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Finch Formats Web Sites For Really Slow Connections
Posted by Kevin Purdy at 3:00 AM on October 14, 2008
The universal, high-speed-everywhere web isn't quite a reality yet, as anyone who's used a relative's dial-up or a seriously weak airport connection can testify to. Web page re-formatting tool Finch gives you just the text, ma'am, from any site you plug into its address box, stripping Flash, JavaScript, stylesheets, and even images from the layout. Tools like this often crop up for mobile phones, such as Google's Mobilizer, but Finch is made for the desktop browser. Some sites will work better with their graphical navigators removed than others, of course, but for anyone stuck with a fist-poundingly slow connection, or paying for every megabyte, Finch is a great bookmarket to keep handy.
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
wildazndude
Posted 4:26 AM 14/10/08
loband is a service that simplifies web pages, in order to make them download faster over slow Internet connections.
[www.loband.org]
wildazndude
Deprong Mori
Posted 4:19 AM 14/10/08
Works okay, but poor choice in link color (pale blue is harder to read) and visited link color (tan is not standard). They should be the default blue and default purple respectively.
Deprong Mori
equazcion
Posted 4:18 AM 14/10/08
From my experience with the NoScript extension for Firefox, I've found that disabling Javascript across-the-board can seriously hamper the Web. It's used on many sites just to display text. Heck, Lifehacker itself and all the Gawker sites won't display comments without Javascript enabled.
equazcion
chaos0815
Posted 5:23 AM 14/10/08
Over Quota
This Google App Engine application is temporarily over its serving quota. Please try again later.
chaos0815
Iain Cheyne
Posted 6:23 AM 14/10/08
If you are low on bandwidth, browsing mobile websites in a text browser like Lynx works well.
[pachome1.pacific.net.sg]
Iain Cheyne
earth2marsh
Posted 6:52 AM 14/10/08
any insight in what makes this better than Mowser?
earth2marsh
lordargent
Posted 7:52 AM 14/10/08
disable images and put noscript into paranoia mode
lordargent
TommySez
Posted 7:43 AM 14/10/08
Or, just use Lynx, or Links, or any number of other text-only browsers out there.
TommySez
kftgr
Posted 8:06 AM 14/10/08
Another alternative is to use Opera Mini on the PC. Bonus if you switch between Opera and OperaMini on PC, with the bookmark sync, you only need to work with one set of bookmarks.
[my.opera.com]
kftgr
g915
Posted 7:31 AM 15/10/08
In Firefox, just use NoScript and ImageLikeOpera. That's what I do on my incredibly slow connection. That way, you still have the page properly formatted, loading a single image is just a right click away (or all images just a click as well), and if you need JavaScript, it's just another click. PLUS, you can whitelist sites on both extensions. MUCH better.
g915
forgotthename
Posted 1:38 PM 15/10/08
finch? i was thinking pidgin in terminal
forgotthename