Chrome Distill Option

Chrome seems to be one of the popular browsers for education...(in due time Opera will take over, but that's just my opinion). Chrome is packed full with extensions, add-ons, security, speed...etc. All the features you'd want in a browser. One of my favorite add-ons for education has been Clearly. This is a nice simple tool that allows you to distill the page to leave you with simple text, and quickly export the information to your Evernote account, if you choose.

However, Chrome has made the distill process much simpler...sort-of.  It is embedded into the browser. There is a tiny trick to turn it on, but once you do, it invokes the cleanliness of Clearly right in the browser, without any add-ons. However, you won't have the options that Clearly offers, but you still can access the native distill option for clean reading. Here is how.

1) Regardless of your OS, find your Chrome launcher.
2) Navigate to the properties of that launcher, typically a "right-click" will bring up a menu to find properties.
3) in the "target" box or "launch Command" add this at the end
--enable-dom-distiller

Here is a screen shot of mine (Note, i'm running Linux and using Cairo-Dock as my launcher so the screen is going to look different)

the full command for me is
google-chrome-unstable --enable-dom-distiller

In windows, when you right click the launcher and select properties, a window will pop up. In the text box called "target" add this after the last quotation mark
--enable-dom-distiller

Once chrome starts, when you click on the menu icon...you know those three little bars in the upper right, you will now have an option that says
Distill Page

Select this option when you are on a news article, or a website that you want to read without the distraction of ads, sidebars, other posts...etc. Again, all this does is exactly what Clearly.does, without the bells and whistles, and without installing any third party tools.

(on a side note: The color of the screen-shots are a result of my desktop set up. I use all dark colors for all applications, and tools on my laptop. This is mainly for two reasons. First it saves battery life...big time. You may have a different opinion, but when I use the default settings of black on white,  my battery drops significantly fast.  Second; it reduces eye strain. The light on dark is easier on the eye, especially when reading at night, or reading for extended periods of time. Try it on your kindle or nook, you can read way longer!  Third; it just looks good)