Introducing Stretchtext.js: Easily Communicate to Different Audiences in a Single Page



Photo by Marco Raaphorst

As a writer, I often struggle with whether to write a tutorial or document to beginners or experts. What if there's some interesting tangent that some readers might find informative but others want to ignore? What if you want to drill down deeply into a subject while just skimming the surface in other areas?

Digital screens can accordion open and closed and change their shape depending on the needs of the reader.
Traditional paper forces writing to be static and fixed: either you target beginners or experts. You can't provide tangents that readers can choose to follow or not. The reader and writer are both stuck in a single gear-shift.
Web pages are not paper and shouldn't mindlessly mimic dead pulp. Digital screens can accordion open and closed and change their shape depending on the needs of the reader.
I've created an implementation of Stretchtext in JavaScript which gets around these problems. You can mix in bits of Stretchtext into your page to allow readers to drill down into specific areas based on their interests and background. 
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