If you look at lots of articles on the web, often you don’t want to see content outside the article like the tabs, other articles, and what not. If you are this type of person, then Evernote Clearly is for you.

What is it and what does it do

Main Functionality

Lets you get rid of everything around the main article so you see the only article, which is not only useful when surfing the web but also when printing.

The following demo video by Evernote shows Evernote Clearly in action:

Pros

• Saves you from going to Safari, which has similar functionality built-in
• Very customizable
• It is environmentally friendly (saves on ink and paper when printing)
• Can clip the articles to your Evernote account for later viewing

Cons

• Have to manually sign into your account
• Color changer is in HTML code

Discussion

Many people that use Windows usually use one of two browsers if they care about their browsing experience: Firefox or Chrome. And because most people do not like to go cross-platform, they stray away from Apple’s Safari… not to mention that Apple no longer supports the Windows version of Safari. However, if you do have Safari you already something have called ‘Reader’ which basically does the same thing as Evernote Clearly. However since we don’t care about Safari or Reader, let us get onto the rest of the experience of Evernote Clearly.

Most people that use Firefox or Chrome use it because they love to customize it. And Evernote Clearly is no different. By going to your Add-ons Manager and then clicking on the option button for Clearly, you can get to all of the different options that include: keyboard shortcuts, page color, font and size, and the width in between the words. With all of these customizations you can really feel like your web browser is yours.

Another plus for using Evernote Clearly is that it is environmentally friendly. You may be asking how this addon is environmentally friendly. Simple: when printing you no longer print all the junk stuff you don’t want, meaning you save paper and ink. Also, back in the old days, we used to print out articles so we could read them later without all of the extra things that most websites have on them (like in book format); with Evernote Clearly you no longer need to physically print articles to get rid of the junk or to get that book format.

In addition to be able to view articles in your web browser, you can can also clip articles to your Evernote account and make life so much easier. When you clip it to your Evernote account you can then view it on your Android, iOS, or web browser on any machine.

As with all software, sadly there are some downsides to this product. The first one is you have to sign into your Evernote by clicking on the little lamp symbol that is in the right hand corner of your browser (if you have not made any prior adjustments). This is really just a little inconvenient — automation would be better. And the second problem with this addon is: in order to change the background color, font color, or link color, you need to know HTML color codes (hex color codes). If you don’t know hex color codes by heart (no one does…), you can go here to find them.

Conclusion and download link

Overall this is a great addon and I love it. I have been using it for the past couple of days and have been loving it. While there are many great addons that do basically the same thing, this one really takes the cake. I especially like how you can sync your articles across multiple devices and how everything works great.

Price: Free

Version reviewed: 7.3346.272.888

Requires: Firefox 3.8 and higher, Chrome

Evernote Clearly homepage | Firefox add-on page | Chrome extension page