Logbook 2026-11-11

Today the Lab got its third experiment: The Focus Reader.

It’s a way to read the long pieces of the site a few words at a time, like subtitles, in a panel that covers the page. The idea came from wanting something a little more advanced than Safari’s Reader mode on a phone.

The reader has two views. In the Sequence view, the words come one frame at a time, always in the same place, as on some small e-ink readers. In the Flow view, the whole text stays in sight and moves up a line at a time, the words being read marked as they go, the way Spotify shows lyrics. The panel lets me set the speed, the number of words per frame, or a whole paragraph in Flow, and the size of the text. A footer follows the pace and the progress: the words read out of the total, and the time left. The keyboard, a tap or a scroll move through the text, and it goes full screen, in light and in dark.

The Focus Reader in its two views, paused on the same article. On the left, the Sequence view: one word, “identity:”, between two rulers, and under them the sentence it comes from. On the right, the Flow view: the whole paragraph, the words being read in ink and underlined, the words ahead faint. Both panels show the settings above and the rate, the words read and the time left below.

All of it is one element that takes a text from the page, with no dependency, kept apart from the rest of the site’s code. That’s for what comes next. On the site, it will sit on every article and essay behind a Focus button. Beyond the site, I’d like to make it an open source project in two parts: the element on its own, which any site can use, and an integration for Astro sites, with a config file for the view it opens in, each view’s pace, and a theme for colours and type, in light and in dark.

Since yesterday, I’ve also started work on an idea for the essays: an immersive page that tells an essay’s content through scenes, which change from one to the next as you read.

This morning I fixed the header. On a small phone, 320 pixels wide, every page scrolled sideways, because the header and the filter tabs were wider than the screen. On phones, the sections now sit behind a Menu button. It fixes the problem, and it prepares the header for the Work section I’ll open soon.