Readability – Another ‘Read Later’ App for Android
Readability is the newest of the Read Later apps to come to the Android play store. We already have the likes of Read It Later, Dolphin Browser’s Read later & other unofficial apps to serve the purpose of mobile friendly reading.
Even though web designers are focusing on responsive designs, the usability of quicker & specific apps cannot be neglected. Mobile phone users will still look for official apps rather than navigating to a website every now and then.
Readability Default View
From the out-set, the UI looks pretty decent. Readability allows us to select the font-sizes & font families which definitely enhances the reading experience. We can even toggle between the light/dark read mode. So design wise it’s a big thumbs up.
Coming to the usability & functionality, it is necessary to remember that the app has been released a day ago. So obviously it does have some bugs. The default Android menu button is non-functional for the moment. Instead Readability has an in-built menu which is located on the top right hand side of the app screen (iOS style).
Like the in-built menu, the sharing support is also native. Now that is a big disappointment.
Web View
Readability also offers a web view which uses the stock Android browser to render the pages. When I loaded one of AndroidGram’s post I noticed a javascript error. The error is not in the blog’s script, but Readability somehow doesn’t seem to load javascripts properly.
How to Send web pages from your Browser to Readability
You can ignore this part if you know how to do it. For other, here is the step-by-step guide to literally send web pages from a browser to your Readability Android app and read them later.
- Go to Readability Apps and download the add-on/extension/the bookmark-let. Once the add-on is installed, you’ll be asked to register. Go through that process and then log into Readability.
- Install the Readability app on your phone.
- Now simply navigate to any blog post or a web site on your browser and click the Readability extension, then select the Read Later option.
Update
Readability have fixed the share list & enabled the default hardware menu & search buttons. Read more about the Readability Update.
I’m pretty impressed with this new Android app. Would love to hear your views on it in the comments section.
