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I've been a UX designer for 10 years and I can tell you why. (Or at least why from point of view.) It's a deprecated design practice to make font rendering loo

I've been a UX designer for 10 years and I can tell you why. (Or at least why from point of view.) It's a deprecated design practice to make font rendering looks smoother in a world where retina screens were not ubiquitous. Back in the old days (so like 3 years ago) before the majority of screens were 'retina' (aka you can't see the pixels at normal viewing distances) fonts always rendered with jagged edges. Turning down the contrast between a font and its background is effective in reducing this effect. It reduces the contrast, it's a very straightforward mechanic. Obviously, this is moot now with razor font rendering on retina screens. And if you do it too much, you risk accessibility problems. The nonsense about black on a white background being too harsh because of eye strain is exactly that: nonsense. If you wanted to reduce eye strain, you'd dial down the brightness of the actual background, often seen in "nightmode" options offered in various UI. (Come to think of it, that would be hilarious if you hit "nightmode" and it just lightened the text, making the overall screen even brighter.)

FreezerburnV 10y ago
That's interesting, I'd never even thought about something like that. Thanks for responding with that information. Is this still something that gets taught? Or do you think that these sites are being made by people who were taught that a number of years ago and haven't taken the time to learn how to interact with monitors in a post-retina/high-dpi world? Or has it become some kind of "cult" knowledge that gets repeated by people who aren't aware of the real reasoning behind why it was done back then? Also interesting to learn white-on-black eye strain is nonsense. Another comment mentioned that it probably looks better to have dark gray because true blacks are rare, is that accurate?
vmarsy 10y ago
That's an interesting point of view! As a UX designer veteran, you must know these numbers better than most of us here, do you know how ubiquitous retina screen are? On desktop, the Firefox Hardware report [1] tends to show that they the most common resolutions are 1366 * 768 and 1920 * 1080, this unfortunately doesn't tell us if those are retina screens or not, but from [2] it seems that we're talking about at most 17% as a 'retina' display would report as 1920 * 1080 [1] https://metrics.mozilla.com/firefox-hardware-report/ https://metrics.mozilla.com/firefox-hardware-report/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13184022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13184022
- acveilleux 10y ago
  And I've lost track of the web UIs that pretend that everyone has and will game the web page 1920 pixels of width (while writing this, I'm glaring at JIRA in 1200x1920, portrait mode.)
- extra88 10y ago
  UHD is not the only HiDPI/retina resolution. My 15" MacBook Pro has a hardware pixel resolution of 2880x1800 but reports "CSS pixels" of 1440x900. The report being from Firefox, all the iOS devices with retina displays aren't represented at all. I don't know how ubiquitous HiDPI displays are on Android devices but my hunch is most smartphones sold in the U.S. and Europe have them.
BinaryIdiot 10y ago
> Back in the old days (so like 3 years ago) before the majority of screens were 'retina' (aka you can't see the pixels at normal viewing distances) fonts always rendered with jagged edges. Turning down the contrast between a font and its background is effective in reducing this effect. Interesting perspective. I was a designer a while back and every designer I've ever worked with has never done this for the reason you state. In fact they always have the latest and greatest monitors and resolutions so they'd never see the issue anyway. They always told me it was "because it looked better". I always fought to change it and got it changed in every case but the difference in perspective is interesting so I thought I'd chime in.
anexprogrammer 10y ago
There's indication that 00/FF contrast can be problematic, especially for dyslexics [1]. The ridiculous part is the amount the contrast is often toned down as a result. No one benefits from a sea of grey on grey bordering on unusable. [1] http://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/dyslexic/eyes-and-dyslexia http://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/dyslexic/eyes-and-dyslexia
lacampbell 10y ago
> Back in the old days (so like 3 years ago) before the majority of screens were 'retina' I can assure you that the majority of the worlds screens are not retinas. maybe the majority of screens owned by experienced developers in the US (very high incomes + cheap electronics) are retinas. Maybe. But in the world? Absolutely not.

FreezerburnV 10y ago

That's interesting, I'd never even thought about something like that. Thanks for responding with that information. Is this still something that gets taught? Or do you think that these sites are being made by people who were taught that a number of years ago and haven't taken the time to learn how to interact with monitors in a post-retina/high-dpi world? Or has it become some kind of "cult" knowledge that gets repeated by people who aren't aware of the real reasoning behind why it was done back then? Also interesting to learn white-on-black eye strain is nonsense. Another comment mentioned that it probably looks better to have dark gray because true blacks are rare, is that accurate?

vmarsy 10y ago

That's an interesting point of view! As a UX designer veteran, you must know these numbers better than most of us here, do you know how ubiquitous retina screen are? On desktop, the Firefox Hardware report [1] tends to show that they the most common resolutions are 1366 * 768 and 1920 * 1080, this unfortunately doesn't tell us if those are retina screens or not, but from [2] it seems that we're talking about at most 17% as a 'retina' display would report as 1920 * 1080 [1] https://metrics.mozilla.com/firefox-hardware-report/ https://metrics.mozilla.com/firefox-hardware-report/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13184022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13184022

acveilleux 10y ago
And I've lost track of the web UIs that pretend that everyone has and will game the web page 1920 pixels of width (while writing this, I'm glaring at JIRA in 1200x1920, portrait mode.)
extra88 10y ago
UHD is not the only HiDPI/retina resolution. My 15" MacBook Pro has a hardware pixel resolution of 2880x1800 but reports "CSS pixels" of 1440x900. The report being from Firefox, all the iOS devices with retina displays aren't represented at all. I don't know how ubiquitous HiDPI displays are on Android devices but my hunch is most smartphones sold in the U.S. and Europe have them.

BinaryIdiot 10y ago

> Back in the old days (so like 3 years ago) before the majority of screens were 'retina' (aka you can't see the pixels at normal viewing distances) fonts always rendered with jagged edges. Turning down the contrast between a font and its background is effective in reducing this effect. Interesting perspective. I was a designer a while back and every designer I've ever worked with has never done this for the reason you state. In fact they always have the latest and greatest monitors and resolutions so they'd never see the issue anyway. They always told me it was "because it looked better". I always fought to change it and got it changed in every case but the difference in perspective is interesting so I thought I'd chime in.

anexprogrammer 10y ago

There's indication that 00/FF contrast can be problematic, especially for dyslexics [1]. The ridiculous part is the amount the contrast is often toned down as a result. No one benefits from a sea of grey on grey bordering on unusable. [1] http://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/dyslexic/eyes-and-dyslexia http://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/dyslexic/eyes-and-dyslexia

lacampbell 10y ago

> Back in the old days (so like 3 years ago) before the majority of screens were 'retina' I can assure you that the majority of the worlds screens are not retinas. maybe the majority of screens owned by experienced developers in the US (very high incomes + cheap electronics) are retinas. Maybe. But in the world? Absolutely not.