WOW, I just tried this on some text and although I think I'd need some more objective tests, it FEELS faster, like significantly so.
Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier
141–150 of 273 posts
Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier
#142Hmmmm... 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 don't understand why you'd change foreground colours instead of background colours.... Either way, quick experiment shows it to be horrid for me.
Amen. The continued use of the asinine, glaring white background with dark text on it doesn't make sense. It's a failed product of the late-'80s/early-'90s "desktop publishing" fad in which developers sought to make the screen an analogy for a piece of paper.
The error here is that a piece of paper doesn't EMIT light. Current default GUIs are the equivalent of reading text off the surface of a light bulb all day. Stupid.
At least every GUI except the Mac's lets you set up a readable system-wide color scheme. Sadly, Microsoft's engineering has degraded to the point where they don't remember how simple color settings work; many of their UIs are unusable now because of hard-coded colors and invisible text: http://www.flickr.com/photos/forensicpics/5115887665/in/set-...
Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier
#143I 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!
I would also love to see Clearly integration! I use it for everything, and you don't need to fuss with background colors or anything.
Please give more options for colors and gradients. I'm sure everyone has different tastes and habits.
Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier
#144Yikes, 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.
It's not that clear-cut. There's a real reason to ask if there's studies here, because it's not easy to self-assess if this actually works. Reading is more than just "how fast can I scan the lines in order" - it's also about comprehension, eye fatigue, etc. All of which are hard for an individual to assess casually.
I think this is interesting, but I'd want to see studies on what the incremental cognitive load of "color matching" (not something I'm particularly great at) does to reading comprehension, and what the impact of this is on how much I can read in a sitting. It's no good if you read 50% faster but tire out 3X as fast.
Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier
#145I tried it and it actually felt quite easier to follow along a line of text.
Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier
#146Hmmmm... 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…
It might not be a problem for you - it isn't for me either - but many others suffer from this problem. My other half struggles to read because she has so many line transition errors. And she has to spend all day reading. I see a huge market for this.
But how you make money? Whatever they believe is patentable, I don't see it holds in the court. Good luck patenting colors of text. Further, the major places where you would see this going major: schools, libraries, law school, law field, etc, most of those places are extremely reluctant to new technologies. To them its not a matter of doing it better, its a matter of doing it the way we know how to do it and been doing for years. Lots of libraries still use typehead machines because those in charge are very old and don't trust/hate technology.
Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier
#147Hmmmm... 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 don't understand why you'd change foreground colours instead of background colours.... Either way, quick experiment shows it to be horrid for me.
There's an existing, broadly used method for solving the line transition errors - you background color every two lines in an alternating set of colors. There used to be ribbon-feed printer paper pre-colored with this for certain applications that involve reading across lines a lot (like database output.) Seems like that is a more practical solution.
Here's what I mean: http://www.stationerytrade.com/upfile/images/big/20122221112...
What about using eye tracking? A device could just detect you're at the end of a line, and put a small marker at the start of the next line.
Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier
#148Hmmmm... 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 suspect that there's a threshold effect going on: if you naturally read faster than a certain speed, certain design tricks will actually make you read even faster. If you naturally read slower, then those same tricks slow you down. Would love to see it confirmed or falsified. (As a note, I am probably under this hypothetical threshold; I'm not a slow reader, but I find that efforts to speed up my reading speed gene…
I cannot understand why it would slow you down, why do you think it might?
Anyway, my experience from this is that it was much easier to differentiate, parse, and scan with the ugly colours (43% faster apparently). However, my natural slowness in reading is in both understanding and committing to memory. I get the feeling that this did not help much with regard to this..
Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier
#149Hmmmm... 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 normally read around 600 to 1000 wpm (depending on how dense or vapid it is). This speeds up my reading wayyyyy past that. 1500 wpm? And I was barely trying. It does look super fucking ugly, but it totally works for me. They need to bring in an army of designers and make software geared towards legal assistants / lawyers because they need this desperately.
when i read that fast i dont have time to think about what i read. thus the colors just disturb me as well.
Re: Show HN: Ditch Black Text to Read Faster, Easier
#150At first glance: wow that's ugly. Then I read it. Fast. Consuming nearly at a paragraph at a glance when I usually can digest only a fragment of a sentence up to a couple of sentence. It's not attractive, but it is clever and innovative - well done!
It said I had a 15% increase. not too sure about that, but one thing i definitely did notice was that was I kept reading the beeline sentence my brain was 'remembering' what I had just read. I 'constantly' have to re-read entire paragraphs because I realised I've looked at them without really taking anything in. It was really strange to feel like i was processing the text as I was reading it.
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