[return0]

This kind of things are gimmicky at best, and an awful reading experience at worst. The time it takes for your eyes to adjust to the blinking letters is larger than the saccadic movement, and a single saccade reads a bunch of words instead, allowing you to both comprehend the sentence immediately, and also easily skip back-forward in case of errors.

[sillysaurus3]

On the other hand, I found it incredibly useful. My mind often wanders when I read, and Squirt solves that.

I found their choice of color scheme jarring. They highlight a specific letter in blue for some reason, and you get a strange optical sensation after staring at that shade of blue for too long. I had to download their js and css, rehost it myself, search through it for the color code, and change it to black. But then I found it very useful.

[Torn]

I suspect that's done to help anchor your focus, i.e. so your eyes don't move too much

[nnnnni]

Perhaps adding a little bit of grey to the blue would help?

[arkj]

I agree with you. I've found it extremely useful to quickly pass through light reads. But sometimes, I wish there was a feature to display 'fixed width', that way small words can be combined, and will give more fixation time at higher speeds.

[danielweber]

I notice I get tunnel vision staring at the exact same spot for 10 seconds. The rest of the screen starts to flicker or something, like when you were a kid and would stare at an inverse American flag before looking at a white wall.

EDIT ten minutes later my eyes still hurt

[Houshalter]

Using an extension similar to this (readline) has let me read things much more rapidly than my normal reading speed. Even faster considering it prevents my mind from wandering or eyes from getting distracted. It's not a gimmick at all.