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Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier

beelinereader.com

111–120 of 273 posts

Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier

#112
post #60

Aside from the bookmarklet, I love it. Without an extension, though, I don't see myself using it. Hopefully we'll see one soon.

Yep, we're working on it. We have a couple of deals in the works, and we are hoping to get on major platforms.

Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier

#114
post #77

2 Suggestions: 1. It'd be very nice if you had a version that tweaks text colors and doesn't touch anything else, i.e. just like on the demo page. When I tested your bookmarklet and it tore up the page I thought something was broken. I only found out that it uses readability because I started digging when it 'broke', you never mention 'readability' in your copy. 2. People will want it enabled by default. You can't do…

For your first suggestion, I dusted off some old code and modified it slightly:

http://pastebin.com/qV8fU1a4

It should keep the layout as is, while only adding color, but I have only tested it on wikipedia. The color period is wrong, but it will show you some approximation of how sites will look with a non-interrupting beeline bookmarklet.

Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier

#115

I definitely noticed that I could read faster with this. And the colors were super obnoxious, so grayscale was my choice. What I would really appreciate was if it could be done without taking it out of the page I was already on. I would really appreciate some way for it to automatically do it and not take me to a new page, maybe something I could install into my browser?

We are absolutely working on more native implementations. This is just the first iteration!

What about a JavaScript version sites could use as a library? (My personal website is text-heavy and might benefit from a very subtle version of this, but I can't A/B test a browser extension.)

Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier

#119

Just a counterpoint to all the negativity: The increase in speed was instantly obvious for me. Will be giving this a try for a few weeks at least.

For me as well. I'm actually very surprised by all the negative reactions.

FWIW, when I looked the demo, I thought to myself, "Ok, I'm going to try to read this quickly." What was so impressive was how easy that was to do. Total comprehension, less eye strain. Sold.

Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier

#120

Hmmmm... 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.

"Jumping from word to word" is a pretty slow way to read - "speed reading" involves chunking blocks of words or even entire lines - if you watch some people when speed reading their eyes don't scan left-right at all, but just stop briefly on each line as they scan down the page.

I felt (without experimenting in a measurable way) that particularly the blue-red transitions _really_ slowed down my "normal" reading…

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