
Readability-inspired Wikipedia Beautifier for Chrome - wheels
https://github.com/scotchi/wikipedia-beautifier/wiki/Wikipedia-Beautifier
======
acabal
On a side note I'm really happy that they included screenshots and a
description in the repo. There are so many github links that go straight to
source code and have nothing in the wiki, as if I have the time to read,
download, compile, and execute code just to see what it looks like/does.
Whenever I reach a repo like that I usually end up just closing the tab.

------
kmfrk
It uses justification and hyphenation, which is a deal-breaker for me (and
presumably people with dyslexia, too). But I guess that's why it's on GitHub.
:)

~~~
unwind
I think it would be interesting if you were to expand a bit on this, it's not
obvious to me why either justification or hyphenation makes it harder for you.

Making more people aware of such "side effects" of visual design might make
help designs improve. I'm thinking a bit about the "awareness" of color
blindness as being related, here.

~~~
Groxx
My reasoning is as follows:

Ragged-edges make lines easier to distinguish. You don't lose your vertical
location as easily, and it aids in remembering the physical location of words
because every paragraph looks different. I seem to have very good location
memory with what I read, though, so I may be abnormal in that part.

Varying space width means variation in reading words. Less variation is less
cognitive cost.

Hyphenation means breaking a word in half, so you have to hold an incomplete
word in your memory until you resume the next line. Useful to prevent huge
gaps in paragraphs, but more = higher cognitive cost.

In summary: they're bad for my speed-reading. Very bad.

------
llimllib
I now have beautifiers installed for the following sites:

news.yc reddit.com wikipedia.org reader.google.com

As well as readability available for most blogs.

I wonder if this is a trend or a temporary thing?

~~~
w1ntermute
What beautifiers do you use for HN, Reddit, and Google Reader? I only have one
for Google Reader (Helvetireader).

Also, does anyone have a Firefox port of this?

~~~
logic
For HN, I use "Comfy Helvetica": <https://comfy-helvetica.jottit.com/>

For Reddit, I've only added Reddit Reveal: Chrome:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ccjhmanjcinnojaidg...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ccjhmanjcinnojaidghpdcbfhehijaib)
Firefox: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/reddit-
reveal...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/reddit-reveal/)
Userscript: <http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/66698>

------
ile
I had this same idea back in the day but decided to go with Stylebot instead
:) <http://stylebot.me/styles/29>

------
cookiecaper
Interesting. I took a different approach:
[http://www.deserettechnology.com/journal/wm-read-
bookmarklet...](http://www.deserettechnology.com/journal/wm-read-bookmarklet-
to-enhance-readability-on-wikimedia-projects) . As a frequent reader of
articles on Wikimedia, I get really annoyed when there is a big chunk of
wasted screen space while I attempt to read. It becomes distracting pretty
quickly in long articles.

------
Tichy
Does it also remove the "needs citation" banners? :-)

------
baddox
I've always thought Wikipedia looked great.

~~~
nodoubt
Original Wikipedia is easier to navigate quickly

------
bdhe
A good rule of thumb is to use sans-serif when possible for lots of text.
Displays that are lower resolution will render serifs poorly, or just subtly
bad enough to make reading difficult.

You could give the user to switch between serif and sans-serif. That would
make the extension even better.

~~~
carussell
_A good rule of thumb is to use sans-serif when possible for lots of text_

Almost everything I've read on the issue advises the contrary, with an
acknowledgment of the caveat for "low resolution" displays.

What qualifies as a "low resolution" display? Anything worse than the iPhone
4?

------
brok3nmachine
I do like it. But it causes horizontal scrolling with my monitor in portrait
rotation @ 1024x1280.

------
vladocar
I did something similar WikiReader – bookmarklet for Wikipedia reading
[http://www.vcarrer.com/2010/02/wikireader-bookmarklet-for-
wi...](http://www.vcarrer.com/2010/02/wikireader-bookmarklet-for-
wikipedia.html)

------
awj
What are your thoughts on an option/setting for partial fade on the navigation
elements? I like the general thrust of the idea, but removing them entirely
puts navigating wikipedia a little too close to mystery meat.

~~~
wheels
That was actually what I tried at first, but still found the extra cruft
distracting, even when faded down to 10%.

I wouldn't be opposed to merging in a setting if someone else wants to create
it. (Same goes for justification / hyphenation and serif / sans-serif.)

------
bkudria
A similar extension:
[https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/oolicfpkpnpbaonk...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/oolicfpkpnpbaonkibdjkpbchakfdmig)

------
jenhsun
IMHO, I found these readability plugins for wikipedia are not good for
printing. I used Beautipedia Modified before, but I switched back to original.

------
tuhin
I was almost about to begin worrying how to search when I just hovered over
the invisible/blank portions of the page to be honestly surprised!

~~~
tuhin
Of course the other option was to go incognito in Chrome!

------
spooneybarger
Is this doing anything you can't do with something like stylebot?
<http://stylebot.me/>

------
chc
Cool idea, but wouldn't this make more sense as a Stylish theme?

~~~
cobbal
Actually, Wikipedia even lets you upload your own custom css and javascript
when you're logged in.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#preftab-1>

~~~
idonthack
This is a much better solution than downloading an extension.

------
va1en0k
awesome, but I can't live without links to articles in other languages

~~~
wheels
All navigation elements are still accessible – they fade back in on mouse-
over.

Edit: Added a note above the large screenshot to reinforce that (though it was
in the bullet points as well)

------
sfgfdhgfdshdhhd
For firefox: Add the following in
%appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\\[profilename]\chrome\userContent.css

    
    
    		@-moz-document domain(wikipedia.org) {
    		 #content
    		 {
    			max-width:50em !important;
    			border-right:1px solid #ccc;
    			padding:2em;
    		 }
    		 p  {  font-family:Verdana ! important; }
    		 #mw-panel { opacity:0.01 !important; }
    		 #mw-panel:hover  { opacity:1 !important; }
    		 
    		 
    		 /* Donate to founder banner */
    		 #JA1banner3 {display:none;}
    		 #JA1banner2 {display:none;}
    		 #JA1banner1 {display:none;} 
    		}
    
    
    
    

Not as nice as the extension linked but much better than default wikipedia.

Hides navigation panel on the left when not hovering and introduces max-width
making long texts readable. A border added to make the change in width more
natural. Change font to whatever you want, i apparently found verdana to be
easy on the eyes last time i edited this but with the new font renderer in
firefox 4 i think there are better choices today.

------
idonthack
What's with all the extra whitespace? If I wanted a smaller content area, I
would resize the browser.

~~~
jevinskie
The non-article UI elements fade back when they are moused-over.

~~~
idonthack
They've gone farther than that. Take a look at the screenshots. There's an
extra 300px of horizontal margin (150px on each side), after accounting for
the space taken up by the hidden sidebar.

~~~
wheels
There's a reason text is usually put into columns of a limited width when
being laid out – it's much easier for the eyes to follow. (You'll see this
nearly universally in print.) In fact, the current columns there are still way
too wide by conventional standards, but Wikipedia's content isn't structured
in such a way as to make even narrower columns tenable.

The Readability plugin, for example, uses a larger font and a 700px wide div
for the text.

~~~
carussell
++

Here's my PSA: if you're reading Wikipedia from a fullscreen or maximized
window on what is typical for a widescreen display by today's standards
(desktop or notebook, even), you're doing yourself a disservice for this very
reason.

