5 ms·

About grey on white, it is said to decrease eye strain. [1] [1] : https://uxmovement.com/content/why-you-should-never-use-pure-black-for-text-or-backgrounds/ h

by Kyro38 6y ago

About grey on white, it is said to decrease eye strain. [1] [1] : https://uxmovement.com/content/why-you-should-never-use-pure-black-for-text-or-backgrounds/ https://uxmovement.com/content/why-you-should-never-use-pure...

throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
The responses at the bottom of that article are very interesting, and not necessarily all supportive. But thanks.
- jraph 6y ago
  If everybody settle on pure white on pure black or the reverse, I can choose the best contrast of my display for myself. Sites that use gray are annoying, and what's worse every sites doing that use a different gray. And if I use an OLED screen in a completely dark setting, your "not really black" is annoying too: there is more light coming to my eyes, and your website will be harder to read because of the lower contrast. Way more strain on my eyes, clearly. You work against me. Don't choose for me, you don't know my setting and how my eyes work. Fortunately, Dark Reader and Dark Background and Light text both do a good job of setting the right colors to webpages and are customizable. An extension working the same way to undo these arbitrary choices and to set the desired level of gray for a light background and a dark text would be nice. Setting the level of gray should not be the designer's choice, because each user is different in this respect. If someone is annoyed by a too big contrast, their screen is probably too bright and they can set it. If you as a designer try to solve this problem for me as a visitor, you are preventing me from solving this problem in the best possible way, once and for all, for every sites I visit. Please don't mess up with my contrast. I know some people don't know how to configure their display or even that this is a problem and bad display settings are what cause them headaches, but you won't this fix for them, and even may make the problem worse for some of them. Smaller contrasts are not compliant to the Web accessibility guidelines for a reason. Good thing that I have screens with sharp contrasts and good eyes though. Am I missing something?
spion 6y ago
In my experience, this is completely wrong. I always strain more to read gray text on white background, no exception. I really wish this trend stops. A darker background, on the other hand, can be helpful in some situations.
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  > In my experience, this is completely wrong. I always strain more to read gray text on white background, no exception. I can't know for sure, but it's pretty likely your experience and your observations aren't quite aligned. If the contrast is too low (such that you notice), it can certainly cause more strain. But it's often the case that almost-black registers as black (and almost-white as white) and you don't even realize that's what you're seeing.
  - spion 6y ago
    That's the entire problem with this theory. The designer does NOT know what my computer screen renders. Not every computer is a Mac with a 400+ nits display or has the same contrast ratio. The optimal "gray" therefore varies across screens. In my case, anything above #333 is capable of producing problems, the range #333 to approx. #444 is problematic with thinner font weights and anything above #444 is easily, noticeably terrible with anything except heading weights.

by Kyro38 6y ago

throwaway_pdp09 6y ago

The responses at the bottom of that article are very interesting, and not necessarily all supportive. But thanks.

jraph 6y ago
If everybody settle on pure white on pure black or the reverse, I can choose the best contrast of my display for myself. Sites that use gray are annoying, and what's worse every sites doing that use a different gray. And if I use an OLED screen in a completely dark setting, your "not really black" is annoying too: there is more light coming to my eyes, and your website will be harder to read because of the lower contrast. Way more strain on my eyes, clearly. You work against me. Don't choose for me, you don't know my setting and how my eyes work. Fortunately, Dark Reader and Dark Background and Light text both do a good job of setting the right colors to webpages and are customizable. An extension working the same way to undo these arbitrary choices and to set the desired level of gray for a light background and a dark text would be nice. Setting the level of gray should not be the designer's choice, because each user is different in this respect. If someone is annoyed by a too big contrast, their screen is probably too bright and they can set it. If you as a designer try to solve this problem for me as a visitor, you are preventing me from solving this problem in the best possible way, once and for all, for every sites I visit. Please don't mess up with my contrast. I know some people don't know how to configure their display or even that this is a problem and bad display settings are what cause them headaches, but you won't this fix for them, and even may make the problem worse for some of them. Smaller contrasts are not compliant to the Web accessibility guidelines for a reason. Good thing that I have screens with sharp contrasts and good eyes though. Am I missing something?

spion 6y ago

In my experience, this is completely wrong. I always strain more to read gray text on white background, no exception. I really wish this trend stops. A darker background, on the other hand, can be helpful in some situations.

eyelidlessness 6y ago
> In my experience, this is completely wrong. I always strain more to read gray text on white background, no exception. I can't know for sure, but it's pretty likely your experience and your observations aren't quite aligned. If the contrast is too low (such that you notice), it can certainly cause more strain. But it's often the case that almost-black registers as black (and almost-white as white) and you don't even realize that's what you're seeing.
- spion 6y ago
  That's the entire problem with this theory. The designer does NOT know what my computer screen renders. Not every computer is a Mac with a 400+ nits display or has the same contrast ratio. The optimal "gray" therefore varies across screens. In my case, anything above #333 is capable of producing problems, the range #333 to approx. #444 is problematic with thinner font weights and anything above #444 is easily, noticeably terrible with anything except heading weights.