So after seeing Spritz I waited for someone to whip up a nice extension so that I could try out the same technique(RSVP) in my brower. Since that hasn’t happened I created a bookmarklet that covers the basics so that we test this all out in real life and see how useful it really is.
install
To install drag the following link to your bookmark bar.
RSVP
Instructions
- Select some text on a page and click the bookmarklet.
- Read like the wind!
Key Bindings
- ESC: exit.
- R(hold): rewind.
- ←/→: jump forward or back by 20 words.
- -/+ or ↑/↓: adjust WPM rate.
- Spacebar: pause/resume.
Features
- Smooth acceleration on start up.
- Variable speed when reading long words, punctuation, etc.
- Spritz like word centering.
Notes
I’m sure Spritz is way better then this simple bookmarklet. This isn’t a comment on how easy this technology is. To do it properly it would take a look of statistics and reading analysis and a lot of science which I think is what Spritz has done. This is just a very basic tool that I built to try out the concept of RSVP and see how useful it is.
Code
All the code(< 300 lines of Javascript) is availiable on github.