HN Explorer

Ask HN: A preview that randomly changes how you view the text.

7 points by biohacker42 ↗ HN
I know pg has better things to do then implement trivial HN features. But if someone's working on a community based startup, this might be a neat feature.

Here's my problem. I'm not a stupid guy, I may not be very smart, but I am not illiterate. However, you might get the impression that I am illiterate.

I can read my own post 100 times and I'll be damned if I'll spot the "teh" that should have been a "the".

But! If the preview changes the color, font, or how the paragraphs are laid out, BINGO! I see all my stupid mistakes. Something about visual memory and how my brain works probably.

So my dream submit form would have a preview which did exactly that, randomly, ad infinitum.

Does anyone else have the same problem, or am I the only one?

8 comments

[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 35.8 ms ] thread
cstejerean
It's an interesting idea. I don't remember ever thinking about previewing my text under a different style so I don't know if it would help me, but I would be willing to try it.
coglethorpe
> I can read my own post 100 times and I'll be damned if I'll spot the "teh" that should have been a "the".

Firefox does come with a spell check plugin...

biohacker42
Ah but it's not just spelling errors, there's missing s-es on plurals and all kinds of other stuff that's technically spelled correctly.
tlrobinson
This could be implemented a bookmarklet.
biohacker42
Hmm, I hadn't thought of that, it does sound like a great idea however. I think I'm off to look into bookmarklets.
deathbyzen
This reminds me of the commenting system that I think all the Gawker blogs use. There is a live preview directly above the comment field that shows exactly how the post is going to display on the page. A lot of forums do the same type of thing, but not live.

My brother has the same problem though, he can read and re-read right through his mistakes and never catch them unless they are pointed out to him. He's not dumb or illiterate, but I've always thought that he's mildly dyslexic.

DanHulton
You could throw together a greasemonkey script to do this in minutes.

- On DOM ready, add a preview div under the textarea. - Bind to the textarea's change event, and have it update the preview div with the contents of the textarea. - Add a [Random!] button next to [add comment] - Bind to the [Random!] button to randomize the font, size, and colour of the preview div.

And with jQuery, that's probably 4 lines of code.

tortilla
Non-software solution: Try proofreading backwards.