Clutter-free layout

DEVONthink Tips
1

Hello,

When I clip from the Firefox extension to DTPO, it seems I can either get a web page with all the (useless) items on it, or a text-only version. The “use clutter-free layout” strips all the images, even those which are inside the article and which are useful (think of step-by-step tutorials with images). This happens no matter which format I use (RTF, formatted note, web archive). Is there a way to make a nicely formatted text+images version of the article, but exclude menus, ads etc? Evernote does this very nicely with the “Simplified Article” clipping option.

Thanks.

2

Firefox has a “reader view”, which is similar to Safari’s reader view and Evernote’s “simplified view”. Have you tried clipping from reader view?

3

I have. Clicking on the DT clipper extension doesn’t do anything when Firefox is in Reader mode, it only works when in normal mode (Firefox 56.0.2 64-bit on macOS Sierra 10.12.6).

1 Like
4

An alternative is to put a page in reader view in Firefox then print the page as PDF to DEVONthink. If you have the “PDF Services” add-on installed, the “Save PDF to DEVONthink Pro” option will appear in the PDF menu of the Print dialog.

I do this frequently in Safari (for the same reason you mention) and I have a Keyboard Maestro macro that puts a page in Safari into reader mode, prints the PDF to DEVONthink, and then restores the page in Safari. Very useful and actually faster than the clipper.

5

Thank you for the suggestion. Not crazy about rendering to PDF as these are less easily editable. IMHO DT should really do something natively, similar to what Instapaper, Pocket or Evernote do.

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6

“Natively” – you mean, you would like the internal web browser in DEVONthink to display a “reader view”? That’s a good suggestion.

7

Well, that would be nice but this is something else. I’m not referring to natively having a “reader mode”, but to natively clip a simplified version of an article, including images, like so many other services and note-taking app do.

8

There is no “clipping standard technology” so these things are developed independently. Other than Evernote, what other apps are you referring to?

9

The quality of so-called simplified clippings depends on the page the clipping is made from. Other than Evernote, I know that OneNote and Outline can produce “simplified clippings”. However their quality is universally bad unless you’re using OneNote on Windows. Bear on macOS does a pretty good job – better than Evernote, IMO.

10

Yes, been using Evernote long enough to know that it’s better with some pages than others. But generally it does well enough in most cases. Don’t know about many other apps because I was using Evernote for pretty much everything before switching to DTPO, but from what I’ve tried the coding behind Instapaper, Pocket and Safari’s reader mode, while different, did the job quite well.

11

The Extension of the Clip with a clutter-free layout do not compatible with darkmode. :joy:

The page in dark mode will convert to light mode when I clip to DEVONthink.