How to use the updated Instapaper Pro with Tweetie 2

Instapaper Pro has been updated to version 2.2. Its creator, Marco Arment, wrote about some of the process behind adding a new feature called "Return to Position." If you enjoy hearing developers sweat the details, it's a great read. There's also a full changelog for those who want more details on the new version.

I've been using Instapaper Pro a lot more recently after making a few changes to my workflow on my iPhone and Mac. I set up the "Read Later" bookmarklet installed properly from the Instapaper website. (An even easier method is to use Quix which I mentioned the other day.) I also started following the "companion site" Marco started especially for Instapaper called "Give Me Something To Read" which is a selection of interesting articles hand-picked by Richard Dunlop-Walters.

The last step was setting up Tweetie 2 on the iPhone to send web pages I wanted to read later to Instapaper. This is pretty simple given Tweetie 2's built-in Instapaper integration. Just tap the "forward arrow" button at the bottom-right corner when reading a web page from Tweetie 2's integrated browser and then choose "Read Later." The first time you do that, it will ask for your Instapaper login/password. After that pages will be sent directly to Instapaper for your later reading.

As I have been getting more interested in putting Instapaper to fuller use, I stumbled on Marco's instructions on how to use Instapaper's formatting tool (or "mobilizer") for all web pages which are opened in Tweetie 2. Despite the fact that these are published on Instapaper's website, few people seem to know about it.

Read on to see how to to configure Tweetie 2 to take full advantage of Instapaper's formatting tool.

The steps are pretty simple. In Tweetie 2, go to the account list, and then:

1. Tap "Settings"
2. Tap "Advanced"
3. Tap "Mobilizer"
4. Tap "Custom"
5. Paste "http://instapaper.com/m?u=%@" into the field.
6. Tap "Save" and then exit back to your Twitter account.

That's it! See the image gallery below for a walk-through.

From then on, whenever you click on a link in Tweetie 2, it will be fed through Instapaper's mobilizer before being displayed in Tweetie's built-in browser. If a page doesn't display properly, you can tap on the "View Original" button at the top-left and have the page re-rendered without using the mobilizer.

After using this for a few days, I wish I could tell Mobile Safari to default to using the Instapaper mobilizer!

Don't forget: If you find a page that you want to send to Instapaper from within Tweetie 2, just tap on the arrow at the bottom-right and select "Read Later". The first time you do this, it will ask for your Instapaper login information. Then you can easily send pages from Tweetie to Instapaper.


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