Converting HTML to Text or Markdown

I’m working on a documentation project where I might need to convert some existing HTML pages back into text or Markdown format for the new system. Rather than manually editing the HTML source, I’m testing with a couple different ways to script it automatically. In this blog post, I’m using a documentation page for our GoToMeeting API method and testing the Lynx text browser and Pandoc document conversion utility.

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Mobile Wi-Fi Testing with Mac OS X

Continuing my work with mobile website testing, here are the steps to create a local Wi-Fi network from a Mac laptop. This allows mobile phones and tablets to connect through the laptop for either a proxy configuration (like Charles), or passive monitoring (like tcpdump or Wireshark). Read on to learn how to set this up quickly…

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Mobile Wi-Fi Testing with Windows 7

In some recent mobile website testing (e.g., using Fiddler to capture Android web traffic), I’ve found it helpful to create a local Wi-Fi network on my Windows 7 laptop. This allows connecting mobile phones and tablets and ensuring the network traffic flows through the laptop, allowing a proxy configuration (like Fiddler), or passive monitoring (like tcpdump or Wireshark). Read on to learn how to create this local Wi-Fi test setup.

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“Read it Later” Apps

For a side project I’m working on, I want to support several different “read it later” type applications. Looking for apps that have both mobile support and APIs, it looks like the most popular options are Instapaper, Read It Later, and Readability. All of these accomplish a similar task: bookmark a web page for later reading, and formatting it for easier reading. Mobile support is usually included, either for reading articles bookmarked earlier, or marking new ones to read on a desktop at a later time. Here’s a quick summary of each service: Instapaper Free service with an optional subscription…

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