Conradish is a Chrome extension that lets you create print version of online news articles. It strips out ads and other distractions, reformatting text to a uniform, professional look. In addition, it lets you attach footnotes to words and sentences.
The extension was designed with educators in mind, those who wish to make use web materials in the classroom. It is especially useful for teachers of foreign languages thanks to its automatic translation feature.
To create a print version of the article that you're viewing, first select the portion you wish to print. Don't worry if the selection ends up including undesired navigational elements—these will get filtered out. After making the selection, right-click on it (or press the menu key on your keyboard) and choose Create print version:
You can trigger the same action in the extension's menu, if you elect to not add an extra item to the browser's context menu:
The print version will open up in a new browser tab:
Select the term for which the definition is desired. A pop-up menu will appear underneath. Choose Add definition:
If the To language specified in the side-bar differs from the From language, Conradish will look up the definition at Google Translate and insert it automatically as a footnote:
If the To language matches the From language or if "None" is selected, then you'll need to enter the definition yourself.
You can undo the action by pressing Ctrl-Z on your keyboard.
Select the sentence you wish to be translated. A pop-up menu will appear underneath. Choose Add translation:
The translated sentence will then appear in the page's footer:
The Add translation functionality only differs from Add definition in that the original text is omitted in the footnote.
Both Add definition and Add translation will appear in the menu when more than one word (but less than 8) are selected.
Add explanation will appear in the menu instead when no translation would actually occur (the To language is the same as the From language or "None" is selected).
To choose an alternative translation, click on the definition part of a footnote and choose from the pop-up menu:
To remove a footnote, simply delete the associated footnote number:
Or delete the footnote entry:
You can make changes to an article as you annotate it. The pop-up menu that appears whenever you select some text could be a distraction, however. To turn it off, choose "Editing" in the Action drop-down in the side-bar:
Click the Finish button to return to annotation mode.
To apply text style to the document, choose "Styling" in the Action drop-down in the side-bar:
If you wish to change the size of a heading, place the text cursor inside it, then click one of the buttons in the tool-bar that appears below:
If you wish to bold or underline a word, select the word, then click the applicable button in the tool-bar that appears underneath:
You can also apply style utilizing the following hot-keys:
Hot-key | Text style |
---|---|
Ctrl-B | Bold |
Ctrl-I | Italic |
Ctrl-U | Underline |
Alt-Shift-5 | Strikethrough |
Ctrl-Shift-Minus | Subscript |
Ctrl-Shift-Equal | Superscript |
Ctrl-\ | Clear formatting |
Ctrl-1 | Heading 1 |
Ctrl-2 | Heading 2 |
Ctrl-3 | Heading 3 |
Ctrl-4 | Heading 4 |
Ctrl-5 | Heading 5 |
Ctrl-6 | Heading 6 |
Ctrl-0 | Regular paragraph |
By default, Conradish will automatically filter out contents it deems irrelevant. Sometimes bylines and dates can be removed as a result. To see what got filtered out, choose "Scrubbing" in the Action drop-down in the side-bar.
Initial view:
With hidden contents shown:
Filtered contents will appear in red. Contents that Conradish thinks are questionable (but chose to keep) will pulsate in yellow. Click on a red section to restore it. Click on a section that isn't red to hide it. When you're done, click the Finish button or choose "Annotating" in the Action drop-down.
You can toggle between scrubbing and annotation mode by pressing the hot-key Ctrl-Shift-H.
Use the double checkmark button at the lower right-hand corner to restore all hidden sections:
Conradish's filter setting determines the initial mode when you open a document. When filtering is set to automatic, the editor starts in annotation mode, with suspected junks hidden. When filtering is set to manual, the editor starts in scrubbing mode, allowing you to immediately correct the extension's findings. When filtering is turned off, the editor starts in annotation mode, with suspected junks visible.
Depending on the web sites you visit, one of these settings will prove more convenient than the others. When a site provides a print stylesheet, filtering is generally not necessary. On the other hand, when a site intermingles a lot of ads and asides with the main article text, or the page layout leads to selection of navigational elements, then leaving it turned on is advisable.
To change the filter setting, click Chrome's extension button in the toolbar then the "kebab" button for Conradish. In the menu, choose Options:
Conradish's options page will open up in a new tab:
By default, Conradish reduces H1 headings in articles to H2, a size more suitable for the printed page. If you wish to leave them as-is, uncheck the Limit heading size checkbox.
To make additional fonts available, click Fonts in the side-bar, then the name of the applicable script (e.g. Arabic). Check the checkbox beside the font that you want to be able to use. Uncheck the checkbox if you don't want to see it listed. You can find a font using the search box at the top of the page if you know the name.
To print, click the Print button. Chrome's print window will appear. Double-check that Paper size matches what is set in Conradish and that Margins is set to "Default". The document will not print correctly if either one of these is off.
To find a document you had created earlier, activate the extension's pop-up menu and choose Show all documents:
Documents are arranged by date. If you remember particular keywords, you can narrow the search by entering them into the search box.
To change the title of a document, click on the "kebab" button beside the title and choose Change title:
If you're in the middle of annotating a document, right click on the page margin (or anywhere else outside the text) and choose Change title:
For selected languages, Conradish can create tables containing inflected forms of footnoted words. To create such a document, activate the extension's pop-up menu and choose Show all documents:
Select the documents from which words will be taken. You can select more than one.
Then click the Create inflection tables button:
A dialog box will appear, where you can select the word categories to include in the resulting document. Click Create to create it:
The new document will appear in a new tab:
The following languages are supported currently:
Slavic | Romance | Germanic | Uralic |
---|---|---|---|
Bulgarian | Catalan | Dutch | Finnish |
Croatian | French | German | |
Macedonian | Galician | ||
Russian | Italian | ||
Serbian | Portuguese | ||
Slovak | Spanish | ||
Ukrainian |
To copy an article to Microsoft Word, right click on the document and choose "Select All" (or press Ctrl-A):
Right click again and choose "Copy" (or press Ctrl-C):
In Word, create a new document then click the Paste icon in the tool bar (or press Ctrl-V):
The text of the article, along with footnotes you've added, will now appear in Word:
Note that the online version of Word currently does not correctly handle the attached footnotes. Only the offline version of Microsoft Word works. WPS Office Writer does as well.
These issues will be addressed in future versions.
Conradish does not capture any user information. It does not monitor your browsing history. All data is stored locally. The extension does send text to Google for the purpose of translation. The privacy implications are the same as those of using Google Translate. When you install the extension, the browser will warn that it can access "your data" at translate.googleapis.com. The data in question is just translated phrases.
If you have any questions or suggestions concerning this extension, feel free to contact me at chernyshevsky@hotmail.com.