I want the world to scroll this way.

By Richard Wallis

It's hard to read on the web.

Your favorite newspaper or magazine probably lets you read articles on its website. It's convenient but there are a couple of draw backs. Compared with print, you're less likely to finish the article, you'll read it slower, you'll skip over sentences and your comprehension will go down.

There are a couple of common sense explanations for this. You've probably been told it's because Facebook is only a click away, your email client is open or your screen has a backlight.

The common sense explanations are wrong. Distractions and backlighting don't help but they're insignificant compared with the real problem which you haven't noticed. You haven't noticed it for the same reason you wouldn't notice that a particular swan is white if you'd never seen a black one.

The problem is scrolling. Scrolling is a brilliant way to display a map or an Excel spreadsheet on a computer. But it's a terrible way to display text.

That's because scrolling moves the text on a page. And moving text, even if it's under your control, will break your reading rythym.

That's why this page scrolls differently. The way it scrolls will probably be new to you. It might take you a second or two to get used to it but it is better.

I'd like the web to scroll like this but that's probably a lot to ask. So I've built a browser extension and a bookmarklet that'll let you scroll existing websites without moving the text.

It's easy and simple and free to use.

Don't have Chrome? Just drag the following link to your bookmarks bar:

Then visit an article on the web that you want to read and click the book button or the bookmark to read it with MagicScroll.