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Only marginally related, but what the heck is going on with the text on gwern's site? Are the per-character varying gray values supposed to convey some kind of

Only marginally related, but what the heck is going on with the text on gwern's site? Are the per-character varying gray values supposed to convey some kind of information?

dpatrick86 13y ago
Looks like an aesthetic novelty rather than something functional.
- rm445 13y ago
  It being gwern.net, there's probably a detailed article comparing meta-analyses of text-colouring somewhere on the site :-) Even as an aesthetic novelty, it's a fairly pleasant one, or at least unobjectionable since it's fairly muted. Gwern's articles can be quite hard to read, being a wall of text, and their structure tends to be much more spread-out than your typical introduction, body, conclusion - articles tend to have several 'chapters'.
teoryn 13y ago
It should be alternating lines with red, black and blue not greys, it's to increase reading speed: http://www.beelinereader.com/ http://www.beelinereader.com/
- theon144 13y ago
  It "should" not, see the "Blues" option :)
- mantrax4 13y ago
  What a coincidence that sites using it, including the beelinereader.com site itself, use super-tight line-height. Thing is, line-height helps with the same issue (but without the weird colors), so if they'd fix that, the funky colors aren't as useful anymore. But I guess we gotta save the trees from those printing their web pages or something. Whatever one may prefer, I see they offer a plugin, which is a better way to use this tech, not by random sites forcing it on us.
  - gwern 13y ago
    > What a coincidence that sites using it, including the beelinereader.com site itself, use super-tight line-height. Thing is, line-height helps with the same issue (but without the weird colors), so if they'd fix that, the funky colors aren't as useful anymore. If it's super-tight, why did loosening it not seem to help? http://www.gwern.net/AB%20testing#line-height http://www.gwern.net/AB%20testing#line-height > Whatever one may prefer, I see they offer a plugin, which is a better way to use this tech, not by random sites forcing it on us. Is it better? That seems like the sort of claim that should be tested...
    - hamburglar 13y ago
      Is it intentional that the text starts out as all black and slowly changes color line by line down the entire document over the course of about 10 minutes, or is my android browser hitting some sort of pathological performance scenario?

Only marginally related, but what the heck is going on with the text on gwern's site? Are the per-character varying gray values supposed to convey some kind of information?

dpatrick86 13y ago

Looks like an aesthetic novelty rather than something functional.

rm445 13y ago
It being gwern.net, there's probably a detailed article comparing meta-analyses of text-colouring somewhere on the site :-) Even as an aesthetic novelty, it's a fairly pleasant one, or at least unobjectionable since it's fairly muted. Gwern's articles can be quite hard to read, being a wall of text, and their structure tends to be much more spread-out than your typical introduction, body, conclusion - articles tend to have several 'chapters'.

teoryn 13y ago

It should be alternating lines with red, black and blue not greys, it's to increase reading speed: http://www.beelinereader.com/ http://www.beelinereader.com/

theon144 13y ago
It "should" not, see the "Blues" option :)
mantrax4 13y ago
What a coincidence that sites using it, including the beelinereader.com site itself, use super-tight line-height. Thing is, line-height helps with the same issue (but without the weird colors), so if they'd fix that, the funky colors aren't as useful anymore. But I guess we gotta save the trees from those printing their web pages or something. Whatever one may prefer, I see they offer a plugin, which is a better way to use this tech, not by random sites forcing it on us.
- gwern 13y ago
  > What a coincidence that sites using it, including the beelinereader.com site itself, use super-tight line-height. Thing is, line-height helps with the same issue (but without the weird colors), so if they'd fix that, the funky colors aren't as useful anymore. If it's super-tight, why did loosening it not seem to help? http://www.gwern.net/AB%20testing#line-height http://www.gwern.net/AB%20testing#line-height > Whatever one may prefer, I see they offer a plugin, which is a better way to use this tech, not by random sites forcing it on us. Is it better? That seems like the sort of claim that should be tested...
  - hamburglar 13y ago
    Is it intentional that the text starts out as all black and slowly changes color line by line down the entire document over the course of about 10 minutes, or is my android browser hitting some sort of pathological performance scenario?