I have seen the glory and can never go back

I was just randomly futzing through Lifehacker when link-hopping from a comment led me to Readable, a bookmarklet that formats a webpage to exact specifications. Fiddle with the settings, drag the bookmarklet to the toolbar and bam.

Here's a sample from amanda_violet's A Box of Pearls, in ff.n default style:



Here's the same thing at the same magnification, formatted with Readable:




It's not just that the text is bigger, which is nice, but Readable also lets users specify the width of a line, with 50-60 characters per line being about optimal for reading. (That's why I had to include a whole lot more margin in the Readable example than the ff.n one to make them the same width for comparison.) Also the ability to specify things like background and text color is invaluable for reducing eye strain.

It looks like Readable is going to become indispensable for my fanfic-reading and other web-reading needs. I have Instapaper to load things up on my iPod or Android phone, but when it comes to reading directly off a browser I have found my new Holy Grail.