I don't know about you, but I'm really reading faster. And that's because I'm only reading the red text. I just realized I skipped all the blue content, and don't have a clue if anything useful was written there.
Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier
91–100 of 273 posts
Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier
#92>A study designed and carried out at Stanford University showed an average reading speed increase of over 10 percent for first time users of BeeLine Reader. Many seasoned users experience speed increases of 25 to 30 percent! So why isn't the study linked? Regardless of whether or not the claims are true, who in the hell decided for red and blue for the demo's default? The blues/grays themes look okay. IMO, saturated…
I took their test and came out 2% faster (likely statistical noise more than actual improvement). Regardless, I attribute the improvement to the obscure content in the non beeline reading passage. I'm curious what others experienced?
With a sample of that size there is no way 2% is significant. You're talking about 1 or 2 seconds right? Mine was 50% or more. Maybe I'm extremely distractable.
Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier
#93>A study designed and carried out at Stanford University showed an average reading speed increase of over 10 percent for first time users of BeeLine Reader. Many seasoned users experience speed increases of 25 to 30 percent! So why isn't the study linked? Regardless of whether or not the claims are true, who in the hell decided for red and blue for the demo's default? The blues/grays themes look okay. IMO, saturated…
It looks like BeeLine didn't improve your reading speed this time through.
i found the colors to be rather distracting and not helpful. the results of two tests taken seem to agree with that.
Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier
#94I would pay to get a PDF version of this. I read PDF documents all the time.
Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier
#95Hmmmm... 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 did find it easier to read faster, however I do believe the JFK portion was chunked with a lot of bigger words/data like years, cities, full names whereas the SBA paragraphs were simpler (IMHO).
Would be great if they could A/B test the text used. I found the JFK portion harder to read/understand and I don't think it was entirely the colouring.
Still, I think it is a cool idea and will give the bookmarklet a try for a while.
Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier
#96Yikes, harsh crowd here. So many people demanding scientific studies to back up the website's claims.
Better idea: Chill out. Then take 1 minute and read some stuff with it on. If you think it feels better try it for longer if not move on with your life.
No has claimed to cure cancer here, just that formatting text differently might give marginal increases in reading speed.
Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier
#97Hmmmm... 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 did find it easier to read faster, however I do believe the JFK portion was chunked with a lot of bigger words/data like years, cities, full names whereas the SBA paragraphs were simpler (IMHO).
The reading test is randomized—different people get different stories in color or black. The order of black/color is also randomized. It's not perfect, but it'll have to hold us over until the larger study from the university research lab is completed.
Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
I took their test and came out 2% faster (likely statistical noise more than actual improvement). Regardless, I attribute the improvement to the obscure content in the non beeline reading passage. I'm curious what others experienced?
I had basically the exact same experience. I'm a bit dubious about whether this actually helps on a computer, since I can just use my mouse cursor to track lines.
Try it on your phone—many people find it to be most useful there.
Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier
#99So this is obviously a problem, right? We had MagicScroll [0] which got a ton of positive hits, and now this. I believe there have also been a few other attempts along the way as well. The crux of the issue is velocity+comprehension. I don't like magicscroll because of the way the lines scroll down; I find it disconcerting. In the case of Beeline, I can't stand the color scheme. The goals of both software are admirab…
Thanks for all the suggestions, everyone! There are two reasons that the color scheme on the front page is so bright (and to some folks, ugly). First, we wanted to make it really obvious what's going on, and if we'd used a subtle color gradient, it wouldn't have been as obvious. We realize that many/most people won't ultimately use the bright color scheme for one reason or another. The second point is that people per…
Bug report: try using the bookmarklet on this: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E17236_01/epm.1112/readme/hss_1112...
It shows only the first paragraph.
(I know, I'm a sad person, but that's the sort of text-heavy doc I have to read all day).
Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier
#100I was ready to call B.S. on this but after actually seeing it in action, it seems very reasonable. I wonder why this hasn't been done before. I happen to skip lines very often, I'll definitely try this out. EDIT: Some feedback after reading a Cracked article with it. First of all, since the inception of the Readability bookmarklet I've always read online articles with some kind of tool (I started with Readability, th…
Thanks for the thoughtful feedback—we are talking with Evernote about Clearly integration. They have a great platform and we hope to integrate with them soon!