Great idea, great execution! Took me a while, but I got used to controls.
The only small annoyance i had was the “saved” notification popping up making me miss a few words. Would love a “zen” mode with no UI other than the text.
The saved toast is a reasonable hit and frankly is worse than annoying. The whole format is based on your eyes never having to leave the same area, so popping anything up next to the word display forces exactly the saccade you are designed to eliminate. It directly attacks the one function it is designed to fulfil. There’s no need for Auto-save to pop anything up at you either; it never received a request to save and there is no need to echo that action back at you.
Good call on Zen-mode, and I’m of the opinion that is what should be the default, once you start reading; when words begin moving make thechrome fade out, when words stop, make it reappear. I will consider both of these.
Was the control issue the Hold to Read option, out of interest? Just wondering what it was.
Intuitively, i thought there would be a toggle to play, and that I would be able to maybe pause by holding, and then scrubbing up/down (or left/right).
But great work! Will try on a longer text.
I did default to hold because the read stops the instant you are not reading – if your attention is drifting, words aren't racing on ahead.
Which felt right for an application whose whole purpose is concentration. But you are almost certainly going to react the way most people will, and there should be an easy toggle instead of one you’re only likely to find when you stumble over it by accident. Scrub is already mapped to left and right-up and down would be an excellent match to speed, never thought of it that way until you said it. Let me know how you get on with the longer pieces, that’s where I’d expect either that it just clicks (or fails miserably).
After reading a bit longer, I have one more nit on the auto mode. I expected a single tap to take me out of the auto mode. Again, awesome work!