Screen Reading Showdown - PageZipper, Mercury Reader, Readability Redux

There's a lot of good stuff out there on the web. But reading on a computer monitor can be very uncomfortable.

First of all, the text is often shoved over into a skinny column while annoying ads hog most of the real estate on one or both sides.

Or those Wikitext articles that cover the entire screen in print.

Or that dreaded notice on the bottom "Click here for next page."

There are Chrome extensions to handle each of these problems individually, but there's one that handles them both.

PageZipper 

The first extension is PageZipper, available here on the Chrome Store, and it does just what its name claims. Install and click on the extension, and it will take a multi-page article and zip it together into one long continuous screen.

Here is screenshot showing the transition from the bottom of the first page to the top of the second.

But if there are ads at the bottom of each page, you still have to wade through all of them to get to the next page. And it does nothing to remove the distracting ads or increase the print size.

Mercury Reader

To deal with the crowded or cluttered page, there is Mercury Reader, available here on the Chrome Store. It is heir to such dearly departed extensions as Read Now and Clearly.

Mercury Reader cleans up the page, keeps the illustrations, eliminates the advertisements and extraneous information, and allows you to read in large, uncluttered print on your screen.

If you click on the Settings gear in the top right corner (not pictured) you can choose between serif and sans serif and adjust the size of the font.

Unfortunately, Mercury Reader will not display all the pages of a multi-page article.

Readability Redux

However, Readability Redux does all these things. It's customizable,  cleans up the page and displays all the pages of a multi-page article on one screen.

Caveat - the following extension can no longer be found by searching the Chrome Store, but this link will bring you to it directly. It hasn't been updated in 6 years, but it still works and it works better than any other extension at solving both these problems at once.

However, it does take a moment to set up to your liking. Right-click the extension and go to Options.

Fine tune your settings (you can see what they will look like as you choose) for Style, Print Size, and Margin Width.

Not only does Readability Redux remove all the ads and give you a nice readable, uncluttered page, it also automatically sews together all the pages from a multi-page article.

Here's a screen shot of the transition from the first to second page:

So despite its age and limited availability, Readability Redux is still my go-to extension for reading anything on my monitor.

Saving in Google Drive - Folders

By default, when you create a Google Doc, it just saves it to your Google Drive. Multiply that by all your files (and everything shared with you), and you're not going to be able to find anything pretty soon.

I'll detail two ways to create folders and move files into them - the on-the-fly method for those of us who forget to set up the folder before we make the file, and the from-scratch method for those people who plan ahead. (I do not include myself in that group, but I know they exist.)

Method One - From Google Docs

Once you've created the Google Doc, it will be automatically saved in Google Drive.

To create a new folder and move the file there, click on the Folder icon (Move to...) next to the file name in the upper left corner. It will bring up your Google Drive. Click on the Folder icon with the Plus sign.

Name the Folder (1) and click on the Check sign.

This creates the new folder. Finally, click on Move here and your file will be relocated into the newly-created folder.

Of course, you can maneuver to a previous folder and create a sub-folder (a folder within a folder) ad infinitum.

Method Two - From Google Drive

1. For those Plan Ahead people, go to Google Drive and click NEW (1) and then  click on the Folder icon with the Plus sign (2).

2. Name (1) and then create (2) the new folder.

3. After you create your new Google Doc,  to move it to the destined folder, click on the Folder icon (Move to...) next to the file name in the upper left corner. It will bring up your Google Drive. 

 4. Scroll down to your newly-created folder, click on it and then hit Move.

5. And you will see a briefly displayed message confirming that your file has been moved.

Of course, once you have already created a folder, you can just use steps 4 & 5 over and over to move files to their proper place.