In a nutshell, WSJ.com has some articles where you can only read the first few paragraphs for free before being prompted to subscribe.

However, you can read these same articles for free by coming to them via Google or Google News. I’ve made a Web browser bookmarklet that speeds up the process a bit.

The normal process without the bookmarklet involves a few steps:

• Go to the article and see that it’s restricted to subscribers
• Copy the headline
• Go to Google.com
• Enter the headline (and a site:wsj.com for good measure)
• Search
• Click the resulting link

Firefox users can simplify it somewhat:

• Go to the article
• Highlight the headline
• Right-click the headline and choose “Search Google for…”
• Click the resulting link

However, when you do this, WSJ.com isn’t always the first result (I keep getting Yahoo! News results), hence the benefit of a WSJ.com-specific search.

In the spirit of being really lazy efficiency, I have made a Javascript bookmarklet that shaves a few steps off.

It’s not perfect though. Ideally, you could go to the WSJ article, click the bookmarklet and go straight to the full version.

This bookmarklet is a step removed:

• Go to the article
• Click the bookmarklet, which pulls up a WSJ.com-specific Google search for the headline
• Click the resulting link

It works by using Javascript to extract the article’s headline from its h1 tag and perform a WSJ.com-specific Google search for that headline.

This should ensure that the first search result is the article in question, although it might not be perfect.

(In fact, if the article is not yet indexed in Google, it won’t work at all. So there’s that.)

If anyone knows how to make it go that final step of essentially clicking through to the Google search result using Javascript, please let me know. I am not sure it’s possible, however; I think WSJ.com might check the HTTP referrer to see if you are coming from Google, and I don’t think you can spoof that with Javascript (though you can get Firefox add-ons that do it).

So what’s the point of all this? It was mainly a Javascript bookmarklet exercise for me, and if it does save someone a little bit of hassle by removing a few steps from the process of reading WSJ, that’s very good. It’s not stealing from the WSJ; after all, the paper’s Web site allows readers coming from Google to read for free. This just expedites the process.

Anyway, here is the bookmarklet.

Firefox users, drag the button below to your browser’s Bookmarks toolbar. Internet Explorer users, right-click it and choose “Add to Favorites.”

Then go to a Wall Street Journal article and click the button.

[WSJ->Google]

Questions? Comments? Leave me a comment!

Many Gannett newspaper sites now split long articles up onto multiple pages. However, if you look at the page’s source code, it actually loads the entire article in your browser but splits it into several divs, showing you only one at a time.

There is no benefit to the reader by doing this. From a readability standpoint, subheads splitting up the text into chunks would work much better. I assume the reason for it is to get multiple page views for a single article.

Reclaim the user experience

Thanks to Web browser add-ons, Web site users can modify the way Web pages are displayed. We can then show all of the article’s divs at once without having to click to see the next one.

Download the Gannett newspaper site anti-pagination user style here.

It requires either (a) the Firefox browser with either the Stylish or Greasemonkey add-ons, or (b) the Opera browser. It’s free.

Reporter Meranda Watling has written more about the pagination issue.

The fix works on these sites. If you would like more Gannett sites added to it, please let me know by leaving a comment here.

I have changed the style slightly. Before, it narrowed the reading area to 45 em. This made text very pleasant to read as the eye didn’t have to move left to right as much.

However, it required readers to scroll horizontally when pictures were in a post, which made reading picture-heavy blog posts (and especially comic strips) annoying.

The 45 em attribute has been removed, and now the width fills the viewing area.

Here’s a redesign of Google Reader I made called “Google Reader – Clean, Minimalist and Readable.”

Google Reader - Clean Minimalist and Readable

Like the design of this blog, the goal was to make something that used a cleaner style with larger fonts, a narrower reading column and more whitespace.

Many of the icons and background colors have been removed and the font is “Georgia.” and the reading column is narrowed to 45 em, a width much easier on the eyes.

It was inspired by the Readability project.

To apply the redesign, you must use Mozilla Firefox with the Stylish add-on. The browser, add-on and style are all free downloads.

I would love to hear feedback, so please leave a comment below!

Now you can install a search plugin in your browser that will search the AP Stylebook’s online edition from your search box.

This requires an AP Stylebook account.

If you search, and you have not already logged in, you will be taken to the login page. After you log in, you will be taken to your search results.

Once you’re logged in, you can search from the search box to your heart’s content.

Click here to go to the download page.

Click “AP Stylebook” on that page to install it.

It works with Internet Explorer and Firefox. It may work with other browsers but I haven’t tested it.