What is it?

Inspired by Bionic Reading, this Bookmarklet modifies a webpage to display the first half of each word in bold. Can also be installed as a Chrome Extension. Works on essentially any webpage!

Examples

Installation

If you're having trouble, we have pictures explaining each step here.

Bookmarklet Instructions (preferred method):

• Open "readable_text.js"
• Click "Copy Raw Contents" button, which looks like Two Squares
• Create a new Bookmark named "Reading Helper" (or name it something else if you want!)
• In the URL, paste what you copied
• Save the Bookmark
• When you want to use it, click the Bookmark and it will convert the page

Chrome Extension Installation Instructions:

• Click the green Code button above, then click "Download ZIP"
• Unzip the file literally anywhere
• Open Chrome Extensions
• In the upper right, turn on developer mode
• Click "Load Unpacked"
• Select the folder, it should load as Reading Helper extension
• Go to the upper right and click the puzzle piece to show the extension (which will look like a Grey Square with a White R)
• When you want to use it, click the Extension button and it will convert the page

Similar Projects:

Bookmarklet

• vonrosceau's Bookmarklet: https://twitter.com/vonrosceau/status/1528375035894894592

Chrome Extension

• TorpedoRead: https://torpedoread.com/
• ansh's Chrome Extension: https://github.com/ansh/bionic-reading
• vzekharov's Chrome Extension: https://github.com/vzakharov/bionic-reading-extension

Webpage

• axoletlmusic's Not Bionic Reading Webpage: https://not-br.neocities.org
• 100L5's Webpage: https://10015.io/tools/bionic-reading-converter
• abenrob's Webpage: https://observablehq.com/@abenrob/bionic-reading-test

Document Readers/Converters

• Official Bionic Reading Test Page: https://bionic.staging.webulos.com/test/ (TXT, RTF, RTFD, EPUB or DOCX; online reader)
• TorpedoRead (not yet released): https://torpedoread.com/ (Supposedly will support EPUB and PDF converters)
• GPFSimon's Word Document Macro: https://github.com/GPFSimon/Speed-Bionic-Reading (DOCX; works in word application)

Other:

If anyone wants to fork this and actually upload it to the Chrome Dev store, please go for it! This was the work of 3 hours, has many issues, and isn't something I plan to refine much. I'd be quite happy if someone else took it and made something better! (This entire extention is ~100 lines of text, it's EASY to modify.)

Changelog

5/22 1.3.0

• TL;DR add support for some unusual webssites, like EPUB readers
• Add iframe documents to traversal

5/22 Rewrite 2

• TL;DR no longer breaks dynamic pages
• No longer processes invisible tags, like style and meta
• No longer processes whitespace individually
• No longer recreates breaks buttons and interactables
• Now also works as a Bookmarklet

5/22 Rewrite 1

• TL;DR catchs text across the entire page, breaks fewer things
• Runs against all elements on the page, rather than a subset
• No longer avoids full sentences if they contain another format tag
• No longer breaks links
• No longer processes script tags

5/21

• Initial Release