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October 29th, 2008
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Read It Later 0.99 Released

Nate Weiner - Posted in Blog, ,

Sort By Quality with PostRank


Read It Later is a great tool for saving things to read later, but now it’s great for helping you actually READ those pages too!  By sorting your list by PostRank (from AideRss), you can quickly find what’s worth a read and start with your best content first.

Google Reader Integration


If you use Google Reader to manage your RSS feeds, you’ll now find the familiar Read It Later checkmark right next to the Google Reader star.  You can now save directly to your reading list from Google Reader!

Customize Read It Later


Now you can take full advantage of all the features of Read It Later without the UI bloat.  Almost all of Read It Later’s components can be hidden and/or customized to your liking.  You can use all of the provided elements or even run Read It Later from a single 10×10 icon in the location bar.

New Appearance Options:

  • Choose between two list views (Normal and Condensed)
  • Open Read It Later in the sidebar
  • Select how many items to show per page
  • Use a scrollable list instead of a paged reading list
  • Enable/Disable Read It Later context menus and additional toolbar buttons

Updated Online Access


Read It Later isn’t just for Firefox anymore.  You can manage your list online at readitlaterlist.com and use the provided bookmarklets to maintain Read It Later’s core functionality regardless of the browser you have.  So if you have Firefox at home, Internet Explorer at work and an Iphone in between, you won’t have any problem keeping your list up to date.

Privacy Controls

It’s your data.  It’s that simple.  You can now delete individual items from Read It Later’s online storage or even wipe your entire account.  And of course if you don’t want any of your list saved online you can still disable the online access and Read It Later will only save locally.

Additionally, you may now password protect your RSS feed to ensure privacy while still taking advantage of the online features.

Improved Existing Features

Syncing

A new syncing system has been implemented to provide stability and ensure your list stays up to date no matter how many computers you have.  Updated sync options and setup gives you easier control over your sync setup.

Offline Mode

You can now have Read It Later automatically save an offline copy of every page you add to your list.  And the new Offline Cache Manager will allow you to control/view what has been saved.

Additional Updates

  • Firefox 3.1b compatibility
  • Full Ubuntu support
  • Option to control how ‘click-to-save’ checkmarks appear
  • Option to hide the plaintext password inside the sync settings
  • Ability to select a Read It Later folder in the Bookmarks Toolbar
  • Improved foriegn characters support
  • Read It Later button can be ctrl/shift/middle clicked with the same behavior standard Firefox links
  • Option to close the current tab when saving a page

What Next?

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Comments (20)


  1. Your extension is getting better and better. Great features! Thank you!

    October 30th, 2008 Dan Andresan

  2. Full Ubuntu support -> nice Updates

    It works perfectly now. Great job.

    October 30th, 2008 Dominic

  3. Sweet fancy Moses, RIL just keeps getting better and better. Best Ffx add-on EVER. Kudos to you for providing this to the OS community and keep up the excellent work!

    http://www.fansoftech.com/2008/10/30/the-best-ever-firefox-add-on-just-got-better/

    October 30th, 2008 Jason

  4. I just got this update, and then I have new problems:

    Clicking the Read It Later button does nothing! :(

    Click the Address Bar Red Checkmark also does nothing (mine is set to display the next unread item).

    October 30th, 2008 thenonhacker

  5. Actually, looks like this is the thread to ask this in. Is there a keyboard shortcut for the checkmark in Google Reader? Some of us navigate through Reader using the ‘j’, ‘k’, ‘v’, etc. keys and I’m hoping that there’s a similar one for RIL …

    October 30th, 2008 Mike Harris

  6. Great update. I especially like the Google Reader integration.

    All I want to know is how great does this add-on have to be before it is able to makes it to the 1.0 release version? This seems like at least a 2.0 release to me.

    October 31st, 2008 Matt

  7. a great thig would be shortcut in google reader without the needs of using the mouse to read it later :)

    October 31st, 2008 marco

  8. I’m pleased as punch to see the offline feature I suggested implemented!

    But I still have some other feedback. :)

    1) Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that when the PageRanking feature is enabled, readitlater seems to randomly choose to update it? I find this a little odd - pageranks hardly ever change, so why couldn’t they be stored once and never touched again?
    I haven’t quite figured out why a pageranking session is started, but I think it’s just ‘whenever the list of read-it-laters is changed’. You can experiment by hitting mod-w twice on a page (adding, and then removing it - for no net change), and then mod-q. That seems to guarantee a sorting session.
    2) Any chance of adding the usual keyboard shortcuts on the mod-q interface? I’m so used to right-clicking on a link and hitting ‘t’ to open it in a new tab, that it’s quite jarring for me to realise that I have to use the mouse again after the rightclick, because neither ‘Open in new window’ nor ‘Open in new tab’ have shortcuts.

    October 31st, 2008 gwern

  9. @Matt

    Haha, the next major release will likely be RIL out of beta. It’s evolved so much during the past year that almost every major release was a rework of the previous so I’ve been hesitant to declare it completely stable until it’s been in the wild longer.

    November 1st, 2008 Nate Weiner

  10. @Marco

    Thanks, that’s a good idea, I’ll work that into the next release.

    November 1st, 2008 Nate Weiner

  11. @gwern

    1. It’s actually not ‘PageRank’, it’s PostRank, which you can read about here: http://postrank.com/ PostRank changes very frequently. RIL uses their thematic PostRank which changes based on the items in your list comparatively. Therefore, with every change to your list, the PostRank has the potential to change.

    2. A few other users have suggested this and I’m going to work on including it in a feature release.

    November 1st, 2008 Nate Weiner

  12. RIL is great, like the google reader intergration, no problems to report at the moment

    November 1st, 2008 scott

  13. I had looked at read it later a long time ago, as a potential way to help organize the torrent of unread items that flow into my google reader, but was disappointed to find that i could only mark the acutal pages. While the new reader integration is a step in the right direction, and along with the must-have syncing, i decided it again.

    Its almost there! Unfortunately, it is not quite coupled closely enough to google reader for me to use it full time, and I think I’ll have to resort to leaving items unread.

    My concern is that there is no way from within reader to see which items have been marked for reading later. I know that the proposed workflow would be to mark it read and RIL, then just use the read it later list to go back to those items, however, with the amount of feeds I have, I have gotten used to using reader as my go-to source for information and things ive read. I do nearly ALL my reading in reader, and dont want to change that.

    All that really is lacking, is the ability to view only the items that you have checked RIL in reader, something like google’s ’starred’ view, or AideRSS’ postrank filtering. If it were possible to narrow down the RIL items to a particular feed or folder, that would be even better!

    November 3rd, 2008 nick

  14. Thank you! I love the app. I just started using it (at ver .9924). Works great, no problems so far. Just read the recent enhancements/features added… very cool. I really like the “Save Mode” functionality.

    Thanks again,

    Mike

    November 3rd, 2008 Mike Roberts

  15. Way to go! RIL is really getting GOOD now. Keep up the great work! Keep the interface elegant, clean, and simple, keep the underlying code solid, and don’t add bloat.

    November 3rd, 2008 RIL is Awesome

  16. Is there any way of adding custom links to the ‘Mark It As Read And Add It To…’ section?

    For example, I use a few Webpage change detection services (Feedwhip.com, http://www.changedetection.com and so on. ) It’d be great if I could get RIL to add a page to these services, so as well as saying I have read the current page I will then get notified when that page later changes.

    So, is it possible to support ChangeDetection.com or Feedwhip.com natively, or give us the ability to extend the list of sites supported?

    Rob

    November 11th, 2008 Rob

  17. I am very impressed with the additions this release Nate. Keep up the great work and keep in touch!

    November 11th, 2008 MikeonTV

  18. Uh oh. I’m getting a problem with the lastest version. It seems if I hit the “Read something from your reading list” button once my list gets a mind of it’s own and randomly goes to another link I have saved. Every 5 seconds or so it reloads another page.

    I’m running FF 3.0.3 on Win XP SP3 and have moved the whereabouts of my Firefox profile folder (if that means anything).

    I’m going to to further test it in a bit.

    November 11th, 2008 MikeonTV

  19. A great add-on, exactly what I needed, have been using it a few months now, and I am thoroughly satisfied. Thank you.

    But … I can’t find how to delete a url I don’t want any more in the list. Please give advice.

    Karen

    January 24th, 2009 Karen

  20. Love the tool! I would like an easier way of deleting read pages from off my list. How about adding a RED X next to the checkmark that allows one to delete the page from off the reading list?

    February 7th, 2009 John Blackham

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