Changing font in Reader (Safari 5)

No way to do it so far it seems.
Palatino 18pt is set as default.
I'm sure this will be addressed in an update.
M.

You can modify the file: Safari.app/Contents/Resources/Reader.html

Gerhard Uhlhorn - Hamburg wrote:
You can modify the file: Safari.app/Contents/Resources/Reader.html

I don't understand this answer. Could someone provide more detail? Where and how?

You should only try this if you are comfortable with changing system defaults and HTML / CSS.

Every application in Mac OS X is just a special kind of folder which includes all that makes the application. We have to dig into the folder that makes the application Safari.

Safari should not be running during this procedure.

Before starting, you might want to make a backup of the current state of your application Safari. One easy way is to make an archive of the Safari you find in your Applications folder. This way you could always remove the version you're working on and return to the current state.

Next thing you do a right-click on the application Safari and choose *+Show Package Contents+*. An new finder window will open. There is one folder in there named Contents. Contents includes several files and folders, navigate to see the content of the folder Resources until you find a file named Reader.html. This is the file you want to edit. Most probably you will not have the rights to do so. Depending on your choice of text editor, you are asked for a admin password when opening the file or when you try to save it. I use the nice TextWrangler from BareBones and it opens the file without asking (it will do so later in the process).

Now edit the CSS to your liking and save the file.

Open Safari and check out how it looks.

And one more thing: With the next update of Safari your changes in Reader.html will most likely be overwritten. So you might want to keep a version of Reader.html at another location outside the application package Safari to re-implement your changes.

HTH