6 ms·

I've observed that behavior in others but never done it myself. As someone who doesn't randomly highlight as I read, I nevertheless agree that a toolbar that a

by bhauer 9y ago

I've observed that behavior in others but never done it myself. As someone who doesn't randomly highlight as I read, I nevertheless agree that a toolbar that appears on highlight is obnoxious for a reading-oriented site. (Meanwhile, I can appreciate Microsoft Word's similar toolbar on highlight, which is especially useful in touch and pen-oriented workflows.) I am idly wondering about the underlying reason people do random highlighting. I assume it's just a "tick" as they say. But I wonder if it has anything—even in small part—to do with the bad contrast on a lot of sites and the fact that browsers render highlighted text with good contrast. Even on high-contrast sites like Medium, the bright background combined with dark text can be tiresome on the eye, meaning that highlighted text will invert that yielding a more comfortable white text on blue. As someone who doesn't randomly highlight text, I often intentionally highlight text to quickly and nearly-effortlessly correct bad color selections by the site's designers. If I did this more often, I could see it developing into a habit.

mykeliu 9y ago
My focus wanders quite a bit when doing anything in general, so I highlight text when reading webpages to help anchor my attention and forcefully keep track of where I am. Otherwise, my eyes tend to jump around the page in a horribly ineffective attempt to speed-read and I miss a lot of details.
- gnicholas 9y ago
  The reading behavior you describe is common among people who use my startup’s software, which assists visual tracking when reading. Sorry if this is taking things too far off-topic, but hopefully this is helpful for some of the people who highlight while reading on-screen. http://www.beelinereader.com/individual http://www.beelinereader.com/individual
  - compuguy 9y ago
    I wanted to try this, but apparently your Firefox extension is not version 58 compatible at the moment.
    - gnicholas 9y ago
      It is not—this is something we are working on still. Sad for us too—Firefox is my daily driver! Hope to have this out in the next couple months, but it's not a simple port, unfortunately.
  - antisthenes 9y ago
    Where are the peer-reviewed studies for this? I'm interested to see the statistics on people who found it easier to do with your app than without. My personal result was 3% extra speed, which is decent but not too impressive. Was wondering what the average & median were.
    - gnicholas 9y ago
      There are several independent (but not peer-reviewed) studies, mostly done with students. In that context, reading fluency gains can be up to 100% in the course of a month. But for adult readers the max would be around 30%, with the average around 20% and the median a bit below that. For some people, speed is the only thing they care about, and I'd agree that 3% isn't a huge bump. But for others, the primary benefit is ease of reading, especially for long periods of time. This ease benefit is subjective and therefore hard to measure (vision scientists tend to look at blink rate, but this is an imperfect proxy), but in our experience about 85% of readers find it easier with the colors. Interestingly, this varies by device size, with a more pronounced effect on smaller screens.
  - SirZimzim 9y ago
    Your site cuts off on the right hand side on Chrome Android. There is also no margin on the sides which doesn't give me a lot faith in an app that is supposed to assist with visual guidance of reading.
    - gnicholas 9y ago
      Thanks for the feedback—the website was relaunched recently and although I was assured it worked on all major platforms I was only able to test with my own device. Would love to know what size your screen is, since this is likely linked to that.
delecti 9y ago
I personally do it just before scrolling. I'll highlight a few lines of text 2/3 down the page, then scroll until it's right at the top of the page. It's an easy way to avoid losing my place. I've also seen people who use the highlighted block to follow their gaze, though I can't speak to the logic behind that.
jimminy 9y ago
I often use highlighting as a positional anchor, often when tired. My eyes begin to lose focus and I can end up reading the same line over-and-over again. In some cases contrast highlighting doesn't work, particularly on macOS since it doesn't seem to change the text color on highlight. It's notoriously bad in my experience when trying to read a downvoted comment on HN. You end up with a super light text on a very pale blue, that is even harder to read.
LanceH 9y ago
I got into the habit in the 90's when using it to scroll the page faster. Since I was already clicking on links, my hand was on the mouse. It was a lot easier to click and drag content than to click the toolbar on the right or to move my hand to the arrow keys.
markcerqueira 9y ago
> But I wonder if it has anything—even in small part—to do with the bad contrast on a lot of sites and the fact that browsers render highlighted text with good contrast. Even on high-contrast sites like Medium, the bright background combined with dark text can be tiresome on the eye, meaning that highlighted text will invert that yielding a more comfortable white text on blue. As someone who doesn't randomly highlight text, I often intentionally highlight text to quickly and nearly-effortlessly correct bad color selections by the site's designers. Mostly to ensure I keep my APM high on HackerNews.
- matte_black 9y ago
  What does your employer use as a baseline APM quota for productivity?
  - twostoned 9y ago
    I remember if you were lower than 100 in WC3 you were a noob.
killerbeluga 9y ago
In contrast to the other replies you've gotten, I think my habit of highlighting is more of a nervous tic than a conscious decision to help me read. The habit is certainly related to my tendency to play computer games that require a lot of clicking (League of Legends/Starcraft), but if memory serves correctly I've been doing it since before I started playing any games. Also, I'm the kind of person that will sit at my desk with a pen clicking and un-clicking it endlessly before I remember that other people are annoyed by that kind of behavior.
- tbirrell 9y ago
  This makes sense. Years ago when I worked in fast food, I noticed that about 30 minutes into my shift, I'd constantly tap the side of the screen when taking orders because the rate of tapping necessary to keep up with people talking would keep my hand moving quickly, then during the pauses, I'd find it difficult to hold still. It's actually not uncommon and you can probably see someone do it next time you walk into a fast food joint.
LoSboccacc 9y ago
I multitask a lot (or better, gets distracted super easily) so I mark lines to have a reference to return to. And as you say most sites have a bad highlighting color combination, so I am used now to highlight a paragraph just above where I'm at
setr 9y ago
I do it to keep focus on a line of text, but since I also don't like the highlight, turn it off, and do it on repeat But also its kinda fun
atesti 9y ago
I think I started it in DOS as a way to scroll text. Highlighting/selecting text and moving the mouse to the very bottom started scrolling
- thaumasiotes 9y ago
  I randomly highlight. It definitely didn't start as a way to scroll text; I have never been aware of the behavior you describe. It's just something you can do. I like to find places where the beginning and end of the highlight align vertically.
bayofpigs 9y ago
I often highlight the last line of text I've read before scrolling the page up. It serves as a placeholder for where to start reading again and also a visual marker where to stop scrolling the page.
AznHisoka 9y ago
I find it funny I just randomly highlighted your comment, as I was reading about you wondering why people randomly highlight.
jamiepenney 9y ago
I use it to keep track of where I am on sites like HN that have some combination of wide content, small fonts, and tight line spacing. It gives my eye something to flick back to when I'm scanning back to the start of a line.
a_d 9y ago
> Even on high-contrast sites like Medium, the bright background combined with dark text can be tiresome on the eye, meaning that highlighted text will invert that yielding a more comfortable white text on blue. Agree with OP and super OP. This is exactly why I do it (highlight). Question: Is there any consensus on which combination of text color/background color is best for reading?
- charrondev 9y ago
  The contrast ratio is far more significant than the exact colors. I’d recomend using a WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) conforming contrast checking when picking colors. A 4.5:1 ratio is recomended for normal size text. Here’s a simple web based one: http://colorsafe.co/ http://colorsafe.co/.
  - chipotle_coyote 9y ago
    While this will sound snarky in a way I don't mean it to, there are people who will reflexively scream the contrast is terrible how can any of you read any of this if your colors aren't #FFF on #000 or vice-versa. I've lost count of how many times I've come across folks insisting that, say, #444 text on an #EEE background is utterly unreadable. (In fact, it's an 8.4:1 contrast ratio, and easily passes the WCAG's more stringent AAA guidelines for normal text.)
- torstenvl 9y ago
  I read once upon a time - and can't find it now - that white or yellow text on a dark blue background was the best combination, and that's why a lot of Microsoft curses-type software uses that scheme (e.g., edit.exe). https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/e/doseditwindow.jpg https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/e/doseditwindow.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/D9wzGjkYvqs/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/D9wzGjkYvqs/maxresdefault.jpg
WorldMaker 9y ago
> (Meanwhile, I can appreciate Microsoft Word's similar toolbar on highlight, which is especially useful in touch and pen-oriented workflows.) I wonder if part of that observed difference is also in how the respective toolbars are engineered? - The medium highlight toolbar is 100% opaque and directly next to the highlight, obscuring previous words in the paragraph. - The Word highlight toolbar has mechanics whereby it doesn't always open directly above the highlighted region, very quickly becomes transparent if you don't interact with it, and dismisses itself entirely just as quickly if you move the mouse too far away or scroll the page. That "Mario ghost shyness" built into the Word highlight toolbar I think makes a big difference in the feel of those popups.
- nxc18 9y ago
  The Word hover toolbar was one of the innovations in office 2007 (along with the Ribbon, live preview, and contextual grammar) and it’s one of my favorite features for the reasons you specify. A truly awesome feature that does not get nearly enough attention and is missing in places like google docs. Often, I find that I have no need to actually use the ribbon, because what I need pops up near my cursor when I select the text I want to edit.
avn2109 9y ago
Highlighting the line you read last makes it easier to recover your place in the text after scrolling down.
nxc18 9y ago
I’ve been doing it since ~2006. Contrast was not an issue back then, and my very young eyes wouldn’t have (and still don’t) cared. I think maybe it was a manifestation of ADHD. Highlighting what I read helped me keep track of where I was if I got distracted (e.g. by a thought, which happens a lot). It also helps me if I get distracted or fail to parse a sentence - I can easily go back to the last known good state and restart reading. Websites doing weird things on highlight (or preventing highlighting) piss me off to no end. Another tick possibly due to ADD: I consistently close my browser tabs. I’ve met a lot of people who need special extensions so they can have 100+ tabs open, and that drives me absolutely nuts. If I’m done using it, I close it and if I need to come back later I google(DuckDuckGo really) it.
- carlmr 9y ago
  Never diagnosed with ADD (although this diagnosis really doesn't exist much in Germany), but I do the same for the same reasons. Even the browser tabs.
- compuguy 9y ago
  I do the same exact thing. It drives me crazy that I can't highlight on an article without causing either a post to twitter box or the font size changing (I'm looking at you NYT). On a random note, do you know what that special extension that allows a user to have 100+ tabs open. I have a family member that always keeps way to many tabs open (drives me nuts as well!).
- SirZimzim 9y ago
  I follow similar patterns to you. One big thing for me is also looking up words and phrases. One thing I hate with a few mobile apps is when attempting to select text within something like a comment it instead just tries to manipulate the comment itself.
pymai 9y ago
the reason i do it is to make it easier to scroll. if im reading on a large desktop screen, especially if its in portrait mode, scrolling fast can make all the text seem like a blur. so instead of having to scroll slow to keep position its quicker to highlight something and then scroll until its at the top i should really just be hitting the spacebar but you know, old habits
antisthenes 9y ago
> I am idly wondering about the underlying reason people do random highlighting. I do this because I played a lot of RTS games in my childhood. Same movement for box selecting units.
the_jeremy 9y ago
In my case, it's something to play with. I need to fiddle with things. If my hand isn't on my mouse, I'm playing with my mouse wrist rest (basically a bean bag). If it is on my mouse, I'm clicking around randomly.

by bhauer 9y ago

mykeliu 9y ago

My focus wanders quite a bit when doing anything in general, so I highlight text when reading webpages to help anchor my attention and forcefully keep track of where I am. Otherwise, my eyes tend to jump around the page in a horribly ineffective attempt to speed-read and I miss a lot of details.

gnicholas 9y ago
The reading behavior you describe is common among people who use my startup’s software, which assists visual tracking when reading. Sorry if this is taking things too far off-topic, but hopefully this is helpful for some of the people who highlight while reading on-screen. http://www.beelinereader.com/individual http://www.beelinereader.com/individual
- compuguy 9y ago
  I wanted to try this, but apparently your Firefox extension is not version 58 compatible at the moment.
  - gnicholas 9y ago
    It is not—this is something we are working on still. Sad for us too—Firefox is my daily driver! Hope to have this out in the next couple months, but it's not a simple port, unfortunately.
- antisthenes 9y ago
  Where are the peer-reviewed studies for this? I'm interested to see the statistics on people who found it easier to do with your app than without. My personal result was 3% extra speed, which is decent but not too impressive. Was wondering what the average & median were.
  - gnicholas 9y ago
    There are several independent (but not peer-reviewed) studies, mostly done with students. In that context, reading fluency gains can be up to 100% in the course of a month. But for adult readers the max would be around 30%, with the average around 20% and the median a bit below that. For some people, speed is the only thing they care about, and I'd agree that 3% isn't a huge bump. But for others, the primary benefit is ease of reading, especially for long periods of time. This ease benefit is subjective and therefore hard to measure (vision scientists tend to look at blink rate, but this is an imperfect proxy), but in our experience about 85% of readers find it easier with the colors. Interestingly, this varies by device size, with a more pronounced effect on smaller screens.
- SirZimzim 9y ago
  Your site cuts off on the right hand side on Chrome Android. There is also no margin on the sides which doesn't give me a lot faith in an app that is supposed to assist with visual guidance of reading.
  - gnicholas 9y ago
    Thanks for the feedback—the website was relaunched recently and although I was assured it worked on all major platforms I was only able to test with my own device. Would love to know what size your screen is, since this is likely linked to that.

delecti 9y ago

I personally do it just before scrolling. I'll highlight a few lines of text 2/3 down the page, then scroll until it's right at the top of the page. It's an easy way to avoid losing my place. I've also seen people who use the highlighted block to follow their gaze, though I can't speak to the logic behind that.

jimminy 9y ago

I often use highlighting as a positional anchor, often when tired. My eyes begin to lose focus and I can end up reading the same line over-and-over again. In some cases contrast highlighting doesn't work, particularly on macOS since it doesn't seem to change the text color on highlight. It's notoriously bad in my experience when trying to read a downvoted comment on HN. You end up with a super light text on a very pale blue, that is even harder to read.

LanceH 9y ago

I got into the habit in the 90's when using it to scroll the page faster. Since I was already clicking on links, my hand was on the mouse. It was a lot easier to click and drag content than to click the toolbar on the right or to move my hand to the arrow keys.

markcerqueira 9y ago

> But I wonder if it has anything—even in small part—to do with the bad contrast on a lot of sites and the fact that browsers render highlighted text with good contrast. Even on high-contrast sites like Medium, the bright background combined with dark text can be tiresome on the eye, meaning that highlighted text will invert that yielding a more comfortable white text on blue. As someone who doesn't randomly highlight text, I often intentionally highlight text to quickly and nearly-effortlessly correct bad color selections by the site's designers. Mostly to ensure I keep my APM high on HackerNews.

matte_black 9y ago
What does your employer use as a baseline APM quota for productivity?
- twostoned 9y ago
  I remember if you were lower than 100 in WC3 you were a noob.

killerbeluga 9y ago

In contrast to the other replies you've gotten, I think my habit of highlighting is more of a nervous tic than a conscious decision to help me read. The habit is certainly related to my tendency to play computer games that require a lot of clicking (League of Legends/Starcraft), but if memory serves correctly I've been doing it since before I started playing any games. Also, I'm the kind of person that will sit at my desk with a pen clicking and un-clicking it endlessly before I remember that other people are annoyed by that kind of behavior.

tbirrell 9y ago
This makes sense. Years ago when I worked in fast food, I noticed that about 30 minutes into my shift, I'd constantly tap the side of the screen when taking orders because the rate of tapping necessary to keep up with people talking would keep my hand moving quickly, then during the pauses, I'd find it difficult to hold still. It's actually not uncommon and you can probably see someone do it next time you walk into a fast food joint.

LoSboccacc 9y ago

I multitask a lot (or better, gets distracted super easily) so I mark lines to have a reference to return to. And as you say most sites have a bad highlighting color combination, so I am used now to highlight a paragraph just above where I'm at

setr 9y ago

I do it to keep focus on a line of text, but since I also don't like the highlight, turn it off, and do it on repeat But also its kinda fun

atesti 9y ago

I think I started it in DOS as a way to scroll text. Highlighting/selecting text and moving the mouse to the very bottom started scrolling

thaumasiotes 9y ago
I randomly highlight. It definitely didn't start as a way to scroll text; I have never been aware of the behavior you describe. It's just something you can do. I like to find places where the beginning and end of the highlight align vertically.

bayofpigs 9y ago

I often highlight the last line of text I've read before scrolling the page up. It serves as a placeholder for where to start reading again and also a visual marker where to stop scrolling the page.

AznHisoka 9y ago

I find it funny I just randomly highlighted your comment, as I was reading about you wondering why people randomly highlight.

jamiepenney 9y ago

I use it to keep track of where I am on sites like HN that have some combination of wide content, small fonts, and tight line spacing. It gives my eye something to flick back to when I'm scanning back to the start of a line.

a_d 9y ago

> Even on high-contrast sites like Medium, the bright background combined with dark text can be tiresome on the eye, meaning that highlighted text will invert that yielding a more comfortable white text on blue. Agree with OP and super OP. This is exactly why I do it (highlight). Question: Is there any consensus on which combination of text color/background color is best for reading?

charrondev 9y ago
The contrast ratio is far more significant than the exact colors. I’d recomend using a WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) conforming contrast checking when picking colors. A 4.5:1 ratio is recomended for normal size text. Here’s a simple web based one: http://colorsafe.co/ http://colorsafe.co/.
- chipotle_coyote 9y ago
  While this will sound snarky in a way I don't mean it to, there are people who will reflexively scream the contrast is terrible how can any of you read any of this if your colors aren't #FFF on #000 or vice-versa. I've lost count of how many times I've come across folks insisting that, say, #444 text on an #EEE background is utterly unreadable. (In fact, it's an 8.4:1 contrast ratio, and easily passes the WCAG's more stringent AAA guidelines for normal text.)
torstenvl 9y ago
I read once upon a time - and can't find it now - that white or yellow text on a dark blue background was the best combination, and that's why a lot of Microsoft curses-type software uses that scheme (e.g., edit.exe). https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/e/doseditwindow.jpg https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/e/doseditwindow.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/D9wzGjkYvqs/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/D9wzGjkYvqs/maxresdefault.jpg

WorldMaker 9y ago

> (Meanwhile, I can appreciate Microsoft Word's similar toolbar on highlight, which is especially useful in touch and pen-oriented workflows.) I wonder if part of that observed difference is also in how the respective toolbars are engineered? - The medium highlight toolbar is 100% opaque and directly next to the highlight, obscuring previous words in the paragraph. - The Word highlight toolbar has mechanics whereby it doesn't always open directly above the highlighted region, very quickly becomes transparent if you don't interact with it, and dismisses itself entirely just as quickly if you move the mouse too far away or scroll the page. That "Mario ghost shyness" built into the Word highlight toolbar I think makes a big difference in the feel of those popups.

nxc18 9y ago
The Word hover toolbar was one of the innovations in office 2007 (along with the Ribbon, live preview, and contextual grammar) and it’s one of my favorite features for the reasons you specify. A truly awesome feature that does not get nearly enough attention and is missing in places like google docs. Often, I find that I have no need to actually use the ribbon, because what I need pops up near my cursor when I select the text I want to edit.

avn2109 9y ago

Highlighting the line you read last makes it easier to recover your place in the text after scrolling down.

nxc18 9y ago

I’ve been doing it since ~2006. Contrast was not an issue back then, and my very young eyes wouldn’t have (and still don’t) cared. I think maybe it was a manifestation of ADHD. Highlighting what I read helped me keep track of where I was if I got distracted (e.g. by a thought, which happens a lot). It also helps me if I get distracted or fail to parse a sentence - I can easily go back to the last known good state and restart reading. Websites doing weird things on highlight (or preventing highlighting) piss me off to no end. Another tick possibly due to ADD: I consistently close my browser tabs. I’ve met a lot of people who need special extensions so they can have 100+ tabs open, and that drives me absolutely nuts. If I’m done using it, I close it and if I need to come back later I google(DuckDuckGo really) it.

carlmr 9y ago
Never diagnosed with ADD (although this diagnosis really doesn't exist much in Germany), but I do the same for the same reasons. Even the browser tabs.
compuguy 9y ago
I do the same exact thing. It drives me crazy that I can't highlight on an article without causing either a post to twitter box or the font size changing (I'm looking at you NYT). On a random note, do you know what that special extension that allows a user to have 100+ tabs open. I have a family member that always keeps way to many tabs open (drives me nuts as well!).
SirZimzim 9y ago
I follow similar patterns to you. One big thing for me is also looking up words and phrases. One thing I hate with a few mobile apps is when attempting to select text within something like a comment it instead just tries to manipulate the comment itself.

pymai 9y ago

the reason i do it is to make it easier to scroll. if im reading on a large desktop screen, especially if its in portrait mode, scrolling fast can make all the text seem like a blur. so instead of having to scroll slow to keep position its quicker to highlight something and then scroll until its at the top i should really just be hitting the spacebar but you know, old habits

antisthenes 9y ago

> I am idly wondering about the underlying reason people do random highlighting. I do this because I played a lot of RTS games in my childhood. Same movement for box selecting units.

the_jeremy 9y ago

In my case, it's something to play with. I need to fiddle with things. If my hand isn't on my mouse, I'm playing with my mouse wrist rest (basically a bean bag). If it is on my mouse, I'm clicking around randomly.