Why is everyone suddenly into this thing that turns text into unreadable scrambled garbage?
A Chrome extension for bionic reading on any website
11–20 of 54 posts
Re: A Chrome extension for bionic reading on any website
#12Why is everyone suddenly into this thing that turns text into unreadable scrambled garbage?
"Why is everyone suddenly into ?"
Re: A Chrome extension for bionic reading on any website
#13If someone would like to try this in Firefox (or other browsers), one could simply install a userscript manager browser extension such as Greasemonkey and use the code from convert.js. Here's an example of how I added the functions to all websites in Firefox/Violentmonkey: https://pastebin.com/ZE75x0Uw Here's a screenshot of what it looks like: https://imgur.com/a/bP3bUFP
I was able to find an emacs plugin through https://github.com/melpa/melpa/pull/7990 (https://melpa.org/#/stem-reading-mode)
Couldn't find a vim plugin yet.
Re: A Chrome extension for bionic reading on any website
#14Why is this popping up everywhere right now? This has been integrated in the Reeder RSS app for ages.
Likely because the author wants to make money from it. Which is funny because it looks a whole lot like an extension of various Dyslexic hacks used to improve readability. Previously discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30787290
Re: A Chrome extension for bionic reading on any website
#15Wonder how that fits with the expansive Patents over the tech: https://bionic-reading.com/patent-trademark-2/
Re: A Chrome extension for bionic reading on any website
#16The idea behind bionic reading is similar to why I find fonts with medium-to-small x-height more readable that fonts with large x-height. Although large x-height probably makes each individual letter more readable, more pronounced ascenders and descenders allow to read words by their shape more easily, and give anchor points when reading long paragraphs. I find serif fonts found in old books to be the most readable.
Re: A Chrome extension for bionic reading on any website
#17Is there any actual research/study on the efficacy of bionic reading? If it improves reading speed / comprehension significantly then it's really a no-brainer.
Agreed, this sounds similar to Beeline reader (https://www.beelinereader.com/) which I didn't find helped my reading speed (per their test as well) despite lots of studies cited.
Re: A Chrome extension for bionic reading on any website
#18Also https://github.com/ahrm/chrome-fastread (Firefox vers: https://github.com/akay/firefox-fastread). Note that neither it or the submitted link use the Bionic Reading API and are instead utilizing their own algorithms for similar results.
Re: A Chrome extension for bionic reading on any website
#19Why is this popping up everywhere right now? This has been integrated in the Reeder RSS app for ages.
Likely because the author wants to make money from it. Which is funny because it looks a whole lot like an extension of various Dyslexic hacks used to improve readability. Previously discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30787290
I've always found these "make things easier for dyslexics" things to make reading far far harder than just picking an nice clear font and contrasty colour scheme. I know a few folk who find that sticking the text on a greeny-yellow background helps them massively and they have a setting on their PC that makes their monitor look knackered, like it's lost the blue gun ;-) But that does seem to make a difference.
I don't find wobbly hard-to-read fonts help at all.
Re: A Chrome extension for bionic reading on any website
#20Wonder how that fits with the expansive Patents over the tech: https://bionic-reading.com/patent-trademark-2/
More obvious issue than the patent (only has been granted in France, idk what this means for the rest of the world) is the trademark.