
I want the world to scroll this way - rdwallis
http://www.magicscroll.net/ScrollTheWeb.html
======
munificent
This seems to result in a large number of cases where the visual experience is
pointless. The line separating the previous and next page is tiny and easy to
miss, and I don't see the use in two torn half-pages on screen.

I agree that smooth scrolling long text is hard to read and trips up line
scanning, but this UX seems be like playing an cruel game where I have to drag
just enough to scroll a whole page. Any more or less and I get a torn page
that's even harder to read than normal scrolling.

I have an alternate solution to this problem: _just hit space or page down_
when you're reading a long web page. It scrolls a whole page, with just enough
animation to help you track where you are.

~~~
btilly
Your alternate solution gets annoying if the page has a header overlaying the
text. Like Google+ does. Then you scroll a page, and have to scroll back a
little.

That said, this solution will also break in that situation. But it will break
worse since there will be no way to get the text at the top to scroll into
view.

~~~
acabal
That's why I utterly loath the stupid new trend of having fixed headers. They
mess up my reading experience and honestly I thought we all ditched iframes a
decade ago because even then we realized that putting frames everywhere isn't
usable.

~~~
augustl
I wish my browser had a setting called "disable scroll events and position:
fixed"..

~~~
itry
You could write a bookmarklet for that.

I often use the "page style: no style" in firefox setting in firefox in the
view menu. That gets rid of fixed positions and a lot of other annoyances.

~~~
tripzilch
I already did:

    
    
        javascript:for(var a=document.querySelectorAll('*'),i=0,e; e=a[i]; i++) if (e.currentStyle.position == 'fixed') e.style.position = 'static'; void(0)
    

I nicknamed the bookmark "fix", so I can just type "fix" in the address bar to
fix those pesky fixed elements.

It works perfectly. Well, I vaguely recall there was one site, where it didn't
work, don't remember which one (nor cared to figure out why it didn't). At
first I was worried that looping over all elements on a page would be too
inefficient, but JS is so fast nowadays, there's no noticeable delay. Also,
there's no getElementsByStyle method, so I'm not sure how to even go about
optimizing that loop.

------
kafkaesque
I was born with pretty severe strabismus and underwent a few major eye
surgeries throughout my life.

One of the side effects of being born with this condition is missing lines
when reading a book. Growing up with computers, I always found it a little
difficult to follow long lines of text or the next line as I scroll.

I'm a lot older now and hardly have these problems, if ever at all. I've
pretty much perfected guessing varying levels of depth perception, I guess, as
this effects my stereoscopic vision. I'm not sure what goes on at the
neurological level or 'lower level', however.

Anyway, you don't know how natural it felt to read this. It almost worked too
well, so I would like to test it out a little more before, just because I'm a
natural sceptic.

Regardless, kudos on this great work and creative thinking.

And yes, it almost did feel like words 'moved' a little sometimes when I was a
child and was still developing strong optic/extraocular muscles. It is
difficult to explain/articulate, especially since it happened such a long time
ago and I'm working from memory, though.

~~~
welder
Try this:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/beeline-
reader/lca...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/beeline-
reader/lcacgebkomahcbghabmikokgjkflmlko)

It color codes lines aiming to solve missing or loosing your place while
reading.

~~~
Anm
Admittedly, I didn't try it in any real world setting, but my gut reaction was
horror. Even reading through the example paragraph, I did not find the
gradients as useful landmarks.

But it does make me wonder if other forms of spatial landmarks could be
employed in large paragraph text. Perhaps enlarge the start of each, if only
for a couple of words, in a way that quickly tappers back to the normal text
height. Extreme run-on sentences might require subclauses to be highlighted
similarly. Line spacing should accommodate the extra needed height, but remain
regular, making the whole document appear double spaced.

At least, that is the picture in my head. It might not do any better than this
Beeline reader.

~~~
thisisnotatest
+1. The gradient just makes the page look confusing, and my eyes gained none
of the imagined advantage of "you were just looking at red, so look for red...
look for red... there's the next line!"

I might actually like it better if it just colored one line red, the next line
blue, and so on. Absolute positioning instead of all this clever gradient
stuff.

------
jiaaro
Honestly... this made things confusing without improving my reading ability.

a lot of people actually like scrolling. So many people in fact, that they
successfully pressured Apple to add scrolling as an alternative to pagination
in iBooks.

I'm one of the people who uses that. I'm trying to be polite, but my honest
reaction to this interface was, "oh god, this is awful," when I tried to use
the mouse to scroll the page.

~~~
lazyGeneral
It would be a lot less confusing if the text from the previous page
dissapeared...or if that line that follows you worked not with pages but as a
scroll....

The line is the interesting feature.

~~~
sliverstorm
Or if the dividing line was twenty times thicker. When pages are narrow, my
brain tends to start reading the next line before it is finished reading the
first line. Imagine how well this works out for me when the "next line" is not
only from the previous page, but currently cut in half by the scroll line.

------
msutherl
1\. One downside of this interface is that it's difficult to keep track of
where you are. The scroll metaphor is broken and the pagination metaphor is
not fully implemented (you need an indicator of where you are, like pages in a
real book). The percentage indicator doesn't cut it.

2\. Control feels too fine. It's too easy to lose your place and mental effort
needs to be devoted to properly placing the page divider. I would like to see
a version that scrolls in discrete steps by line, perhaps with a little
smoothing by way of animation. This would also give you a new feature: using
the divider as a reading aid as people often do with rulers and real books.

Think of it this way: you have two controls, page turn and pixel-advance. What
is a control with granularity somewhere between those interfaces that combines
some of the advantages of both for navigating?

3\. I'm not convinced by the divider. I think it either needs to communicate a
visual metaphor, perhaps implying that the new page comes out on top of the
current page using shadows, or just needs to be softer using blurring or
fading the adjacent text out to white. And I don't think you should be able to
cut a line of text in half (addressed in (2)).

~~~
wtracy
If you scroll using a touchpad the divider moves exactly one text line at a
time. The problem is "clicky" mouse wheels that try to enforce their own units
of movement.

~~~
crymer11
Not on my Macbook Pro running the latest Chrome on Mac OS 10.8. I'm able to
move the divider and show partial lines of both the old and new text.

------
pertinhower
Nice idea, badly implemented.

The interface teaches me how to use it very badly. The most obvious interface
clues are the arrows to either side of the page, but these work in the usual
manner (hopping from page to page), so they distract me from the heart of your
interface.

When I do happen to mousewheel, I can't immediately understand what that does.
Am I moving myself or a divider? Why is the divider coming from the top?
What's above the divider? Why is it snapping like that, instead of scrolling
smoothly? The snapping erects a level of indirection between my (smooth) wheel
movement and the movement of the divider, which obscures my ability to
understand what's happening. I can't decide whether to scroll upwards or
downwards—which is "forwards?"

Why is there a white page "behind" the text if I scroll the divider upwards?
Is that what's on the next page or the previous page? Why are you showing me a
white page?

The sense that I'm reading downward yet new text comes from above feels very
strange. I see how you've ended up here, but it's highly unintuitive. Alas,
it's also fundamental to your concept, so whether the concept lives or dies
(once all other problems are removed) is a question of whether people can
adapt to this spatial "warp."

The "snappy" movement of the page divider line feels clunky. Move per pixel,
in immediate response to mouse wheel (or touch drag?) movement—preferably with
inertia—definitely not per line.

This is not the way I want the world to scroll. But I see where you're going:
leaving the text in place makes sense, and if you're going to do that then
using a divider from the top follows inevitably. So the idea is worthwhile,
but this implementation is its own enemy.

~~~
fastball
I think you're over-engineering your analysis... I immediately knew what was
going on when I started scrolling, so I don't share your view that it is
counter-intuitive.

Also, I think your problem with the scrolling is your mouse. Does your mouse
have a smoothly scrolling middle button, or is it one of the ones that moves
in clicks? Scrolling with my touchpad worked excellently.

You only see a white page when you are before the beginning of the text you
are trying to read... otherwise scrolling up results in going to the previous
page.

~~~
masklinn
I can only say that, scrolling with a touchpad gesture (OSX), I fully agree
with pertinhower and completely disagree with yours.

~~~
fastball
I too am on OSX (10.8.2) Perhaps it is your browser? I am using Chrome (Latest
Version - 24.0.1312.52)

------
ChuckMcM
Its a neat experiment. It reminded me of the scroll wars of yore, when the
VT100 came out it had "smooth scroll" as an option vs "jump scroll" and there
were long and heated debates about which was better. I personally found 'jump
scroll' better but that was just me.

The moving bar revealing text is ok for keeping text from moving but it feels
weird when part of the page is from one page and another part is from another.
Reading with the arrows to just 'flip' the pages worked better for me.

Because the 'next' page starts at the top, it creates pagination / layout
issues when a paragraph is split between the top and bottom of the page with
the scroll line. This is tolerable in page flips because the previous part of
the paragraph is gone, but distracting in partially turned pages.

All in all it was an interesting thing to look at and think about though.

~~~
jws
Some of us remember…

The _Guide to VMS Performance Management_ [1] suggested that you enable smooth
scrolling on your VTxxx terminals and cut your user's baud rate from 9600 to
4800 in order to support more users, since the smooth scrollers wouldn't
notice that their baud rate was lower. Yeah, I was a jumper.

[1]
[http://odl.sysworks.biz/disk$cddoc04mar21/decw$book/d32va177...](http://odl.sysworks.biz/disk$cddoc04mar21/decw$book/d32va177.p205.decw$book)
[2]

[2] I can remember enough of this paragraph from the '80s to google it in one
go, but I can't remember my wife's cell phone number. I should have words with
this brain.

~~~
ChuckMcM
_[2] I can remember enough of this paragraph from the '80s to google it in one
go, but I can't remember my wife's cell phone number. I should have words with
this brain._

I would gladly give up my catalog of lyrics to songs from the 1970's in
exchange for additional memory capacity! :-) I just wish someone had told me
in my youth "Don't memorize that stuff, you'll need those neurons later, trust
me."

------
huggah
This is great! I'm glad you're experimenting. I don't like this particular
experiment, however. I far prefer using space / page down to handle a page of
text at a time. I don't see much benefit to your method instead, and among
other things, I miss having consistent visual anchors when I read.

~~~
gavinlynch
It's a very interested and unique way of looking at scrolling, that's for
sure. And I'm with you, I like this type of experimentation.

One thing I find tough to deal with is the default amount of characters
"scrolled" for a given mouse wheel move: the default takes way too long for my
tastes. I find around 50 characters a lot nicer. Also, what about co-opting
the scrollbar? It's a much more natural and smooth scroll as compared to the
mousewheel, giving users more precise control over how much to scroll.

------
artursapek
Do you have evidence to support your claim that the true problem is moving
words? I'm really not convinced. I feel especially with OS X's inertial
scrolling that I can naturally keep track of where I am in an article while
scrolling, it has never bothered me.

This just feels like fancy pagination. I tried partially scrolling ahead as I
was reading and it disoriented me further, because the upcoming text was
showing up at the top, behind where my eyes were, replacing the old text. This
is confusing and not better.

~~~
wtracy
Have you ever tried reading a web page over a person's shoulder while they
occasionally scroll up and down? It's really jarring (though turning on
Firefox's "smooth scrolling" helps.)

I'm not sure that I like the results of this experiment, but I completely
understand the motivation behind it.

~~~
scott_s
I'm not sure that's relevant, though, because someone else is controlling the
scrolling according to what _they_ are reading. That it interferes with your
reading is unsurprising, and I don't think says much about the reading
experience when you are in control.

~~~
tokipin
my mom has trouble using computers because of the scrolling. i imagine it's
something in the same category as how i can't read anything in a moving
vehicle without getting a ginormous headache, but other people don't have
trouble with it :|

~~~
scott_s
Okay, but that's kind of a non-sequitur in reply to my comment, which was
pointing out that you can't conclude much about reading-with-scrolling when
someone else controls the scrolling.

------
Sandman
I'm not sure if this is really an improvement. With traditional scrolling, my
eyes stay at about the same position while I scroll. With this scrolling,
however, after I've finished reading the last line, I need to look up again.
And when I scroll backwards, I need to constantly remind myself to look down
after I've read the topmost line. Traditional scrolling doesn't brake the
reading rhythm (at least in my case), but this one does.

~~~
jiggy2011
I agree, it's easier to read when you can keep your eyes at approximately the
same level.

Even when reading something on paper I'll find myself actually moving the book
itself further away from me as I read down the page.

This design is also harder to skim, because you need to keep moving your eyes
back up as you scroll.

~~~
artursapek
It is in fact impossible to skim with this. You're very right.

------
Dove
Not an improvement for me.

I almost always keep what I'm reading near the top of the screen. I like to be
able to scan ahead, read the lead lines on coming paragraphs, see how close I
am to the end of the sentence/paragraph/chapter, or even just track my
position in the larger context of the piece. Pagination disrupts that near the
bottom of a page.

I can live with pagination if I have to, but I much prefer to scroll. It's
interesting, because maximizing the size of my look-ahead viewport leads me to
make the opposite optimization: I like my text to move _a lot_.

------
jackolas
This is a fundamentally wrong understanding of how reading works. This way may
be ideal for close reading but full speed reading needs the whole page and the
ability to bounce around visually.

------
Jabbles
What benefit does this have over scrolling = next page? Your eyes have to
refocus on the top of the page anyway, you might as well have refreshed the
whole text, not just the top line of the second line.

Interesting idea though - what does this do on a touch device?

~~~
LarrySDonald
This is already standard on ereaders, nearly all (even if it's a tablet or PC
app) do this. I don't like it, more than 1/3rd of the time a page turn is
accompanied by a "back to last page, back to current page" as it annihilates
my flow (yes, that includes dead trees).

VT100 may have something to do with this though. Straight scroll isn't optimal
either. When reading long texts, I prefer to have it presented in chunks, but
retain 1/8th-1/4th of the information I was already looking at in case I need
to refresh where I was just now. If I can't have that, a straight scroll (bar
or paper) is preferable, and if I can't have that, page to page isn't so bad
either.

~~~
re_todd
Yeah, it's like "Congratulations, you just invented a Kindle."

------
liber8
This could help to read faster, but as is, it does not. By leaving the last
page visible, it makes the screen cluttered, and actually harder to read.

If, upon starting to scroll, the previous page were either whited-out
entirely, or the contrast was greatly reduced, I think this would be much
better.

------
DanBC
I sort of really like this.

I want a progress bar at the bottom, with filled and unfilled segments. (Or
for that to be an option.) I'd like the 'transition ruler bar thing' to be
bigger, maybe a 3 pixel feathering would be enough. And it'd be nice if I
could have some customisation over speed. It was very fast, which is good, but
I think I want some kind of acceleration style movement in there?

Somehow I got stuck at 99.99%, which is going to be frustrating for some
people!

Anyway, it's neat.

------
nlawalker
Great experiment.

Everyone reads differently and looks for different things in a reading
experience (if you couldn't already tell by the comments). I remember once
when I was in elementary school, a teacher suggested to kids that were having
trouble focusing or who were losing their place that they should use a piece
of paper to obscure everything below the line they were reading and slide it
down the page as they went. For reading on a screen, reflowing and resizable
text can helped greatly with focus and "losing place" problems (I love
Readability), but the "scroll line" concept you've got here has the potential
to maybe go a bit further.

I think that if you blanked out everything below the scroll line, or
everything below a good-sized margin of it (so as to preserve some of the text
from the previous "page", to enable a bit of bouncing back and forth), you'd
have a pretty good, functional recreation of that, and some people might find
it pretty useful.

------
mistercow
What I really want is almost the exact opposite of this. For long text, I want
smart autoscroll that uses eye-tracking to keep me from ever having to make a
manual adjustment. If my eyes are pointed at the bottom of the screen, speed
up the scroll, and if they're at the top of the screen, slow down/reverse.
With this kind of feedback system, the eye tracking doesn't even need to be
all that precise.

I've used Enable Viacam (<http://eviacam.sourceforge.net/index.php>) to sort
of do this using head tracking, but you don't really move your head that much
when reading, and it's too sensitive to changes in seating position.

If this could be implemented correctly, I think the result would be a superior
reading experience to any alternative so far.

------
rdwallis
The bookmarklet & chrome extension are partly based on readability.js.

The code is open source and available at
<https://github.com/rdwallis/MagicScrollWebReader> if you want to have a poke
at it.

~~~
tokipin
i just want to mention something about the "Sorry, MagicScroll was unable to
parse this page" window.

because "Report This Page" is the only button, i instinctively hit it under
the muscle-memory assumption that it's the back/escape button. chances are
you're going to get a good deal of noise from beginners because of this

------
iota
A drop shadow under the scroll boundary would be a nice way to differentiate
between what's on the "bottom" page and the new content on "top."

------
delinka
Nope. Because I like to keep the content I'm actually reading this instant in
the middle third of the screen whenever it's possible. Physical media prevent
this. It's a computer, it's made to serve me, that's how I like it.

While we're on scrolling, I want my browser to act the right way all the time:
I hate that scrolling becomes zooming on maps-- hate, hate, hate. I want
scroll to pan the map.

May I continue on this path that's headed off topic? The backspace/delete key
is not navigation - don't navigate history when I backspace; because
sometimes, the text field gets defocused, I think I'm about to delete text and
_blam_ previous page and my form filling was for naught.

</rant>

------
undershirt
Wow! I think this is a remarkable alternative scrolling method. Instead of the
current "camera-panning" across a single long page, this "unrolls" the next
page over the previous.

It matches the aesthetic of a printed book, but differently through this
"unrolling" model. I think it's a great blend between a book and a single
screen. The words are fixed, but you still have the smooth moving window of
what's before and after your current sentence.

And perhaps this is less important but neat: it allows you to remember where
certain passages were by position on the page since they don't move.

Great job on this. I'll be trying it out in the coming weeks.

------
Kilimanjaro
While I applaud creative thinking, I want to say no, thanks.

I hate scrolling to be honest, I lose concentration when everything moves and
kind of makes me dizzy.

I like some ways I've seen on the ipad to paginate info without scrolling. No,
I hate the pagination effect.

So, in essence, no scrolling, no visual distraction, just show me a page on
the screen, then the next, then the next.

Like a magazine.

It is your business, as web designer, to fit content in a page and auto adjust
it to my resolution, without breaking the intended relation between text and
images, and without distracting me.

Like a book.

------
Cass
I don't find it the least bit hard to read on the web, and traditional
scrolling has never interfered with my reading pleasure, but I'm pretty
excited about the fact that if I can get the scroll speed right on this thing,
I can probably use this to read in bed on cold winter mornings without ever
having to move a hand out from under my warm blankets to hit the pagedown key.

(I know I could use automatic scrolling for the same purpose, but I don't like
it when the text is constantly moving.)

------
alan_cx
Right, I really hated this when I first looked at it and did some scrolling.
However, when I used it in conjunction with actual reading, it worked rather
well. Long term, I don't know.

However, one thing I would like to see is the bar fading the text in and out
as it scrolls. Both or one, I don't know. I found the bar too harsh. Im not
saying it would be better, I'd just like to try it out to see.

Also, I'd like to see adobe reader do this. See if that improves the
experience.

------
BSeward
This is cool! An interesting experiment.

I think a quick shadow does a lot to give the divider some heft and alleviate
concerns about visual ambiguity between foreground and background page.

It would look something like <http://cl.ly/image/2N3B2V2d2L3W> (pardon the
wonky #ss_topPage). It can be done in CSS (+ two empty divs, uh) with small
effort. To me it feels like the most usable skeuomorphic hint you could drop.

~~~
rdwallis
That looks great. I'll see if I can update it tomorrow.

~~~
rdwallis
Actually this doesn't really work. Mainly the problem is when the top page
hasn't scrolled at all, for example if you're just using pagination, it
creates a meaningless shadow.

------
loftsy
A lot of negativity in the comments. I for one really like this. No loss of
focus when scrolling and no flicker from clicking 'next page'. Great idea.

------
jonknee
If you want the world to scroll in a new way, you need to support mobile.
Desktops are quickly becoming legacy devices, especially for reading.

I undertstand from the comments that it does something differently when you
have a scroll wheel, but since I am on a touch based device I just see arrows
for forward and backward and a remarkably small amount of text on each "page".
It's infuriating to use.

------
zabraxias
This is a truly great experiment since it revisits something we've typically
considered "solved". The current experience behaves a bit "jaggy" and slow but
the core idea behind this is fantastic.

I would love to see where further iterations of magicscroll would go. Slightly
disappointed by the extremely skeptical HN responses though...reminds me of
the stuffy old science committee in Futurama.

------
christiangenco
I like it. My current method of reading a long body of text is to keep my
current position at the top of the page and scroll down line by line. With
this, my eyes follow down the page with the black bar refreshing to the next
page scrolling right behind them, then at the end my eyes jump back to the top
and the scroll bar loops.

It worked really well for me, was a really pleasant way to read, and helped me
keep my place better. I'll be using this in Chrome.

\------

Edit: After using it to read a few articles, here are some additional
thoughts.

* I don't have to be as vigilant with scrolling to keep my position (at the top of the page, in my previous method). I can track where I am on the page based on its vertical position, because that's not changing anymore.

* I wish the bar were more visible. I want to be able to track it in my periphery.

* I can scroll up on the first page. I shouldn't be able to.

* The reversed scroll direction in Mac OS X 10.8 doesn't make sense anymore. I feel like I should be controlling the bar. Perhaps reverse the scroll direction?

------
jclos
Works perfectly on Chrome (24.0) but nothing happens on Firefox (18.0).

~~~
rdwallis
I found some stickyness on Firefox 18. I've deployed a fix but I put a 24 hour
cache in front of the page before posting it to hn so it'll probably only
update for you this time tomorrow.

~~~
mikecane
Fox 18 on XP here and I can't get anything to work, either. Mouse scrollwheel,
spacebar, arrow keys all do nothing.

In addition, I don't know if you're using any light gray for visual cues.
That's a problem. My screen is crap with shot contrast and light gray tends to
become white that I can't see. I wish to hell everyone would stop using light
gray _everywhere_.

------
EGreg
I wouldn't call this scrolling, I would call this revealing.

Scrolling actually is continuous (think of a scroll being unrolled from the
botom and rolled up at the top).

Revealing would be nice for reading forward, and I have to admit that I feel a
sense of accomplishment and control when revealing further text. And as a
result, I read more of the page!

But the psychological aspect of revealing things can also be done with
scrolling, for example the parallax pages such as NikeBetterWorld (now taken
down but you can see it at [http://www.ianlunn.co.uk/demos/recreate-
nikebetterworld-para...](http://www.ianlunn.co.uk/demos/recreate-
nikebetterworld-parallax/)) and Ben the Bodyguard and the other sites here:
[http://webdesigncrowd.com/websites-unique-scrolling-
adventur...](http://webdesigncrowd.com/websites-unique-scrolling-adventure/)

As you reveal more of the world in a novel way, you feel a sense of curiosity.
Once the novelty wears off, though, you are left right back there with the
content.

The key to revealing things is that you are more focused on the new stuff
instead of the old. In this sense, I agree tha the revealing is better than
scrolling, because when scrolling, you don't immediately focus on the new
stuff. Instead, the old and some of the new stuff is all a big blur until you
stop scrolling. That breaks your concentration.

However, as someone pointed out, revealing is not good for "scrolling back
up". That is an important point. Revealing is a different psychological
phenomenon.

To summarize: revealing is not scrolling. Revealing is about using a novel
method of showing new content, always de-emphasizing the old one (in Ben the
Bodyguard, for instance, new things move but the old things stay still).
Revealing is good for presenting information in a forward direction, and wears
off with the novelty of the method. The web shouldn't all scroll this way.

------
charlieok
I think there is something to be said for having some kind of visual element
whose job it is to track "where the reader is in the text".

Lacking this, I (and I suspect many others) improvise by using a mouse
selection, and constantly growing the selection by shift-clicking. This breaks
if the UI has messed with the relevant UI events (e.g. disabling selection or
popping up something on mouse clicks).

I wouldn't mind some controls for this designed specifically around the
activity of reading. Maybe tap to advance one sentence or one paragraph. Keep
the current paragraph entirely in view (unless it's too big; then keep the
current sentence entirely in view). Shift the text a paragraph at a time. Make
it advance both the marker and the text, so the reader doesn't have to manage
those two things separately.

I'd especially like a good tablet solution to this, since reading is my
primary activity on a tablet, and there's no mouse in that case.

------
lukehorvat
I like having control over my scrolling and being able to see the structure of
a document at first glance. One can often quickly locate where the "meat" of a
document will be just by looking at its structure, and scanning the first line
of each paragraph.

I also frequently go back and re-read previous lines when I'm reading, because
I sometimes just don't absorb things on first-pass. The auto-scrolling line
needlessly introduces an urgency to the reading experience that I don't
particularly enjoy. Sure, you can pause it, but then that is something you
consciously have to think about doing while reading. "Free scrolling" doesn't
introduce any extra thinking, because you do it subconsciously most of the
time.

So, no, I don't find this particular useful or innovative.

A better solution? A scrolling system that tracks your eye movements in
conjunction with a sophisticated AI to adapt to your preferred scrolling
behaviour over time.

------
heeton
This is horrible :/

I'm getting lost on the page, there's no simple anchor for my eyes. I agree
with some of the arguments (scrolling disrupts reading position) but this
doesn't fix it.

Iterate some more, perhaps try entire pages moving down to replace the
existing page? Something, anything, to give me a better feeling for scrolling
through pages.

------
norlowski
Needs bigger margin or indication of what the 'last' page was. When it's
scrolling down my eyes want to read that line and immediately jump to the
middle of the last page, as that is where the line is. Make the last page
darker or something.

You also have no idea how long-winded an article is and if you need to tldr;

------
Madness64
Another way to make the reading experience much better would be to not use the
color black. This article explains pretty well why you should never use this
color. <http://ianstormtaylor.com/design-tip-never-use-black/>

~~~
rdwallis
Agree but the new interface is jaring enough. I wanted to use bog standard
colors.

For the ebook reader on the main page at magicscroll.net you can set it to use
Ethan Schoonover's solarized colors: <http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized>
which I prefer to the black on white.

------
Groxx
Ehhh... neat setup (I've wanted to try such a thing for a while) and a good
implementation, but especially with such large text and vertical spacing it
makes it noticeably more awkward to read because my eyes need to travel
bottom-to-top many times. Scrolling lets me go side to side without as much
movement. And yes, spacebar to go down a page works pretty well too.

All that said, it could just be that it's new. I'll happily try the extension
for a while (thanks! makes it a lot easier to try out) and report on things
later :)

One detail does jump out at me: I would prefer a gap between 'bottom' and
'top' so I can park the separator out of sight. I might just be obsessing with
keeping a 'clean' page, but I do find myself trying to do so.

------
randallsquared
Hitting space to page down/over doesn't. Instead it starts a very slow scroll.
Hitting space again stops it, so it almost seems intentional, but in any case
it breaks the most common scroll method for me. Mac 10.6.8/Chrome 23.0.x.

~~~
recursive
According to the help, it is intentional.

------
ChrisInToronto
"It might take you a second or two to get used to it but it is better." Says
who? While I'm not trying to debunk the claim, I'm curious if there is there
any real evidence or proof on this or if it really is just an unfounded boast?

While I agree that stationary text may be easier to focus on the words
themselves, I personally find the "magic-scroll" effect makes it harder for me
to read. I tend to move my content into the middle of the screen and will
occasionally jump back and re-read a paragraph, both of which magic-scroll
seems to prevent.

Perhaps it's a user adaptation problem, but it just seems more constrained and
less natural to me...

------
ansible
I'd like this scrolling scheme a lot better if there was some physical
feedback on my mouse. Basically, I'd like there to be a little detent feeling
at the end of the page, so that I know when I'd scrolled a complete page.

Without a force-feedback mouse... I guess I'd prefer if there was a little bit
of "edge resistance" or something going from one page to the next.

Otherwise, I'm OK with just hitting page-down to go to the next part of the
page. It would be nice if browsers were a little smarter, and tried to not cut
off text at the top edge. So in other words, when you hit page-down, you will
see a complete line of text at the top.

------
mwill
I dislike pagination, honestly, and find the scrolling effect a little too
jarring.

However the scrolling effect DID actually remind me of my own natural
behaviour. I tend to either randomly selecting and unselecting the paragraph
I'm focusing on, or highlighting the first paragraph and holding the mouse
button down, to incrementally select the text on a page as I read it/scroll.

At first glance I could maybe see myself enjoying this scroll effect minus the
pagination, where the text still scrolled upwards but the page had a 'reading
line' near the top that showed content above it dulled.

~~~
agrona
I too am a dedicated highlight-reader, precisely because it's so easy to lose
my place when scrolling. I found myself reading somewhat slower (perhaps due
to trying to understand what was going on and how it worked), but I wasn't
clicking the mouse maniacally, either.

~~~
woah
Hey guys, I'm designing an annotation product that uses highlighting as part
of the control scheme, and I'm wondering if you'd be willing to test it at
some point in the future and see if it interferes with your reading habits.
You guys are hard to find! Also, any other 'highlight readers' if you reply
here or PM me I would be very grateful.

------
klibertp
I'm not sure about it. When one reads about speed reading techniques it seems
that the thing that limits the reading speed (if you're advanced enough) is
actually (physically) flipping pages... Repositioning one's eyes from the end
of one page to the beginning of another takes time too, I'm not convinced that
it's the best way to read.

Do we have someone who is proficient in speed reading? I would be very
interested in opinion of such a person: is paging and associated flipping of
pages making speed reading harder or easier than scrolling?

------
ebbv
This is nice for people who want it, and it might be better for reading on
phones (but that will require testing to confirm.)

For reading on a large enough display (laptop, desktop or even any newer
tablet), I think it's unnecessary. The way I read on these devices doesn't
involve scrolling very often. I read like I do on print, but scrolling
replaces the page turn much like it does on his. I don't read text while I'm
scrolling usually, I'll read what's on the page, then scroll it to give me a
new chunk to read. It's not a big deal at all.

------
Anm
I agree with munificent, with the precision of the scroll in the current
implementation, but that seems trivially fixed with a snapping behavior.

There are keyboard short cuts and clickable side arrows to turn the page,
though why they decided to override [space] with autoscroll, I cannot
comprehend.

The scrolling feels backwards, now that I'm gotten used to Apple's tablet-
style reversal on the touchpads. I'm sure this makes sense on a scroll wheel.
Not sure if there is a way to detect the default scroll mechanism.

Overall, thumbs up for many long article applications.

------
nhebb
I'm not seeing the navigation buttons or the hot key display in FF 18. I had
to open it in Chrome to see what the fuss was about. It's not a bad
implementation, but I prefer normal scrolling.

~~~
lessnonymous
Oh .. is that the problem? No, opened it in chrome, still an annoying turn-
the-page interface. No idea what everyone is talking about. Maybe you need a
scroll wheel on your mouse?

I have ABSOLUTELY no problem tracking scrolling text as I read it. I think
pagination is of the devil. We could have paginated the web in '93, but the
beauty of the web is pages can be endless.

------
cryptoz
I accidentally clicked my mouse on page load and all content disappeared.
There was absolutely no indication of how to get it back. I do _not_ want the
world to scroll this way.

~~~
bengillies
I hate to be picky (well actually...), but you appear to be complaining about
a bug on the site causing all content to disappear and then concluding that
the scrolling effect is rubbish.

Your conclusion may be valid, but I don't think the bug you found has anything
to do with it.

~~~
cryptoz
Maybe, but I don't think so. Content also disappears if you scroll using the
mouse wheel (but more slowly, so there is some indication on how to get it
back). However, _nowhere else_ on the entire web does scrolling ever remove
content from the page. I've never seen that happen, and there are multiple
ways to accidentally remove content from this page.

Maybe it's just a bug, but it seems intentional and it ruins the experience
for me.

~~~
wtracy
Every time I scroll down a web page, content disappears off the top of the
screen.

Are we talking about the same thing?

~~~
cryptoz
No, we're not, I guess. If you scroll down on a web page, the content becomes
invisible off the top of the screen but it has not disappeared. You can still
interact with it. You can select it. You can search for it. It's still there.
With this, it's completely gone.

------
da3da
I think this would be very nice in an ebook or other long form writing where I
need to backtrack to find some earlier reference. Where it doesn't work well
is in hierarchical data like HN comments. I installed the chrome extension and
used it to read the comments on this posting and it was nearly impossible to
use. With things that are arranged hierarchically, such as comments, a single
page works better than this, but I do think this will be nice on longer
articles or with ebooks.

------
chaowentan
Interesting solution to this problem. But just like the others, I was confused
by the way that the next page overlaps the current page. I think a simpler
solution would be to just columnize the text and maximize the usage of all
available screen space. So I implemented a Chrome extension to experiment with
it.

Shameless plug:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/purify/kjiappjpfpa...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/purify/kjiappjpfpaekdfeioanaphpihpojemc)

------
scott_s
_Compared with print, you're less likely to finish the article, you'll read it
slower, you'll skip over sentences and your comprehension will go down._

Not for me. I am far more likely to finish a news article on the web - with a
physical newspaper, I read the beginning of many front page stories, but don't
always flip to the rest of it. The rest of the claims are quite dubious.

It's a neat technology, one which I may like for books. But not for articles.
I prefer having it all "there."

~~~
nhaehnle
_Not for me. I am far more likely to finish a news article on the web - with a
physical newspaper, I read the beginning of many front page stories, but don't
always flip to the rest of it._

I wonder how much of that can be attributed to the fact that you're just not
sufficiently interested. Kind of like reading the blurb on a website, and then
not clicking through to the article itself.

Something to keep in mind also: having articles continue in the remainder of
the newspaper is a cultural (US? English-language?) thing. In Germany,
articles in physical newspapers are not split up like that.

~~~
scott_s
If I'm interested enough, I'll flip the (physical) pages. But I have to be
_more_ interested than on a computer - despite having been heavily involved on
my high school newspaper, I don't like the feel of newsprint, particularly
during breakfast.

------
jeremyarussell
I have to say. When I go to the news sites I usually peruse it cleans things
up nicely for me. Taking away the side images and garbage I generally don't
care about when reading news. And replacing it with a cleaner, more
streamlined, article. I'm one of the people that dig words that don't move, I
read books a lot though, and when I read ebooks I don't like scrolling, I like
"turning" the pages. I'll be keeping this bookmarklet on my computers.

------
frading
I find that really interesting. And much more relaxing. It took only a couple
scrolls to get used to. The only thing I miss when reading an article is
getting a global view of it. I usually do that by scrolling all the way down
and back up. The percent at the bottom does not fully help I think. Maybe a
global view like what sublime text has on the right?
(<http://www.sublimetext.com/>)

------
urlwolf
Now, if I wanted to use this often, I'd need a keyboard shortcut. I haven't
found a way to add a keyboard shortcut to an extension that doesn't have one.
Ah! but I can trigger the bookmarklet with this extension:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/shortcut-
manager/m...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/shortcut-
manager/mgjjeipcdnnjhgodgjpfkffcejoljijf)

If anyone has a way to trigger extensions, please share.

------
xavieralexandre
There's one advantage to this way of scrolling most comments seem to miss:
When you go to the next page by hitting Space or Page Down there's an
interruption in the flow and you have to refocus at the top of the page once
you're finished with the current page.

Here I like the fact than I can already start focusing at the top of the page
while finishing to read the page at the bottom.

Weird, yes, but it has at least this advantage over classic pagination
display.

------
eob
It seems to me pagination is one of the big things keeping HTML back from
being a replacement to LaTeX[1]. Would others agree with that statement? I
know academics aren't exactly the major "customer" of W3C standards
committees, but it would be interesting to see HTML6/CSS4 try to introduce the
pagination and layout commands necessary to make it a viable contender.

1\. When I say HTML, I mean HTML + a host of CSS and Javascript libraries

------
MMcCormick
I love this. Very smooth in Mac 10.7.5/Chrome 24.0.x. I'm sort of stunned that
an annoyance with moving text has never occurred to me consciously.

~~~
farnja
Perhaps moving text is not an annoyance? I have never been annoyed by an
annoyance that never occurs.

------
orangethirty
Add page numbers with javascript to every page. That way we can keep track of
which "page" we are in. That will solve the feeling of being lost.

------
samuellevy
I scroll the page to keep the text I'm reading at a relatively consistent
height.

I don't read the entire length of the page before scrolling, I read a
paragraph or two before scrolling.

When I read a book, I don't usually put the book in one place then read down
it, I'll often move the book up slowly to that it's always in a position to
read where my head/neck is comfortable.

I, for one, am glad that the world doesn't scroll this way.

------
lazyGeneral
There is a bug where when I scroll to the next page, all the old text from the
previous page still shows. (using latest firefox on OS X)

It would be nice to use this method with some texts I want to read...but
definetley not all.

Can't scan.

Probably would be really good to read an academic paper I really want to grasp
a second time.

Good experiment!

Edit: (Since it said it was Chrome only...tried it with Chrome, text from
previous page still shows up...)

~~~
nosse
It's not a bug, its a feature.

------
magoon
Very cool idea!

I use <spacebar> and <shift-spacebar> when reading the web; paging up/down is
more comfortable for me than scrolling.

Kindle is also excellent for reading because it uses distinct pages. I set my
text large and columns narrow, then it's easy to speed-read by scanning my
eyes down. It results in many more page turns, but it results in faster
reading and less strain.

------
znowi
First off, I don't share the sentiment that "it's hard to read on the web".
I'm doing just fine. The only time I grumble is when text reflow fails or I
have to go through n pages to read an article.

Static "newspaper" text is a neat idea and we already have this functionality
- page turn. But marrying it with scrolling is confusing. I just don't see an
advantage here.

------
pit
I like this a lot. I can't stand those image galleries where the frame resizes
itself every time you load a new picture. There's a little bug in Firefox
15.0.1 (sorry, not an Administrator):

1) Advance to the last page -- progress is 99.99%. 2) Go back one page --
progress stays at 99.99%. 3) Go back another page -- progress is 57.08% (which
happens to be correct).

------
nemetroid
I felt like the huge font size defeated the purpose here, because I had to
move my eyes more than ever. I like the idea though.

------
progrock
I didn't really enjoy the scroll, but did like the pagination.

A little tangential: Xfce has a dictionary applet. That includes a speed
reader. Which only displays words, one word at a time in quick succession.
It's actually pretty simple to use. And works really well. I wouldn't have
thought so. Should add that to smartphones. No scrolling required!

------
reillyse
Nice solution, makes reading text online far easier and I read to the end of
the article which is something I rarely ever do online.

Because you have a pretty good idea if the person has scrolled to the last
page (cause you are tracking it) you should be able to get some metrics on how
many people finish the article etc and use it to promote your product.

------
jrabone
Nice idea but it breaks horribly if you have a smooth / bouncy scroll plugin
(like Chromium Wheel Smooth Scroller) installed. I don't know if it's easy to
detect plugins in Chrome any more, but if you can't you might want to mention
that somewhere up front. The one I use has a button in the browser UI to turn
it off on a given page.

------
wtracy
Thinking out loud here: Being able to click and drag (or swipe on a touch
device) on the divider itself would be helpful.

And I agree with the comments that the divider itself doesn't provide enough
of a visual cue about what's going on. I'd either go with the drop shadow
suggestion, or play with a thicker divider that feels like a physical object.

------
Lendal
Nothing happens. Is this a clever way of saying that nobody should scroll at
all on the web? Why is this the top story on HN? Or is this saying that
everybody should use Chrome? I don't. I use Firefox and it doesn't do anything
either on Windows XP, Windows 7 or Windows 8. I have all three sitting right
here. Nothing happens.

~~~
Cass
There's a little "start scrolling" button in the lower right of the window. It
took me five extremely confused minutes to find it.

------
aiculedssul
I was confused for a few seconds while reading this on my portrait monitor: it
just shows the whole page at once.

------
dreadsword
This isn't a scroll interaction, its a pagination interaction. I don't think
that this breaks up reader's flow any less than scrolling down a page, or
turning a physical page in a book. The creator's assertion that "its better,
deal with it" is detrimental to their credibility, IMHO.

------
geon
The point of scrolling would be to exploit the visual/spatial center of the
brain to give you a sense of context. You know where you are, relative to all
other content.

This experiment feels like set of slides, and i don't necessarily feel where I
am as I click back and forth. I feel lost.

------
scrumper
Yuk, but kudos for trying it out and I can imagine that you're not the only
one who will like this.

------
servercobra
Ctrl + F doesn't work as expected. And even if it did, it would be a very odd,
jumpy experience.

------
mapleoin
Going back and forth between your page and HN by using the browser button
doesn't return me to the exact same place I left on your page. Traditional
scrolling does that, though. I wonder if that would be easy to implement
without a browser extension.

~~~
rdwallis
Yes, this is hard to keep track of even after window resizes which changes how
many words appear on each page. To do it I'd need to store info about page
position in local storage. which is possible with the extension but might be a
bit too much effort. I can't think of a way to do it with the bookmarklet at
the moment.

~~~
fzzzy
Why not use pushState or store this info in the url hash? Both of these will
allow you to save bits of info in the url that can be used to make a nice back
button experience.

------
B-Con
When reading a lot of text, I usually scroll about a page at a time and I
scroll once I've read about 80% of the page. I don't have text constantly
moving around and breaking my concentration.

Rather than this, I'd rather just have a "80% screen down" scroll option.

------
smsm42
I think the way that page scrolls is distracting and inconvenient. I am used
to getting the next page in one action. Getting only one line per action
significantly impairs my reading, and having half of the page cover other half
is very confusing.

------
smurph
How would you handle a piece of content that is too long for 1 page, but
doesn't deal well with being broken up? Like a tall infographic or block
quote? I just think there are too many failure scenarios for this to take off.
It is cool though.

------
progrock
You can page a webpage with the spacebar. Shift and spacebar to page up. I try
not to scroll, because I hate it too, unless I need to look at an image. The
browser could magically align and size an image for me, but that's another
topic.

------
charlesju
This is so much better, but perhaps it would work even better if the text
being scrolled in is blank until the full page is scrolled through. It is
distracting to see the end of the next page while reading the end of the first
page.

------
appleflaxen
I think the best solution to this problem is to keep your fixation point and
move the text.

Implemented beautifully in ForceFeed (<http://qwerjk.com/force-feed>) which is
currently down :(

------
leed25d
It's is a good idea to be sure and I tried it out on several articles. The
extension cause my chrome to lock up a few though, and I really do not have
time to diagnose the failure. I hope that you get it working later.

------
jere
Some men just want to watch the world _scroll_.

No seriously, this is great. An unexpected advantage is that's it is actually
harder to skim. You're encouraged instead to read things thoroughly. I, for
one, skim articles way too much.

------
jxdxbx
Here's something. This seems to have messed up Reeder for Mac. Any time I try
to go to a page from the RSS feed I get a blank page. And if I do an "open
this in browser" command I get sent to the magic scrolling page.

------
jenius
I feel like if there was a gradient fade (white to transparent) above the
black line it would make me feel much better. immediately revealing more text
just above where I was reading when I scroll kind of confuses me

------
jxdxbx
I like pagination. I use pagination whenever possible available to read on my
tablet or phone. I don't use pagination on my normal computer because it
doesn't fit in, but I do prefer pagination to scrolling.

But, I don't like this.

------
icoder
I tried this on a Wikipedia page and realised why scrolling is awesome:
overview. I also realised why I often don't read long texts from my screen: I
don't want to. I want find the answer to my question asap.

------
snowwrestler
If you're going to implement full-page scrolling, the animation should go
sideways, like it does in a book. That way there is less opportunity to mix up
the bottom of page 2 with the top of page 1.

------
anonymous
100% awful. I can't move the text to centre it vertically on the screen.

------
brownbat
Hey, that's what I just asked for!

No idea someone was working on this RIGHT THEN. You are my freaking hero.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5018293>

------
grannyg00se
I click on the arrows to change pages forward / back - seems typical. I press
space bar to scroll forward a page - does nothing. I press j to scroll down a
line - does nothing.

I'm missing the magic.

------
aidenn0
What's wrong with pressing the spacebar (other than the fact that pages with
crappy CSS headers will scroll so that you skip an amount of text equal to the
height of the header)?

------
bloaf
The page is broken in by browser, none of the shortcuts work and I can't
scroll with the mousewheel either. In short, it is impossible for me to read
beyond the first page.

Firefox 18, Win 8 x64

~~~
ksec
Same here, Firefox 19

------
keithgabryelski
There is a reason the world doesn't scroll this way. It looks horrible and
adds no real value. A split screen with smooth scrolling is far superior and
far more natural UI

------
stretchwithme
A couple of refinements that might be useful.

Separate the bottom line of the new page from the top line of the old page
with more space.

And also add or remove each line all at once instead of gradually.

------
donniezazen
I have started using Evernote Clearly which does good job removing everything
from webpage except the content text. It also can highlight and save article
in Evernote.

------
lucb1e
> I want the world to scroll this way

I don't. The idea looks revolutionary and fun the first time you try it. Then
you scroll back, start to read, and notice it has no advantages.

------
abcd_f

      Timestamp: 11/01/2013 7:28:33 PM
      Error: too much recursion
      Source File: http://www.magicscroll.net/staticScroll.js
      Line: 751
    

Firefox 17 on W7

~~~
rdwallis
Is this on the page itself? Or is it when using the bookmarklet?

~~~
abcd_f
On the page itself. I can make the page work if I zoom out by pressing Ctrl/-
three times or more (and reload the page afterwards).

This is what I see without zooming - <http://imgur.com/pGJuk>

~~~
rdwallis
Are you on a netbook or otherwise slow computer?

I'll see what I can do to add some breaks to the page rendering loop. I get
the impression that the Firefox version needs a bit of work.

~~~
abcd_f
Nope, a year old ThinkPad Edge. Hardware performance is certainly not an
issue. I get this message in the log right after the page is loaded.

~~~
rdwallis
Should be fixed now.

~~~
abcd_f
It's not, I'm afraid. Getting the exact same error message in the log. One
difference is that now it requires only one Ctrl/- and a reload to start
working.

~~~
rdwallis
Thanks can you email me at support@magicscroll.net. I can't reproduce the
error so I'll need help testing the fix.

------
lycos1
This isn't a particularly good idea for competent readers who typically scan
entire blocks of sentences at a time. The scrolling effect just slows them
down.

------
vbl
So it's basically incremental paging with a lot more work.

------
ollysb
I really like it. I'd rather not see the previous page underneath though, the
first page doesn't have this(only white space) and it seems far more natural.

------
viraj_shah
This with Instapaper could be a cool combination to create a smooth reading
flow while eliminating distractions and saving articles or stories for later.

------
rcb
This is very clever. The autoscrolling feature is strongly reminiscent of
reading text from dial-up bulletin board systems at low baud rates (300-2400).

------
graeme
Scroll speed seems fast compared to everything else I do. I have max scroll
speed on OS X. It would be good to be able to adjust the reader's speed.

Neat idea.

------
boringkyle
Did you just compare scrolling to a black swan? :-)

A good effort, I didn't realize it was a pitch for the magicscroll extension
till I read it a few times.

------
schiang
It might be better to just have a horizontal line to show you where you are.
The rest of the visual experience is kind of unnecessary.

------
MaysonL
Any site that works like this is not one I will be visiting more than once
without hitting the Readability or Instapaper bookmarklets.

------
kercker
There is always some text at the bottom of the screen, which make it hard for
me to read.

This is the reason why I am not so much into this scrolling.

------
cra
Dammit this is so awesome!! I was just thinking of similar concept for my
blog. I think I now, what I'm going to do this weekend :)

------
fnordfnordfnord
Nobody seems to care that I have a wide format display, and could easily have
two pages side by side (almost like a real book!).

------
MatthewPhillips
This reminds me a lot of the attempts to replace QWERTY. A familiar UI is more
important than a good UI. (see also: 8, Windows).

~~~
rdwallis
This is a lot easier to learn than dvorak.

------
BigNuts
I hate it but i love the fact you have tried it

------
hackintosher
Awesome, an idea: have it on tablet or phones with eye tracking so we don't
have to set the # of chars/sec. Brilliant idea!

------
moconnor
I can't read past the first page on my mobile. If the author collected stats,
this would be both interesting and obvious.

~~~
Raphael
There is a page turn button on the far right.

~~~
Raphael
Oh! Broken on Chrome for Android. The page turn button is supplemental to
actual scrolling.

------
graham_king_3
That's amazing. So much easier to read. I too, now want the world to scroll
this way.

Hopefully this will trigger innovation in scrolling.

------
chrisdes
I like it, but few lines at the end of first page are truncated. But rest of
the pages are just fine. Good work though.

~~~
rdwallis
Any chance you can send a screenshot of the truncated text to
support@magicscroll.net?

------
lubujackson
I can't scroll whatever magical way he intends in Firefox for some reason. I
want the world to scroll AT ALL please.

~~~
lubujackson
I'm guessing it's a netbook issue from some of the comments?

------
listic
What is the replacement for "Drag the link to your bookmark bar" for those
that do not have a bookmark bar?

------
quanticle
The problem with this solution is that

page breaks tend to occur in awkward places,

which makes you jump back and forth between pages.

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Tyr42
I like it, but I think you need to play with the transition bar a bit more. I
keep looking at it.

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ScottBurson
This page repeatably crashes the browser in my Android phone (a 2-year-old Evo
running 2.3.5).

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egonschiele
Wow, this is brilliant! If you can package it into a js library I'd love to
use it on my blog!

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tehwebguy
I've been a pretty big fan of the Reader button on mobile Safari, this looks
even better.

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jakeonthemove
Yeah, it doesn't work for me on Firefox 18 (Adblock and NoScript _disabled_
)...

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kriro
I don't care if this is usefull or not (I think it probably is). It's pretty
cool.

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tonylemesmer
It seems to be broken on Android. Clicking on the arrow makes everything
disappear.

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murgle
omg, the scrolling line was so painfully slow, why is this the top hn story.

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macspoofing
I don't. I think smooth vertical scrolling with inertia, works quite well.

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TommyDANGerous
This is super duper awesome, how can I incorporate it into a web app?

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nosse
If you could do this to pdf, I might be willing to pay little for it.

~~~
rdwallis
pdf is not reflowable. So I don't think it's possible while still adhering to
the pdf standard.

~~~
sherjilozair
A PDF extractor could be used first, to get the content to be in the same
standard as required, and then your tool could make it scroll this way.

This would be quite useful to me as a PDF reader.

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zsoltgyongyosi
Where can I insert insults? In the first minute of my interaction with this
site, I had to face it, there is no easy way to express my negative thoughts,
even thought there were many. If this is the future, I should change career...

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ako
I do most of my reading on a tablet, how do i use the hotkeys?

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lurkinggrue
Did not like this and not obvious. I was just clicking on the arrows to page
though.

Only after reading the comments I went back and used a scroll wheel. The lack
of any feedback that you could scroll was annoying.

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eldavido
The news apps in Windows 8 do this out of the box.

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justplay
Thanks for sharing . I liked it ,its brilliant.

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CrankyPants
You want the world to be incredibly annoying?

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quarterto
Rhythm Has Your Two Hips Moving.

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TootsMagoon
Nope.

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molsongolden
Black screen in IE 9?

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carter_harwood
This is awesome!!!

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chinchang
simply kewl! It makes reading so natural.

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lysol
This is an effect, not a functionality.

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Buzaga
Just to balance the negative choir, I really liked this, it felt more natural,
maybe there's a thing or two that could be improved, but it's really good...

Personally, I can't find a comforting way to read on the web(and I read a
lot), most of the time I'll go selecting text(sometimes with the keyboard,
sometimes with the pointer) but then it will feel tiring or weird doing that
and I'll switch to just scrolling bit-a-bit, but then I'll start losing track
of the line I'm at and go back to selecting, I feel this approach is much
better than this.

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Evbn
Totally nonfunctional on Android. Just some giant black boxes and a tiny
paragraph of text with hidden page flip buttons.

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dakimov
This is so stupid, I even laughed at this. Like one of the dumbest UI-related
ideas I've ever seen.

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mbetter
I can't get to the second page.

