Idea Shower: Going All In

Thank you all for your support over the last two years and for making this dream even remotely possible.

Beta 3 contains over 100 fixes, tweaks, and improvements over beta 2.  Things should be much faster and much more stable.  If you’ve reported a bug, it should now be resolved.

A couple of improvements worth noting:

• Recently Read is now searchable and sortable.
• Offline downloading should be faster and there should be no visible slowdown in the browser while it’s running.
• You can right click an item in your list to share it
• In Firefox’s bookmark organizer, right click any bookmark folder and import it into Read It Later
• Ability to erase your local list and data
• Resolved long-standing keyboard shortcut issue on Mac w/ alt key
• Ability to disable individual keyboard shortcuts

How to Get It

1. Please read these notes.  It will be a pain to downgrade back to 0.9 if you go to 2.0.
2. Save this file to your computer
3. From the Firefox menu select File -> Open File
4. Browse to the saved file and open it

While scanning through your feeds, you can now save pages you find directly to RIL.

Read It Later support is available in both the free and paid versions of MobileRSS.

MobileRSS makes use of Read It Later’s Open API that lets any developer make Read It Later applications.  For a list of other applications and RSS reader with Read It Later support, check out the Apps Using Read It Later.

As I feverishly work on version 2.0 of Read It Later (an upgrade to every aspect of the service), RIL has surged past 2,000,000 registered users.

Thank you all for your support.  It’s been fun working on a tool that I love, but it is even better that others love it too.

Using the Read It Later Open API that lets developers create their own Read It Later applications, Mark has developed an app called Paperdroid that allows you to sync your reading list to your Android phone and view it offline (similar to the Read It Later iPhone app and Firefox extension).

Mark is currently seeking beta testers, so if you have Android and want to try it out, visit http://latedroid.com or email Mark at m@latedroid.com

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Outside of RIL support, the new version brings a large number of improvements from 1.0 that are definitely worth upgrading for.

Tweetie makes use of Read It Later’s Open API that lets any developer make Read It Later applications.

I’ve received a number of emails and support posts with a lot of great feedback.  If you’ve been testing and haven’t checked in, I’d love to hear from you.

I’m pushing out beta number 2 today.  It contains fixes for a ton of little bugs as well as improved syncing support.  I’ve made a number of improvements to how Read It Later syncs with the server.  If you notice anything funky since the change please let me know.

My focus is to continue to hammer out all of bugs and corner cases within the next beta or two and then I will begin focusing on optimizing (making things a bit snapper).

Thanks again!

How to Get It

1. Please read these notes.  It will be difficult to downgrade back to 0.9 if you go to 2.0.
2. Save this file to your computer
3. From the Firefox menu select File -> Open File
4. Browse to the saved file and open it

Read It Later 2.0 will be a rehaul of the entire service from ground up.  This includes the Firefox extension, iPhone app, and website.  Outside of a few choice features that will find their way into the app over the next coming weeks, Read It Later’s core feature set is very close to where I want it to be.  The focus is now making it better, cleaner, and faster.

This beta is the first step towards 2.0.

Some Notable Changes

• List no longer stored in bookmarks - Your reading list will no longer be stored in Firefox’s bookmarks.  This was originally implemented before RIL provided it’s own syncing so that people could use Xmarks (formally Foxmarks).  However, after RIL implemented syncing, using the Firefox bookmarks as it’s storage system has been the source of almost 90% of the reported issues.  Including ironically of which, incompatibility with Xmarks.  RIL 2.0 saves your list in its own storage system, tucked away from other extensions that could cause incompatibility.
• Text View - If you use the iPhone app, the text view will be familiar to you.  Now with one click you can switch any web page to a clean text only version that makes for consistent, easy reading.
• Greatly Improved Offline Reading - The offline reading mode is faster, runs in the background, and downloads web pages more accurately.  It works very well right now but will get much better in the next beta or two.  If you find a page that does not download accurately, please report it.
• Simplified Interface - Read It Later offers a lot of really powerful features: a number of flexible ways to save and to read your list.  But displaying all of these quickly clutters an interface.  The new goal of RIL will be to still offer all of the powerful features but have them be tucked away until just the moment you need them.
• Better Tagging Support - It is now much easier to add tags to your items.  You can even view a tag directory to quickly find a set of pages you saved on a particular topic.
• Scroll Position Saving - Read It Later now remembers where you left off on every article.  In 2.0 this will be synced to the entire service so you’ll be able to start an article at home and pick up where you left off on your phone or at work.  You can even view all your currently ‘open’ items and your progress in each one.  This is great for pruning your list.
• Faster Syncing - Changes you make in the Firefox extension will be synced immediately to the server (instead of the previous 1 minute delay).
• Built in Archive - You can access your recently read items directly from inside the app, view them, or re-add them to your list.

What’s Coming Soon

• Better Design - You will notice that beta 1 is rough around the edges.  Icons clash, colors mismatch, etc.  Consider what you see now placeholders, I have a new design that I’ll be layering in very soon.  On this same note, I have not done any testing with themes, so if you use a non-standard theme it may make RIL display incorrectly.
• And more… this is just the start, we’ll see a lot more dropped in soon!

How to Help

Report an errors/quirks you run into.  If something goes wrong: In the top Firefox menu go to Tools -> Error Console -> Errors tab.  Every error from every extension and website go into this list so you might have to scroll down to the bottom, but if anything shows up in there that looks relevant, right click it, copy and paste it to me here.

How to Get It

1. Please read the notes above.  It will be difficult to downgrade back to 0.9 if you go to 2.0.
2. Save this file to your computer
3. From the Firefox menu select File -> Open File
4. Browse to the saved file and open it

AddToAny’s button can be added to any website/blog simply by dropping in a few lines of code.  In addition, you can save directly to Read It Later on any site that is already using AddToAny’s share button.

AddToAny uses the share url format:
readitlaterlist.com/save?url={url}&title={title}
Learn More >>

Up until now, if you wanted to access your reading list offline (on the plane, subway, etc), you had to use one of Read It Later’s native applications for the iPhone or Firefox.  But now, the web interface supports offline reading too!

And the great part?  It should work in Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Opera, IE Mobile, Opera Mobile, Android, and more!

I have plans to integrate a much cooler version of this feature into the upcoming 2.0 release, but I wanted to test out a rougher version in the public space before launch.

This version uses Google Gears but I plan to eliminate the need for that in the future.  Give it a spin and let me know what you’d like to see in the next version.

How to use it:

1. Log into your account at http://readitlaterlist.com/unread/

2. In the top right, click ‘Go Offline’

3. Click the ‘Go Offline’ button and wait about a minute.

4. Now go back to your reading list and you’ll be able to read your last 10 items even without an internet connection!

Enjoy!