Admittedly, I didn't try it in any real world setting, but my gut reaction was horror. Even reading through the example paragraph, I did not find the gradients as useful landmarks.
But it does make me wonder if other forms of spatial landmarks could be employed in large paragraph text. Perhaps enlarge the start of each, if only for a couple of words, in a way that quickly tappers back to the normal text height. Extreme run-on sentences might require subclauses to be highlighted similarly. Line spacing should accommodate the extra needed height, but remain regular, making the whole document appear double spaced.
At least, that is the picture in my head. It might not do any better than this Beeline reader.
I agree with munificent, with the precision of the scroll in the current implementation, but that seems trivially fixed with a snapping behavior.
There are keyboard short cuts and clickable side arrows to turn the page, though why they decided to override [space] with autoscroll, I cannot comprehend.
The scrolling feels backwards, now that I'm gotten used to Apple's tablet-style reversal on the touchpads. I'm sure this makes sense on a scroll wheel. Not sure if there is a way to detect the default scroll mechanism.
Overall, thumbs up for many long article applications.
But it does make me wonder if other forms of spatial landmarks could be employed in large paragraph text. Perhaps enlarge the start of each, if only for a couple of words, in a way that quickly tappers back to the normal text height. Extreme run-on sentences might require subclauses to be highlighted similarly. Line spacing should accommodate the extra needed height, but remain regular, making the whole document appear double spaced.
At least, that is the picture in my head. It might not do any better than this Beeline reader.