That page physically hurts my eyes to read.
Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier
41–50 of 273 posts
Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier
#42Hmmmm... I'm sure it'll need a linked scientific study to actually back up the claim. (And every speed-reading product I've seen has usually had a decrease in comprehension rate...) It's a clever idea, but anecdotally, from my experience, I'm finding it slows down my reading -- I'm having a hard time processing the blurbs because I don't read "linearly" -- I scan content to find the relevant parts, and the color chan…
A research lab at a well-known university has a study underway.
Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier
#43I'll be testing this with different color schemes, but yeah, works!
Addition: for eink readers, would underline or italics work in place of color gradient?
Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier
#44I find myself selecting text every now and then to make it easier to read. On the examples on BeeLineReader's website, I was surprised I didn't have to select text to read it.
The examples in the bottom of the page really helped me realize how much this helps. Seriously, I read those paragraphs with the "Bright" theme and then I read them with BeeLineReader disabled ("Off") and I could notice my brain working harder.
I realize it looks ugly as other commenters have posted before, there's probably another method that doesn't make the text look so "ugly".
Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier
#45I find this incredibly hard to read, my eyes feel like they're being pulled to sudden colour changes. I find this extremely difficult to scan, as well.
Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier
#46The testing methodology is quite flawed (at least for the reading speed test on the site). It asks you to read a passage with BeeReader to start out. When you're done, you're presented with questions about the passage before reading a non-BeeReader passage. The catch is, you will almost certainly read the second passage slower than the first, since you're now looking to retain information for the questions! The color…
Actually, the test randomizes whether you get black&white first or Beeline first.
Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier
#47Does the research provide any info about fatigue after using it?
Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier
#48You can also reduce line transition errors by increasing font size and line spacing. The font in the "What is it" paragraph is, to my eyes, too small and tightly spaced to be easily readable (perhaps purposefully, to demonstrate their value).
Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier
#49Hmmmm... I'm sure it'll need a linked scientific study to actually back up the claim. (And every speed-reading product I've seen has usually had a decrease in comprehension rate...) It's a clever idea, but anecdotally, from my experience, I'm finding it slows down my reading -- I'm having a hard time processing the blurbs because I don't read "linearly" -- I scan content to find the relevant parts, and the color chan…
I found my eyes 'jumping' from word to word. I didn't miss any, and I went to the correct lines, but I did seem to be reading at a much slower clip. But that's from spending 30 seconds reading the webpage, so not very scientific.
Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier
#50My gut feeling (and the websites I enjoy reading, and what I recently did to my blog) is that line skipping is due to too long lines combined with little font-size and line height. But of course, not all eyes/eye-brain systems work the same, and I'm sure this will be more helpful to some than larger fonts with larger line heights.
I very much agree. Line height , line width , and font size , are the 3 elements of a body of large text that must be balanced. There is some basic arithmetic to this, and it appears everyone seems to ignore it. (HN's design is a perfect example of the 'meh' attitude toward readability.) I think this article does a good job of visually explaining this balance and how to accomplish it: http://www.pearsonified.com/2011…
Heh, read it (it's in my Instapaper for some future referenc since it appeared first heree) But when I did the redesign I just went with the flow and what I saw nice on my screen. After all, what I write in my blog works as future reference for me, too :)