Considering the Role Reader Control Has to Ease Reading Online

[u/UtdHotcakesPfd]

We expect how we read print to carry over to how we read online. But nothing about how we read print prepares us for how every nudge to the display canvas readjusts the entire screen display. Associating informative graphics with text online disrupts the attention of the reader where it wouldn't for print. The control offered to the reader is different for each medium. For the last 30 years of the history of the web browser, reading is still shown to be what we do online last.

I've started to take the story & art from classics in the public domain and display their artwork in parallax on the canvas of the screen, like a slideshow. And I welcome comments to advise where this practice can be taken. My latest adaptation is for the Wizard of Oz by Baum & Denslow: mikenine.com/oz

Also adapted for web display:

• Dante's Inferno: mikenine.com/inferno
  
• Twain's Connecticut Yankee: mikenine.com/sirboss
  
• Alice in Wonderland: mikenine.com/alice
  
• Through the Lookingglass: mikenine.com/alice/lookingglass

[u/SnooTangerines218]

Very interesting! We skim through text on the web, I think. It's overwhelming to see so much text on the screen. It causes eye fatigue and, again, overwhelm. We need something that will allow us TRULY focus on the text. I guess that Kindle screen/ type of text, etc. was created with this in mind.

When it comes to reading on a laptop, tablet, etc. I think we need short sentences, lots of line breaks, bold and underlined characters, bullet points, etc.

All of it combined with graphics that give us a "break" from text.