Ask HN: Anyone highlight text as they read? • Hacker News Board

I am a highlight reader. Going through this thread, I thought it would be nice to automate it, as it's a triple-click to highlight a paragraph in safari.

What if instead, it was just on hover? I'd like to opt into this for just pages with long text, and so I created a bookmarklet.

Using this page:

https://mcdlr.com/css-inject/

I added this naive css:

  p:hover {
    background-color: Highlight;
  }

It works ok, if any fellow highlight readers want to give it a try, but does anyone with any sort of css-fu know how to make it more robust? I tried adding other tag:hovers, but nesting quickly makes this weird. Is there a way to select parents of text nodes?

Re: Ask HN: Anyone highlight text as they read?

#35

Post by sour-taste » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 11:13 PM UTC

mostertoaster wrote: post #28

Yes. All the time. My co workers probably find me maddening in a collaborative google doc.

That's actually what made me post this. My boss was presenting a Google Doc that I was reading during a meeting. I realized that I was repeatedly highlighting the line he was reading and it must have been super distracting.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone highlight text as they read?

#36

Post by sour-taste » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 11:15 PM UTC

leach wrote: post #31

I've never actually thought to do this but its kind of genius.

I promise, it's not :D

It's more of a fidget/habit than any kind of reading comprehension hack.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone highlight text as they read?

#37

Post by frosted-flakes » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 11:27 PM UTC

nmonsey wrote: post #27

Sometimes when I use multiple monitors and have several windows open, I select text so I don't lose my place when reading. I wish the colors of the letters would not change color when selected.

You can create a custom global CSS style for that using a browser extension like Stylus. The rule would look something like this:

  *::selection {
    background: yellow;
    color: inherit;
  }

Re: Ask HN: Anyone highlight text as they read?

#38

Post by gwern » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 11:42 PM UTC

Earlier HN poll: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4839436

I had no idea so many people did this, as I can't imagine wasting the time mousing around like that; so you can imagine how surprised I was at the first bug reports on gwern.net from people having problems with highlights (from the link-underlining using drop shadows, usually). "I'm amazed you noticed such a subtle bug! ...you what"

Re: Ask HN: Anyone highlight text as they read?

#39

Post by riidom » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 12:03 AM UTC

I do that sometimes when my DarkReader-extension is giving me bad colors. Ctrl-A for the most lazy contrast quick fix I could think of :)

Re: Ask HN: Anyone highlight text as they read?

#40

Post by MiddleEndian » Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 12:08 AM UTC

dont__panic wrote: post #30

MiddleEndian wrote: post #4

Yes. I usually triple click to select the line/paragraph I'm on. If some site fucks with that setting, I try to disable most of their javascript with the "Absolute Enable Right Click And Copy" add-on's "Absolute Mode" and if that doesn't work I close the site.

Thanks for the add-on recommendation. I tend to select paragraphs and sentences as I read articles just like OP, so this should do nicely to neuter sites that try to override selection behavior.

No problem.

For those potentially interested, the add-on will remember your settings on a domain by domain basis.

Also beware, if you turn on absolute mode on a site and forget you have, it may break javascript-based custom text fields and controls for videos, and you may end up confused for awhile until you remember why.