Laser beam is a plugin designed to enhance your reading experience by utilizing customizable laser lines. These lines are virtual guides meant to improve reading focus and concentration.
Overview and features
Customizable laser lines: You can choose between 2 laser focus types, laser line or laser area, to personalize your reading experience and find what works best for you.
The virtual laser lines guide your eyes across the page, line by line, minimizing distractions and keeping you on track.
You can activate/deactivate the laser line using the command palette or by setting a keyboard shortcut. You can also toggle between laser line and laser area (focus type).
I hope this plugin helps to improve your reading focus and performance (daily study and work tasks).
@Yurcee You can adjust the laser intensity with the proper slider (settings tab of the plugin), you don’t have to edit any file manually. After adjusting its intensity, it’ll make the laser a much more comfortable reading line once you find the right setting.
About the lag…
As for the lag, it could be caused by other plugins or programs running in the background. Try closing anything unnecessary or temporarily disabling other plugins to see if that smooths things out.
“Needs work” is valuable information. We’re constantly improving.
Laser too bright. Settings don’t allow to dim it enough. 0.1? 0.2?
I will add the option to select values below 0.5. Maybe add the option to have just a plain transparent line (no glow).
Laser too slow. Even in Sandbox. Laser follows mouse pointer only with noticable delay.
Well, this is really strange to me. You can check below one screen recording, please notice it was a test (Windows → Obsidian 1.5.12 → screen resolution: 1366x768). I am exaggerating the mouse movements…
I had to add a function (throttle) to avoid calling the function to reposition the laser thousands of times (but it is a 100ms delay). The 100ms delay is a common setting for this type of throttle. It’s a good balance between responsiveness and smoothness. While a faster update might feel more responsive at first glance, it could lead to the jittery behavior and worse performance.
Idea makes sense. I would use it, if it didn’t distract so much.
Thanks for the comment and taking the time to share your opinion.
I will keep improving laser beam when possible. Here’s the list of things I would like to implement:
Add the option to static position (laser won’t follow mouse pointer).
Add the option to plain line (no glow)
Intensity level → 0.1 or 0.2 (still have to test these values, probably it will disappear the line and it will look really bad, better to use the plain line option).
Having more options makes sense, so that it looks good with different themes or personal preferences. Don’t worry, if it disappears on your device. On others it might just look fine.
Make the throttle adjustable? This would allow users to find the balance that works best on their device.
Static is an interesting idea. I haven’t tried it, but it would be nice to toggle between off/dynamic/static with a hotkey.
I hope to have more time this weekend. I’ll see what I can do to improve the plugin. I currently don’t have a Mac to test it after adding each new feature (like I normally do with Windows and Linux). I’ll have to ask some friends, as I did before launching the plugin, to test the new features on Mac. I also hope to rely on tests and feedback from users here on the forum.
