Ever found a web page you liked so much you wanted to download or save it for later but didn’t know how? There are few good options when you want to save a page for viewing later. You can Print a web page as a PDF, take a screenshot, or even download the entire page (however usually that just makes a mess of the page.) Good news – recently I found an even better alternative called Instapaper which I think you will find very useful!
Instapaper is an online web app that provides an easy way for you to save pages quickly for later reading. If you’re the type of person who loves adding favorites to Google Reader, or Delicious, chances are you’ll find Instapaper pretty useful.
First I’ll show you how to get started and use Instapaper, and then we’ll look at how to use some of its few, but useful features.
How To Set Up Instapaper For 1 Click Web Page Saving
1. Visit http://www.instapaper.com/ – to use it, you’ll need to Register a new account.
2. Registering for Instapaper is simple, just enter a username or email and Click Register.
3. After login, you will be on the welcome page. Here, drag the Read Later button up to your bookmark bar. Alternatively, you can Right-Click the Read Later and add a bookmark using the context menu.
Now Instapaper is ready to use in just 1-click!
Using Instapaper To Save and Read Web Pages
When you’re browsing your favorite groovy website, all you have to do to save the page for later reading is click your new Read Later bookmark in your browser. If it works, you’ll see a small “Saving” box appear in the top left of your browser.
After you’ve saved enough pages, you can view them offline or on another platform. Just head over to http://www.instapaper.com/u again. Saved web pages store under the Unread tab. From here you can do a number of things.
You can choose the download feature (currently in BETA testing) to download the article in any of several different formats. Unfortunately, they haven’t quite perfected the download feature, and it only worked on a few websites for me. BUT, it’s a great start on a good idea!
You can use the Text button to strip the images away from any web page. This process not only makes the page load tremendously fast, but it also makes it very easy to save the entire page.
When you’re mobile, you can use the Instapaper iPhone app to view your saved pages in optimized text format. Once added, your iPhone will automatically download text-only versions of each page and save them locally on your iPhone in case you ever lose service.
One last bit of good news, Instapaper is compatible with Google Reader! This compatibility means you can use the bookmark feature while browsing or use the Send To button to add the article directly to your Instapaper account.
I just tried out the iPhone app for this and it is frickin sweet. I had a paper I was working on and was trying to figure out how to save a wikipedia article to my iphone without risking losing it to Safari. It’s funny though the way you add the “Read Later” button to the iPhone is almost like hacking around Apples stupid software barriers.
Forgot to mention there is a paid and free version of the app. The free version works just fine. It has ads but if you’re using it to view the information offline then it doesn’t matter anyway since the ads go away as soon as you lose WiFi or 3G service but the content stays.