iPhone tip - Instapaper simplifies reading on the web
Here at Toucthip we spend a great deal of time reading on the web. In fact, we read so much that our system for marking web pages for reading at a later time has completely failed us. Browser bookmarks don’t work because we have go back and delete them using the bookmark manager. Sending items to social bookmarking apps like Delicious has the same problem, we’ve got to constantly delete pages we’ve already read but don’t want to save any more. For the longest time now we ended up loading pages into separate browser tabs that we can come back to, but having lots of tabs open can eat up system resources. These tools just weren’t designed to do the one thing we need to do; to flag a web page that we want to read but don’t have time at that moment. Enter Instapaper, sublime in its simplicity and focused on doing one single thing very well; mark web pages for later reading. This is one of those web apps we’ve come to depend on so much that we really couldn’t live without it. If you use the web for reading or research, you should try out Instapaper. It’s free, and after the jump we’ll tell you how it works.
Instapaper works as a bookmarklet, a link that you drag and drop onto your browser’s bookmark bar. When you come across an interesting web page you want to read later, just tap the bookmark “Read Later” on your browser and the link to the web page is automatically sent to your Instapaper page in the background leaving you on your current page. Continue surfing and saving just like that. No more bookmarking, or opening pages in new tabs.
When you’re ready to start reading, go to your Instapaper page and see the list of all the links you sent to “Read Later”. The links are categorized for you as “Unread”, “Recently Read”, and “Recently Skipped”. For each unread link you can tap the url to read that page, or you can tap “Skip” which moves that link to the bottom category, “Recently Skipped”. Likewise, you can mark any “Read” item as “Unread”. You can also add a summary desciption for each link, or you can delete them entirely if you wish.
If you highlight text on a web page before submitting it to Instapaper, that text will be used as the summary description for that url. Also, if you submit a url that you’ve already subitted in the past, Instapaper will update it and marked as “Unread”. And like Touchtip.com, Instapaper has a custom icon for your mobile device so be sure to create a web clip for it on your iPhone or iPod touch
Instapaper’s layout works great on any desktop or mobile browser, but was designed with the iPhone and iPod touch in mind. The bare-bones design allows you get to your links quickly without having superfluous content surrounding the main column. The links and buttons are not crowded like most sites making it ideal for tapping on the touch screen interface.
Kathy Sierra who writes one of our very favorite blogs, Creating Passionate Users, has a mantra for anyone creating a product. She says that you need to create a product that enables your users to kick ass. We’d like to say thanks to Marco Arment, creator of Instapaper, for giving us an application that helps us kick ass!
Now it’s your turn. Go to Instapaper now and start kicking some ass.
I guess I’m kinda slow…
I understand how this works in a “normal” browser, but I can’t figure out how to do it on the iPhone. I’ve tried both bookmarking and putting an icon on the home page. No joy. Could you step through how to for the iPhone?
TIA!
Posted on Mar 31st, 2008 at 4:15 pm by Steve
@Steve - After you create an account in Instapaper, sign in and you’ll see a little link, “Read Later” at the top of your page. Add that link to your Safari bookmarks. If you have trouble with that, do it on your desktop Safari then sync in iTunes so that your desktop bookmarks get added to your iPhone. Also create a web clip for Instapaper on your iPhone home screen. Now go surf to a web page in mobile Safari, go to your bookmarks and tap the Read More bookmark you created. Keep doing that as you surf. When you are ready to read, tap the Instapaper button on your home screen (the web clip you created). That will take you to your Instapaper page with all the saved links for you.
Posted on Mar 31st, 2008 at 4:31 pm by Dean Lucas
Dean — in the second sentence you said to add the Read Later link to the Safari bookmarks. That’s what I don’t understand how to do on the iPhone and I would like to know how its done. How do I get that link within the page to be a bookmark?
Thanks!
Posted on Mar 31st, 2008 at 6:11 pm by Steve
@Steve - Be sure you have Safari installed on your desktop for Mac or Windows. Then go to your Instapaper site and drag the link to your toolbar. Then, sync your iPhone and be sure your sync settings are configured to sync your bookmarks. After you sync you should see the Read Later link in your mobile Safari.
Posted on Mar 31st, 2008 at 7:37 pm by Dean Lucas
How EXACTLY did you install this bookmark? It appears to be impossible to install directly from an iPod touch or from Safari running on a PC. When syncing from Safari via iTunes to the touch, the process changes “dangerous characters” into ASCII escape sequences, which prevents the bookmarklet from running on the touch. Did you install it from a Mac?
Michael
Posted on Apr 1st, 2008 at 7:19 am by Michael Connick
@Michael - I did install this from a Mac and a PC without any problems. You might want to check out the official Apple help page for syncing data from a PC or Mac to the iPhone or iPod touch.
Posted on Apr 1st, 2008 at 9:38 am by Dean Lucas
Dean - I guess you didn’t read my comment carefully. Let me elaborate.
There is a definite bug in the bookmark syncing process between Safari, iTunes, and the iPod touch. If you’ll take the trouble to visit other blogs dealing with bookmarklets, you’ll run into comments from people who are unable to get synced bookmarklets to work. You’ll even find comments from people who have noticed that the javascript code is being modified by the syncing process to the point where the result is unexecutable. For example, the “{” character is being changed into an ASCII escape sequence. By the way, I’m an experience javascript developer, so I feel able to speak with some authority regarding this problem.
Of the three bookmarklets I’ve tried to install via Safari bookmark syncing, only one has succeeded. The other two, including Instapaper, can only be installed on my touch by going through the following process:
1. Create a Web page with a hyperlink to a valid page and then append the bookmarklet javascript to the end of the URL as a dummy parameter.
2. Publish the page, access it from my touch, and click on the “dummy” hyperlink.
3. Bookmark the resulting page to the touch.
4. Edit the resulting bookmark to delete all the characters occurring before “javascript” and save it.
That’s what I had to do to get Instapaper working on my touch. I am running the latest version of iTunes, Safari, and have all the latest firmware and software updates on my touch. I don’t know what’s different between my setup and yours, since you don’t seem to have this problem. Maybe it’s because I’m running Vista, and perhaps you’re running XP? Did you install Instapaper on a touch or an iPhone? In any case, it looks like others have run into this bug as well and most likely they don’t have the ability to go through the elaborate process I’m having to utilize, and so are completely stuck!
By the way, thanks for providing this blog - in general, I’ve found it to be a real goldmine of information!
Michael
Posted on Apr 2nd, 2008 at 1:57 am by Michael Connick
@Michael - I did not realize that there were syncing issues with bookmarklets, but I am glad you were able to work around it. And thanks for sharing the solution. I tested this bookmarklet on using the touch on XP. If I hear more readers having issues, I will publish the link on this post as you describe and tell readers how to edit it after they get it on the device. Great feedback, and thanks for reading Touchtip!
Posted on Apr 2nd, 2008 at 5:09 am by Dean Lucas
Here, This makes it easy!!!
1, Click link at bottom of comment
2, Eeww! That page looks ugly, but just bookmark it on your touch anyway.
3, in the Add Bookmark screen change the name of the book mark,
4, Save it
5, edit the book mark you just saved and remove every thing before the word javascript!
6, ????
7, Profit!
http://touchtip.com/?javascript:var d=document,w=window,e=w.getSelection,k=d.getSelection,x=d.selection,s=(e?e():(k)?k():(x?x.createRange().text:0)),f=’http://www.instapaper.com/b’,l=d.location,e=encodeURIComponent,p=’?v=4&k=N53lvCq7UOxi&u=’+e(l.href) +’&t=’+e(d.title) +’&s=’+e(s),u=f+p;try{if(!/^(.*\.)?instapaper([^.]*)?$/.test(l.host))throw(0);iptstbt();}catch(z){a =function(){if(!w.open(u,’t',’toolbar=0,resizable=0,status=1,width=250,height=150′))l.href=u;};if(/Firefox/.test(navigator.userAgent))setTimeout(a,0);else a();}void(0)
Posted on May 12th, 2008 at 10:22 pm by Dan
How do you delete and edit instapaper entries on the iphone 2?
Posted on Jul 14th, 2008 at 10:03 pm by Sharon
@Sharon - As you may have noticed on your iPhone or iPod touch, the “edit - delete” links do not appear under the Unread items as they do in the desktop version of Instapaper. To delete an item from this section you simply tap “Skip”, but you cannot edit them.
Posted on Jul 15th, 2008 at 5:59 am by Dean Lucas