Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Get your favorite fics "to go"!

Did you know you can download your favorite fanfic site stories in an easy to read format, load them onto your computer, and read them offline?

No? Then let me introduce you to the "Fanfiction Lightweight Automated Grabber" also known as FLAG. All you have to do is enter the story ID into the FLAG field, select which format you want to save the file as, and click GET.

If you're an iPad user or if you have a mobile device that can read .pdf files, you can even EMAIL the story to yourself to read when you are offline. Goodreader is a nice .pdf reading app, but if you're on an iPad, you can even open your downloaded fiction using iBook.

I, personally, prefer iBook because it also lets me annotate the .pdf files. I can highlight sections and even create notes in the .pdf file which are GREAT if you want to review the chapter later!

If you have trouble finding the story ID number, here's a screen shot of what it looks like. You can actually find it in two locations on the FanFic site page when you are viewing the story, and it's also in your FanFic story alert emails.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave comments here and I'll address them as best I can. This is a simply marvelous tool, so be sure to bookmark it in your browser!

http://flag.erayd.net/

If you find this online tool helpful, then don't forget to click that "Donate" button to show your appreciation to the very kind man in New Zealand who created this FREE service for fans across the world. I've found him to be VERY responsive to suggestions and fixes when things get wonky.

When FF.net changed their format, Steve (his name is Steve) quickly fixed the FLAG to accomodate their new format.

When the fastcgi process that runs FLAG crashed, he was quick to restart it.

When I told him that it would be great to be able to email the .pdf file to myself so I could load it on my iPad, he eagerly added the "email" feature!

He's just marvelous.

1 Comment:

Unknown said...

I agree, FLAG is the coolest thing ever! I'm having a problem getting my pdfs to reflow in iBook on my iPhone. It just left the text on the page exactly as wide as it was in the pdf so I have to either read it *very* small or scroll from left to write to read the whole line. Any ideas on how I could fix that?
Thanks!
Donna