

Ask HN: A preview that randomly changes how you view the text. - biohacker42

I know pg has better things to do then implement trivial HN features. But if someone's working on a community based startup, this might be a neat feature.<p>Here's my problem. I'm not a stupid guy, I may not be very smart, but I am not illiterate. However, you might get the impression that I am illiterate.<p>I can read my own post 100 times and I'll be damned if I'll spot the "teh" that should have been a "the".<p>But! If the preview changes the color, font, or how the paragraphs are laid out, BINGO! I see all my stupid mistakes. Something about visual memory and how my brain works probably.<p>So my dream submit form would have a preview which did exactly that, randomly, ad infinitum.<p>Does anyone else have the same problem, or am I the only one?
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coglethorpe
> I can read my own post 100 times and I'll be damned if I'll spot the "teh"
> that should have been a "the".

Firefox does come with a spell check plugin...

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biohacker42
Ah but it's not just spelling errors, there's missing s-es on plurals and all
kinds of other stuff that's technically spelled correctly.

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DanHulton
You could throw together a greasemonkey script to do this in minutes.

\- On DOM ready, add a preview div under the textarea. \- Bind to the
textarea's change event, and have it update the preview div with the contents
of the textarea. \- Add a [Random!] button next to [add comment] \- Bind to
the [Random!] button to randomize the font, size, and colour of the preview
div.

And with jQuery, that's probably 4 lines of code.

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deathbyzen
This reminds me of the commenting system that I think all the Gawker blogs
use. There is a live preview directly above the comment field that shows
exactly how the post is going to display on the page. A lot of forums do the
same type of thing, but not live.

My brother has the same problem though, he can read and re-read right through
his mistakes and never catch them unless they are pointed out to him. He's not
dumb or illiterate, but I've always thought that he's mildly dyslexic.

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cstejerean
It's an interesting idea. I don't remember ever thinking about previewing my
text under a different style so I don't know if it would help me, but I would
be willing to try it.

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tortilla
Non-software solution: Try proofreading backwards.

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tlrobinson
This could be implemented a bookmarklet.

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biohacker42
Hmm, I hadn't thought of that, it does sound like a great idea however. I
think I'm off to look into bookmarklets.

