger for the knowledge!
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At the moment, for multipart fic, I am using Repagination (Firefox add-on) to force all parts of a fic to open in the same window, and then DotEPUB to convert it to an epub file, which I then transfer onto my iPhone. This does not work for every file, especially if the site has frames, but it's certainly better than hand copying stuff into .doc files...
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