Chrome: The New York Times is lowering its free article allowance from 20 articles per month to 10. Make those 10 page views more pragmatic with Ochs, a Chrome extension that slims down the toolbars, brings high-res art out front and puts the focus on the reading.
Ochs (named for the Times‘ first publisher) is a single-use extension that does a lot of subtle things to the Times‘ website. The first thing you’ll notice is the pushing of the multiple (redundant) topic navigation toolbars toward the bottom of the home page. What you won’t catch the first time is that the top-most topic bar in Ochs is actually customisable, so you can put your favourite sections up there for quick access. Fonts get bigger and, depending on your system, changed to interesting TypeKit replacements. Ads are also generally stripped out, and while it would be nice to have an on/off switch for that specific function, it does make a difference in page design.
Click on an article, and the changes are more dramatic. The top-most image of each article is replaced with the larger image you’d normally have to click to see, non-relevant sidebar elements are cleaned up, and, nicest of all, the links are automatically converted to the all-on-one-page view that’s best for your favourite bookmark/read-later app.
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