Readability and Readable bookmarklets

[FilterJoe]

I have been using the relatively new Readability and Readable bookmarklets extensively to help make long posts more readable. I also use NoScript, and that means before clicking on my Readability or Readable buttons, I have to click on the NoScript button that temporarily disables all scripts on the page.

Question:

1) On sites I've never been to before, is there a way I can run one or both of these bookmarklets without having to first temporarily disable scripts for the site?

2) Can this be done while still keeping up some or all noscript protections on whatever else is going on at the site?

3) If (1) and (2) are not currently possible, please consider this a feature request: Allow Readable and Readability to work with NoScript, without requiring any user actions before using them.

Note that the "Forbid bookmarklets" option on untrusted sites is disabled (the default) on my NoScript options.

BTW, thanks for this tremendous security enhancement for FireFox. It's an incredible service!

[therube]

URLs (or webpages) for these bookmarklets?

This?

Readability - An Arc90 Lab Experiment
http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

(I'll just ramble ... need to allow arc90.com, injecting script, ...)

Wouldn't it be that you would need to Temporary Allow the page where you wanted Readability to work on to work, & not Forbid?

[FilterJoe]

Yes, you are right that I need to temporarily allow the page. This is an extra step I'd rather not take, given that I do it 10-20 times per day (I'd probably do it more if I didn't have to temporarily allow the page each time). Also, given that I'm often reading the article on an obscure blog, it would be nice to still have some protection, yet still be able to run the bookmarklet if the site is full of distractions or hard-to-read style choices.

The two links are:

http://readable-app.appspot.com/

http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

And, for anyone who's interest is peaked in what these bookmarklets do: They reformat any long text article so that everything but the text is blanked out, AND the text is reformatted to look beautiful (and you can customized the reformatted style - readable provides far more customization flexibility).

I posted about the various reading issues on the web and how you can use readability with F11 to produce distraction-free reading (and on a netbook like an EEE PC, an experience not too far off from that of reading a hard back book):

http://www.filterjoe.com/2009/03/25/fil ... n-the-web/

I do know that the creators of noscript have made certain bookmarklets work well with noscript (i.e. EverNote) so I'm hoping these are possible too - though I do understand that these bookmarklets are more complex than the usual bookmarklet.

[Beetle B.]

I'd like to chime in that I'd also really like to see this work.

Probably the initial post explained all, but just to clarify:

Readability is a JS bookmarklet that, when you click on it, formats the article you're currently reading into a much more pleasant format. At the moment, it only works if I enable scripts for whatever page I'm on. As I read all kinds of content on the web (blogs, news, etc), this would mean that wherever I want to use this, I have to enable scripts (temporarily or otherwise).

Note that this is not an issue of enabling the Arc website - I've already enabled it by default.

So it'd be great if one could just click the bookmarklet and have it work without having to manually enable scripts on each page.

[NS Fan]

Yes, you are right that I need to temporarily allow the page. This is an extra step I'd rather not take, given that I do it 10-20 times per day (I'd probably do it more if I didn't have to temporarily allow the page each time). Also, given that I'm often reading the article on an obscure blog, it would be nice to still have some protection, yet still be able to run the bookmarklet if the site is full of distractions or hard-to-read style choices.

Hi ,

I don't believe that the Evernote bookmarklet could ever have been excepted to run with NS also running.
The Evernote extension has been excepted by Giorgio, as a once-off hack.
See these 2 threads for a little more background for you

http://forums.informaction.com/viewtopi ... rnote#p351
http://forums.informaction.com/viewtopi ... note#p4369

Perhaps a suggestion/request at the Readability developer's forum would be more productive for usability that includes security.
Ah, I see there is no forum... maybe a tweet at them #security NoScript?

[Giorgio Maone]

latest development build (1.9.2.92) does quasi-miracles with bookmarklets, by automatically turning setTimeout delayed calls in direct synchronous calls and emulating deferred script inclusion from trusted sources.
Therefore the Readability should almost work now on untrusted pages as well:. it should succesfully style the page, but the 3 buttons on the top left couldn't work anyway because they attach in-page events.
However those 3 buttons are all but indispensable (print, reload) except the "mail this page" one, maybe -- which you can use another bookmarklet for, on the other hand.

[Nan M]

However those 3 buttons are all but indispensable.

Is the sense possibly "these 3 buttons are all but dispensible" or "these 3 buttons aren't exactly indispensable", as in they aren't really vital?

Nice new development to get along with bookmarklets in some contexts!
I like that Readability very much myself.

Edit:
The readability bookmarks work well on untrusted now, but I just finished playing around with a customised one made at the alternative site mentioned in the OPs list.
http://readable-app.appspot.com/
I'm not getting any action from it on trusted sites, let alone untrusted ones.
Have I missed a setting, aside from allowing the appspot.com domain?
Running 1.9.2.92
Edit2: Answering myself. googleapis.com needs to be allowed for readable's functions. It does run on trusted sites now.

[FilterJoe]

latest development build (1.9.2.92) does quasi-miracles with bookmarklets . . . it should succesfully style the page.

Giorgio - You are amazing to add this amount of sophistication to the noscript extension! I tested Readable and Readability with 1.9.2.93 with the following results:

Readability: Works perfectly, on both trusted and untrusted sites. I even see the three buttons.

Readable: Works, but only on fully trusted sites (that is, the site AND all the active subcontent pieces must be trusted for this to work). I did "trust" googleapis.com but perhaps that has something to do with why Readable doesn't work on untrusted sites?

I hope you are able to get Readable to work on untrusted sites as well, as I prefer it over Readability.

Thanks!!

Joe

[Beetle B (lot logged in)]

Just thought I'd say thanks for allowing Readability to work!

[FilterJoe]

Here are my latest notes as to what works and what doesn't with Readability bookmarklets/Noscript, using the latest version of NoScript:

1) All bookmarklets can work on sites that are allowed, either temporarily or permanently
2) If you mark arc90 as trusted, Readability works on every site, including ones that have not been permanently or temporarily allowed
3) If you mark Readable as trusted (both readable-app.appspot.com and googleapis.com), it DOES NOT work on untrusted sites. Only on trusted sites (either permanently or temporarily).
4) Evernote and Readabilty were recently combined into one bookmarklet (see here: http://forum.evernote.com/phpbb/viewtop ... 39&t=10450). This is really cool, but again does not work on untrusted sites - requires temporarily allowing the site in order to function properly.

I wrote this as a reference for anyone who runs into these issues, and in the hopes that NoScript developer Giorgio Maone is able to find a way to get other bookmarklets like Readable and the combined Evernote/Readable to work as well.

[pstjvn]

I think readable cannot work because it executes JS in the context of the current web page (self executing function), thus the current web page should be allowed to run JS.
That is very unfortunate of course because I really like Readable addon and it is most useful on sites that I really really don't want to run JS (like news sites and forums)
So maybe something can be done? Maybe NoScript can detect that the evaluation of the script is not coming from the website and is instead invoked from the browser?