6 ms·

The reason I don't develop my ViewText any further is that the barrier to entry for this is just to low. Marco already has an excellent app, now reability will

by ronnier 15y ago

The reason I don't develop my ViewText any further is that the barrier to entry for this is just to low. Marco already has an excellent app, now reability will enter his market, along with Apple. Here's an example: http://viewtext.org/article?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.marco.org%2F2011%2F11%2F16%2Freadability&format= http://viewtext.org/article?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.marco.org%2...

jorde 15y ago
ViewText is really good. If you have stopped development, why not dump the code to GitHub? Open source community could use a good text extractor as most of the current ones are pretty bad on server side and Readability's old code requires browser components to work well.
- puzz 15y ago
  +1 for open sourcing it (from another ViewText user who also happened to need good open source text extractor). BTW, what programming language you used for ViewText?
  - ronnier 15y ago
    C#
- ronnier 15y ago
  I'm always ashamed of my code.
  - scott_s 15y ago
    You're clearly not ashamed of what your code can do, since you showed us the above with no hesitation. (And you shouldn't be, of course.) So why be ashamed of the code that accomplishes it?
    - jorde 15y ago
      Yep, function over form. And the function part is fantastic in this case
alvarez 15y ago
Slightly off-topic: Thanks for ViewText. Seriously. The barrier to entry may be low, but you are the one who developed it. It works flawlessly, it's fast, it's a delight to use on a mobile device and on the iPad, it doesn't attempt to distract me with ads or premium offers and it's free. If you don't me asking, how much does it cost to run ViewText?
- ronnier 15y ago
  Thank you. It's about $60 a month to host all my sites. Including http://ihackernews.com http://ihackernews.com and http://ronnie.me http://ronnie.me
  - mazuhl 15y ago
    You should create a tip jar. I use ViewText 3 or 4 times a day. If I go to a website and there's no print view or there's a load of crud I don't want to print I hit the bookmarklet and ViewText makes it all look good.
minikomi 15y ago
Sorry for derailing - is the text of the bookmarklet available somewhere so I can edit it into an iPhone bookmark?
- ronnier 15y ago
  javascript: (function () {window.location = 'http://viewtext.org/article?url= http://viewtext.org/article?url= + encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);})()
haraball 15y ago
I'm using Viewtext mainly to get the full posts from RSS-feeds into my reader, and it is excellent for that! It does not work on all the feeds I want to follow, but the majority is covered. Maybe this is something you could focus more on if you feel that the Instapaper/readability-functionality is already too crowded?
- ronnier 15y ago
  That's not a bad idea. I might do that :)
- asymmetric 15y ago
  how do you do that? do you wrap the feed's url in viewtext's api url, and provide that to the reader?
  - ronnier 15y ago
    ViewText accepts RSS feeds
oz 15y ago
Wow, I never new the creator of ViewText was on HN! You have NO IDEA how much your site has helped me, particularly on my crappy BlackBerry browser. Thank you.
- ronnier 15y ago
  Yup! I created it for hacker news. While I was making http://ihackernews.com http://ihackernews.com (HN for mobile), I wanted an easy way to view the text of articles, so I made VT.

by ronnier 15y ago

jorde 15y ago

ViewText is really good. If you have stopped development, why not dump the code to GitHub? Open source community could use a good text extractor as most of the current ones are pretty bad on server side and Readability's old code requires browser components to work well.

puzz 15y ago
+1 for open sourcing it (from another ViewText user who also happened to need good open source text extractor). BTW, what programming language you used for ViewText?
- ronnier 15y ago
  C#
ronnier 15y ago
I'm always ashamed of my code.
- scott_s 15y ago
  You're clearly not ashamed of what your code can do, since you showed us the above with no hesitation. (And you shouldn't be, of course.) So why be ashamed of the code that accomplishes it?
  - jorde 15y ago
    Yep, function over form. And the function part is fantastic in this case

alvarez 15y ago

Slightly off-topic: Thanks for ViewText. Seriously. The barrier to entry may be low, but you are the one who developed it. It works flawlessly, it's fast, it's a delight to use on a mobile device and on the iPad, it doesn't attempt to distract me with ads or premium offers and it's free. If you don't me asking, how much does it cost to run ViewText?

ronnier 15y ago
Thank you. It's about $60 a month to host all my sites. Including http://ihackernews.com http://ihackernews.com and http://ronnie.me http://ronnie.me
- mazuhl 15y ago
  You should create a tip jar. I use ViewText 3 or 4 times a day. If I go to a website and there's no print view or there's a load of crud I don't want to print I hit the bookmarklet and ViewText makes it all look good.

minikomi 15y ago

Sorry for derailing - is the text of the bookmarklet available somewhere so I can edit it into an iPhone bookmark?

ronnier 15y ago
javascript: (function () {window.location = 'http://viewtext.org/article?url= http://viewtext.org/article?url= + encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);})()

haraball 15y ago

I'm using Viewtext mainly to get the full posts from RSS-feeds into my reader, and it is excellent for that! It does not work on all the feeds I want to follow, but the majority is covered. Maybe this is something you could focus more on if you feel that the Instapaper/readability-functionality is already too crowded?

ronnier 15y ago
That's not a bad idea. I might do that :)
asymmetric 15y ago
how do you do that? do you wrap the feed's url in viewtext's api url, and provide that to the reader?
- ronnier 15y ago
  ViewText accepts RSS feeds

oz 15y ago

Wow, I never new the creator of ViewText was on HN! You have NO IDEA how much your site has helped me, particularly on my crappy BlackBerry browser. Thank you.

ronnier 15y ago
Yup! I created it for hacker news. While I was making http://ihackernews.com http://ihackernews.com (HN for mobile), I wanted an easy way to view the text of articles, so I made VT.