Use This Site to Read and Annotate Articles Without Ads

Advertisements are an unavoidable part of content consumption on the Internet, and using ad blockers to disable or hide them does not always contribute to a better reading experience. Plus, if you’re trying to focus on words, even the basic website design can be distracting. If this sounds like a problem that bothers you, there is a website that can help you. Outline.com is a free site that removes ads and other distractions from online articles so you can read them in peace .

This is how it works:

  1. Open Outline.com ,
  2. Copy and paste the article url in the “Enter article url” box.
  3. Click Create Structure.
  4. The article will load in a new Outline window, removing all ads and irrelevant visuals (however, text, image, and video formatting will remain unchanged).

The end result is akin to enabling Focus Mode in Microsoft Edge or Safari Reading Mode; you get the same article, but without these annoyances – and it works with any browser.

But minimalist reading isn’t all that Outline.com is good for:

Use Outline.com to annotate articles

Outline is built by the same team as above the Hypothes.is web annotation browser extension, and Outline also offers the latter’s annotation features – provided you have a free Hypothes.is account.

You can still read articles without ads through the Outline, but if you want to highlight them or otherwise annotate them as you do, you need to register with Hypothes.is and then login with that account from the sidebar menu Online.com. …

To create a new annotation or page note:

  1. Click and drag to select the text you want to mark,
  2. Select the “Summary” to add an annotation or the “Select” to create a note on the page.
  3. Edit the note in the sidebar, then select to make the annotation Public or Private. Public annotations are shown to everyone with whom you share the structure link, while private annotations are shown only to you.

Outline also lets you share notes and collaborate with others. Copy the outline URL at the bottom of the page to share with anyone, or go to Annotations> Share Annotations On This Page to send your outline to other hypothesis users. All readers will be able to see your public annotations, while other Hypothesis users can create their own annotations, and you can reply to each other’s comments in the sidebar.

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