In a day where we have fantastic website designs, terrific layouts and tons of stuff to check out on the web – we sometimes forget that some people have more readability problems than most.  The Readability add-on for Firefox looks to change that.  It strips all the fluff from the webpage you are looking at – and delivers pure content.

This extension to the Firefox browsing experience makes reading webpages much more simple.  Once installed, all you need to do to activate it is click the "R" icon in the Firefox status toolbar.  The add-on will also auto-scroll for you too – to make reading any article a hands free experience.  All you need to do is press Ctrl + Shift + A to start the auto-scrolling experience.

Here are a few more tips to help you get more out of the auto-scrolling feature:

0-9 : Set scroll speed, 0 being stand-still and 9 being skim-speed
– : Decrease speed
= : Increase speed
shift + – : Decrease speed quickly
shift + = : Increase speed quickly
ESC or q : Quit

For people out there who want this nifty tool, but do not want to install another add-on into Firefox, you are in luck.  They do have a bookmarklet option available too at Arc90.com.  All you need to do is drag their bookmarklet to your bookmarks toolbar – and you can make any webpage article more readable.

For those who want the Firefox add-on experience, you can pick up Readability from the Firefox Add-ons website.

Want to remove all the clutter from your favorite site to read, and get right to the text?  TidyRead, an extension for Firefox, removes all the extra stuff from a web page or article that can make reading on the Web difficult at times.

This browser add-on does a simple, yet effective, job of stripping away the extra content from news or blog article pages, leaving you with nicely formatted text to enjoy.  Since the new version is overlaid on top of the old version, switch between the two is very easy.  You also have the options to customize it to suit your own reading style too (white on black, black on white, white on green, ect).

Well worth trying out, if you find some of the content on the Web a little hard on your eyes.  You can pick up TidyRead on the Firefox Add-ons web site.

With the economy taking a nose dive, people are looking for a way to save cash where ever they can find it.  One good way would be to save on ink and paper for your printer by instead printing to PDF.  That is only the start of it though.  Here are six PDF power tools for the Firefox browser:

PDF Download – The most powerful of the bunch, PDF Download allows you to do just about anything imaginable.  View PDFs in Firefox as HTML, automatically control how the browser handles the PDF format, and also convert any web page to a PDF you can save for later.

PrintPDF – Due to Apple people already having the “print to PDF” feature, this extension (which allows you to do just that) is for Windows and Linux users.  Print any page to a PDF file, and save on some paper!

PDFescape Extension – Want to edit your PDF files from within the browser?  PDFescape brings that functionality to Firefox.  PDFescape enables you to open and edit PDF files & forms online.

LOOP to PDF for Firefox – Upload, convert and combine your files to PDF from a tidy toolbar, without the conversion getting in the way of your Web browsing. LOOP for Firefox allows you to convert and combine files to PDF with the click of a button.

pdfit – This oddly named add-on gives you the ability to convert the current page to an image or PDF formats.  You can also apply some image filters, such as rotate or reflection, to give your conversion a little style.

Send to Google Docs – What does Google Docs have to do with PDF files?  This extension for Firefox allows you to view web documents in Google Docs.  It supports PDF files too. (as well as Microsoft Office and Open Office files)

Know of anymore PDF friendly alternatives for Firefox?  How do you handle PDFs online these days?