Ways to make posts without links or distraction free
November 9, 2010 § Leave a comment
If you read my previous post about the distractions while reading online, I’m here again with a few solutions for readers suffering from cognitive load. These techniques are collections from various posts and comments, which I came across while researching the topic aptly called delinkification of the web err… articles.
Use ‘Readability’ tool to remove links – I came across this handy tool that you can install in your web browser’s bookmark toolbar. So when you are on a web site, simply click on the link on the bookmark toolbar and the web site transforms into a link free, design free printable text. But I found this tool a bit obtrusive since it removes the entire styling from the site and refreshes the page. Additionally, the tool requires a certain skill to set-up in your web browser. And then it can not be used in mobile devices at all.
Before I move to the next technique, you certainly want the link to the tool so you can try it. You may like to scroll-down the page and see the footnote containing url of the tool.
Create browser extensions to remove links – This may have come to you also even before reading this post. I couldn’t find any existing browser extension that does this job. So I think someone with the extension writing skills can think of creating one and help people who really need it. If I could make one, I would have to add the following abilities at the very least.
- Make the extension to remove links from the content area. Remove all links from the current page could be an option too.
- Make the content area auto-identifiable for wordpress, wikipedia, joomla, and other well known platforms by studying their layout. For the rest, it could use intelligence
- Ability to make the content area wider so the sidebars are hidden
- Ability to hide the header and footer
- Bring all the links back if the user refreshes the page
One can go on and add more abilities to the extension to make it work behind the scene and learn more from user’s reading behavior.
Create plug-ins or widgets to hide links – In addition to creating browser extensions, we can also create widgets or plugins for platforms such as WordPress, Joomla, MediaWiki, etc that makes it site specific and be available in the page itself next to the article. So the plugin may have the following abilities to start with
- Ability to hide links from the content area temporarily by clicking on a toggle link to hide/show the links. It can be positioned close to font size or print tool in web pages
- Ability to make the content area wider so the sidebars are hidden
- Ability to hide the header and footer
- Make changes without refreshing the page
Option in Share widgets – We can have the ability built into the link sharing services such as ShareThis or others. These tools already have large number of features for email forward or printing the pages. Existing providers of popular services can add another option to toggle link display.
Enlist links towards the end of the post – This one is most recommended approach I found on the web and is being used by most willing bloggers. The blogger adds all the links towards the end of the post along with the caption so the the user could relate the link. This also has various approaches we can take a look at them
- Write the caption (like WikiWords) and give a link to it
- Write a title in relateable words along with the entire visible hyperlinked URL
- Write small phrases from the post containing the linkable text and add link to the relevant words
I’m almost certain there can be more innovative ways to get rid of the links temporarily from the stories and posts. However, as web developers, we can start somewhere and provide options to the willing readers (including me) to use these tools and avoid increasing our cognitive load.
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