Canisbos Safari Extensions

CustomReader 2.0.4

I’ve changed the default stylesheet to do away with Reader’s semi-opaque dark background. Now the entire window is filled with the same background color, which I think looks better. I’ve also made the scrollbar more subtle and moved it to the right edge of the window.

If you already use CustomReader and want to check out the new look, go to the Advanced tab of CustomReader’s settings and click Restore Default. (But copy your old stylesheet to a text file first, in case you want to go back to it!)

Download CustomReader

CustomReader II 2.0.3

Printing from Safari Reader now respects some CustomReader settings. The effective settings are the body and heading fonts, text alignment, and paragraph indentation/spacing. Other settings continue to have no effect when printing.

Download CustomReader or let Safari update your copy

CustomReader II 2.0.1

Safari 6 Reader has an annoying bug where, if you switch away from the Reader to a different tab and then switch back to the Reader’s tab, any keypresses from that point will be captured by the underlying web page and not by Reader. This means you can no longer scroll the Reader using the keyboard. You can get keyboard scrolling back by clicking anywhere inside the Reader page, but it’s still quite annoying.

This version of CustomReader adds a workaround to ensure you can always scroll the Reader by keyboard when you switch to a different tab and back.

Note: if you also use my extension NatKeyScroll, you may notice that the background web page will also scroll when you scroll the Reader by keyboard. To avoid this, update to the latest version of NatKeyScroll.

CustomReader II

I’ve released a totally new version of CustomReader, now with the Roman numeral 2 in the name. This version does away with the dependency on Diffbot and instead works by modifying Safari’s built-in Reader. It requires Safari 6, because older Safari versions do not support modification of Reader by extensions.

As a result, gone is the annoying delay that the old CustomReader forced you to endure while it fetched simplified page contents from Diffbot. Starting the reader is now instantaneous—you just activate Safari Reader in the usual way. The extension adds a new button to Reader’s HUD; clicking this button opens the settings panel.

CustomReader II still has the autoread feature from the old version, but it loses the multi-column mode. (I haven’t yet figured out how to apply multiple columns to Safari Reader in a reliable way.) If you like multi-column mode a lot, you’ll probably want to stick with the old CustomReader, which is still available here.

Please note: CustomReader II is not an auto-update from the old CustomReader. If you want to upgrade, you have to install it manually.

Download CustomReader II

New Chrome extension: Columnist

I’ve released my second Chrome extension: Columnist. It’s basically the same as CustomReader for Safari, except that it always uses multi-column mode.

(If you want a single-column readable layout in Chrome, Evernote’s Clearly extension does a great job of that. I made Columnist multi-column-only so it would have a raison d’etre.)

CustomReader 1.1.1

Updated the Diffbot signup link because they changed it.

CustomReader 1.1

A nice update, this one. New is multi-column mode, which is pretty self-explanatory. Try it out!

Download CustomReader 1.1 or let Safari update your copy.

CustomReader 1.0.7

Tweaked the hotkey code so the keyboard shortcut (Command-Shift-R) works with non-Latin keyboards.

CustomReader 1.0.4

Couple of bug fixes.

CustomReader 1.0.2

This version sports a nicer waiting indicator while simplified content is downloaded from Diffbot.