I’ve always loved the idea of loving Instapaper but still can’t quite get into it. Also, trying again recently reminded me of another dream feature that no one seems to have right yet.
Instagram call it Speed Reading, spritzinc.com do the same thing, and a few others do it too, but they all seem to miss a killer feature for me. Backing up a bit if you don’t know the functionality: It flashes words in the centre of the screen rather than having you read normally: Scanning your eye along the page or screen. The idea is that it’s an easier and faster way to read, and for my eye it’s loads easier.
But every case I’ve seen pretty much ignores punctuation or ability to easily reflect after each sentence. Yes, you can tap to pause, but I’d like it to auto pause at the end of each sentence or paragraph, requiring me to tap to continue. Also, I’d like easier ways to swipe or scan backwards for a bit you want to re-read or that you missed.
Small details within an edge case niche functionality, but without it it just seems ill-considered and another thing that pushes me away from adopting Instapaper after all these years of hating to read things in the browser. Maybe I need to try harder again and clear my ‘to read’ debt. Or claim to read bankruptcy.
Documenteering 