5 ms·

Ask HN: Review my app, ReadMeLater.com

9 points by chip 16y ago

Hi, http://ReadMeLater.com is my mvp, weekend project. Basically it's an offline Instapaper for those who don't own a iphone/ipad. I'm a big fan of Instapaper, but don't own a iphone/ipad and wanted the offline functionality. I put this together go I can save some articles for reading on the plane. Also it gave me an excuse to play around with some HTML5. Would love some feedback/testing from the HN community. (note: it should work on the iphone/ipad) Thanks!

mijoro 16y ago
Awesome, I was thinking of making something like this, so glad that you already got onto it. Nice work. Could we see a window with a frame like the Reddit comments window, where the list of bookmarks are on the left and the content is in the main window on the right?
- chip 16y ago
  At the moment I wanted to keep it screen friendly for all devices and a left/right frame probably won't fit/look so great on an iphone for example. Maybe I can add some custom view options depending on the device you're using. Thanks for the suggestion and comments!
Concours 16y ago
clickable link: http://ReadMeLater.com http://ReadMeLater.com
marcamillion 16y ago
Hey chip, I am doing a podcast about various ideas/projects/stuff that HN members are working on. Interested in being on one of the episodes? I put up the first episode and am pivoting based on the feedback I got from the HN community: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1379942 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1379942 If you are interested, email me: marc {at} ideatin {dot} com
- chip 16y ago
  Sure thing, email sent.
marcamillion 16y ago
This looks interesting, I would definitely use the bookmarklet, because it sucks to have a page always open. I would have hoped that the original page (including images and stylesheet) were saved locally. Otherwise, this is like an RSS reader, and I am not a big fan of RSS readers for that very same reason. Just my $0.02. P.S. Prettifying the landing page would go a long way :)
- chip 16y ago
  All the html, images, css, and js files are saved locally using HTML5's cache.manifest so everything should load while offline. It is for me at least. What browser version are you using? Yes, making it pretty is on the todo list. Thanks for the feedback.
- chip 16y ago
  Double checked, looks like I wasn't serving the cache.manifest file correctly. Should be fixed now. Try again. Nice catch.
  - marcamillion 16y ago
    Hrmm....it kind of works. The issue I am having now, is that on the page I tried it only does part of the page. http://52weeksofux.com/tagged/week_1 http://52weeksofux.com/tagged/week_1 I tried to capture that page, and it only captured the bottom story - not the top. I never checked the source or anything, so it could very well be something about that specific site. That was just the first site I tried, and that's what I found. Hope that helps :)
    - chip 16y ago
      Ah, that is the result of the Readability, http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ algorithm, it is a bit greedy and chopped off some of the content. If there are better algorithms/tools for scraping content please let me know.
TTDaVeTT 16y ago
How is this different than http://www.instapaper.com/ http://www.instapaper.com/?
- chip 16y ago
  Instapaper does not provide offline functionality except through their iphone app. ReadMeLater allows any device with a browser that supports HTML5 to provide offline functionality.

9 points by chip 16y ago

mijoro 16y ago

Awesome, I was thinking of making something like this, so glad that you already got onto it. Nice work. Could we see a window with a frame like the Reddit comments window, where the list of bookmarks are on the left and the content is in the main window on the right?

chip 16y ago
At the moment I wanted to keep it screen friendly for all devices and a left/right frame probably won't fit/look so great on an iphone for example. Maybe I can add some custom view options depending on the device you're using. Thanks for the suggestion and comments!

Concours 16y ago

clickable link: http://ReadMeLater.com http://ReadMeLater.com

marcamillion 16y ago

Hey chip, I am doing a podcast about various ideas/projects/stuff that HN members are working on. Interested in being on one of the episodes? I put up the first episode and am pivoting based on the feedback I got from the HN community: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1379942 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1379942 If you are interested, email me: marc {at} ideatin {dot} com

chip 16y ago
Sure thing, email sent.

marcamillion 16y ago

This looks interesting, I would definitely use the bookmarklet, because it sucks to have a page always open. I would have hoped that the original page (including images and stylesheet) were saved locally. Otherwise, this is like an RSS reader, and I am not a big fan of RSS readers for that very same reason. Just my $0.02. P.S. Prettifying the landing page would go a long way :)

chip 16y ago
All the html, images, css, and js files are saved locally using HTML5's cache.manifest so everything should load while offline. It is for me at least. What browser version are you using? Yes, making it pretty is on the todo list. Thanks for the feedback.
chip 16y ago
Double checked, looks like I wasn't serving the cache.manifest file correctly. Should be fixed now. Try again. Nice catch.
- marcamillion 16y ago
  Hrmm....it kind of works. The issue I am having now, is that on the page I tried it only does part of the page. http://52weeksofux.com/tagged/week_1 http://52weeksofux.com/tagged/week_1 I tried to capture that page, and it only captured the bottom story - not the top. I never checked the source or anything, so it could very well be something about that specific site. That was just the first site I tried, and that's what I found. Hope that helps :)
  - chip 16y ago
    Ah, that is the result of the Readability, http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ algorithm, it is a bit greedy and chopped off some of the content. If there are better algorithms/tools for scraping content please let me know.

TTDaVeTT 16y ago

How is this different than http://www.instapaper.com/ http://www.instapaper.com/?

chip 16y ago
Instapaper does not provide offline functionality except through their iphone app. ReadMeLater allows any device with a browser that supports HTML5 to provide offline functionality.