Hi guys. Late night favour needed. What I need is a service/program or website or similar that will convert webpages into readable text only (or something) for less conspicuous browsing at work, having been on the receiving end of a genuinely kind reminder that personal browsing during office hours is not permitted earlier today. Before any old-timers swing by and re-firm the advice given to me; I work extremely hard, and that always comes first - but there are times when there are lulls and I have nothing to do while waiting on xyx or yzy. I've just closed some massive (for me) deals, and have earned some at work browsing time! It can just truncate pictures/videos; as long as it outputs to a readable format. Any help or suggestions appreciated. TSB EDIT: The software has to be able to run on a Windows machine.
I would suggest and recommend a Greasemonkey script which blocks images from loading, sets all fonts to black and all other colours to white. You'd have to find this yourself or write it, but might do what you want?? Edit: someone wrote a FF addon for it - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/textise/ There are a few if you search for "text-only" in the Firefox addons site.
Use one of the text only browser like lynx. It just looks like a cmd prompt window so should be pretty inconspicuous.
With Opera browser you can set style to B/W and disable images. It looks harsh though, most annoying in my opinion and it will probably 'break' some sites. You can also disable flash. Here is what it looks like
That's a good idea to keep them from physically seeing that you are on the web but wouldn't they still be able to see all the websites you are visiting over the network? Or are they not that savvy?
Morning all, thankyou so much for all of your contributions! Zoon; I tried your suggestion first - it worked and it worked well however it meant I had to load the entire page first (in all it's colours, ads, flash, images etc) and then turn it to a text-only page by right-clicking - which while it was certainly better than nothing, was not ideal. I did check out a few other addons, like you said - but they either needed the same thing, or ruining the formatting of the websites making it extremely frustrating to navigate. I do appreciate your help though, and had nothing else been suggested, I would have tried my damnedest to make it work. +rep. Sparky, I gave WebbIE a good try also; putting aside the ridiculous amount of crap it installed along with it (I lol'ed for having not checked the installer) - It more or less ruined the formatting of pages, such as the BBC website and Bit-tech tot he point where they couldn't be navigated easily, and one might have to scroll down hundreds of lines to find something and /or follow posts by users. If I was sight-impaired however, I think this would be my best bet. Help appreciated. +rep Lysol; I gave lynx a try. My god, it was a complete polar opposite! Instead of it looking like I was browsing when I shouldn't; it now looked like I was tampering with the OS when I shouldn't! This also drew unwanted attention, with people asking me if my computer had crashed etc. - Definitely my new go-to browser if I want to look 'leet'. Enlightening, as I didn't know such things existed - but no biscuit on this occasion - help appreciated +rep Astral, you're quite right about the rules - but it was awfully long winded to use, and then while I had the pdf open full screen; it looked as though I was browsing naughtily as before anyway - good to know how to save pages easily though! +rep Zener, you sir - get the cheesecake. Exactly what I needed, thank-you. + Rep. How do I set the style to black and white though? Finally, MSperson; I wasn't 'told off' by anyone technical/it services related; just by my direct superior. I do a lot of legitimate browsing as part of my job; but it becomes pretty obvious when I get distracted and start looking at the latest mod thread with full screen 6Megapixel images of watercooling loops! Regardless, I've always done my personal browsing using an encrypted RDP session to one of my home servers; in case these things are getting logged. Thanks all; I'll lte you know how Opera is panning out after a week! TSB
Opera button in the top left, Page/style/High contrast (B/W) To disable images: Opera button in the top left, Page/Images/No Images (If you have the old style menu bar, ie. file edit view etc., then these options should be under view) To disable plug-ins: Ctrl+f12/Advanced/Content/Uncheck Enable Plug-ins Good luck
