"Read Mode" for Chrome Removes Distractions

Many web pages are full of distracting advertisements, animations, buttons, and "If you liked this..." links.  These can often get in the way of the real reason that you went there:  To read something.

To handle this, install "Read Mode" on Chrome or chromebooks.  It can take a cluttered website and strip away the distractions, noisy ads, and other "busy" items that tug at your attention.  In other words, this:

Before using Read Mode

...becomes this:

Read Mode leaves only the useful part

To install it, go to the Chrome Web Store (at chrome.google.com) and search for "Read Mode".

Once installed, there will be a small eye glasses icon at the top-right whenever Read Mode thinks it can remove distractions.  Click that and it will perform its magic.

Click the "eye glasses" to activate Read Mode

Bonus tip:  Using Read Mode before print a web page can make the printout much cleaner and save ink!

Save Paper with "Print What You Like"

For those of you who don't know, there is a way to print parts of web pages without printing the parts that you don't need.  This can save paper, ink, and space on your desk.

Just go to PrintWhatYouLike.com and type (or paste) in the address of the page that you want to print.  Then you can click on the parts of the page that you want to print and they'll highlight. You can highlight as many or as few chunks of the page as you want. Then you can click on "Isolate Selected" and print it.

You can also select the advertisements and click "Remove Selected", if you prefer. Or just click "Remove Background" for a quick way to reduce ink use.

For easier access to this service, you can make a button for it. Part way down the page is a "bookmarklet". If you drag this into Safari's button bar (just below the address bar), you can create a single-click button that loads the current page that you're viewing into the PrintWhatYouLike.com service. This makes it really quick to use.