4 ms·

I find the contrast between the text color and background color to be too low for comfortable reading.

GordonS 6y ago
Totally agree, this makes for horrible reading - why would you think light grey on white was a good idea?!
brenns10 6y ago
Hey, I hear you and I don't want reading my site to be uncomfortable! My site uses the solarized light colorscheme [1], which I chose because I use the solarized schemes for my text editors. I think they are lower contrast to lend themselves to long editing sessions without being jarring on the eyes, but maybe that's not ideal for webpages? In any case, if I added a small JS powered button to switch into a higher contrast style, would that make the site more usable to you? [1]: https://ethanschoonover.com/solarized/ https://ethanschoonover.com/solarized/
- optymizer 6y ago
  Hi Stephen, I appreciate your willingness to accept feedback. I'm flattered that you would add a button to make my reading experience better, but I think a website should be readable by default, so the button would just be a workaround from my point of view. I would also like to respectfully challenge your assumption that lower contrast text is less jarring for the eyes for long reading sessions. If it were so, they'd be printing books in light gray color, wouldn't they? Looking at the Solarized theme, my guess is it's the yellow-ish background that removes the strain on the eyes, as #fff is typically very bright. Since most people aren't focusing on the background when reading, it doesn't cause the eyes to focus more than usual. However, changing the color of the text is a different matter because that's what the eyes are focusing on, and making the text lighter causes it to be harder to read. That's easy to verify: on the opacity scale of 0.0 to 1.0, where 1.0 is fully opaque, #000 (full black) at 0.1 opacity (almost transparent) is harder to focus on than 0.9 opacity (almost fully opaque). The only reason why some (most?) designers wouldn't be caught dead using #000 at 1.0 opacity for text, despite it being the most readable text color, is because very few things in the real world are at #000 or #fff, so the general advice is to use some shade that's close to it to make the webpage look more natural. They're essentially trading off readability for aesthetics, and my original comment was that you traded off too much readability for aesthetics, in my opinion. That said, if I were you, I wouldn't trust my opinion or anyone else's really. Seeing as you made it to HN, you could run an A/B test to see if serving a higher contrast page causes people to spend more time on that page on average, presumably because they're spending more time reading the content, instead of just skimming it like me. That way you'd be making informed changes based on data, not people's subjective experiences (including mine and yours). Just for fun, I fiddled with the text color on your webpage and I'd say anything lighter than #555 for the body and #666 for the h2 seems too washed out (with the same background color). Finally, I do want to note that the content is excellent. Happy Memorial Day!

Totally agree, this makes for horrible reading - why would you think light grey on white was a good idea?!

Hey, I hear you and I don't want reading my site to be uncomfortable! My site uses the solarized light colorscheme [1], which I chose because I use the solarized schemes for my text editors. I think they are lower contrast to lend themselves to long editing sessions without being jarring on the eyes, but maybe that's not ideal for webpages? In any case, if I added a small JS powered button to switch into a higher contrast style, would that make the site more usable to you? [1]: https://ethanschoonover.com/solarized/ https://ethanschoonover.com/solarized/

optymizer 6y ago
Hi Stephen, I appreciate your willingness to accept feedback. I'm flattered that you would add a button to make my reading experience better, but I think a website should be readable by default, so the button would just be a workaround from my point of view. I would also like to respectfully challenge your assumption that lower contrast text is less jarring for the eyes for long reading sessions. If it were so, they'd be printing books in light gray color, wouldn't they? Looking at the Solarized theme, my guess is it's the yellow-ish background that removes the strain on the eyes, as #fff is typically very bright. Since most people aren't focusing on the background when reading, it doesn't cause the eyes to focus more than usual. However, changing the color of the text is a different matter because that's what the eyes are focusing on, and making the text lighter causes it to be harder to read. That's easy to verify: on the opacity scale of 0.0 to 1.0, where 1.0 is fully opaque, #000 (full black) at 0.1 opacity (almost transparent) is harder to focus on than 0.9 opacity (almost fully opaque). The only reason why some (most?) designers wouldn't be caught dead using #000 at 1.0 opacity for text, despite it being the most readable text color, is because very few things in the real world are at #000 or #fff, so the general advice is to use some shade that's close to it to make the webpage look more natural. They're essentially trading off readability for aesthetics, and my original comment was that you traded off too much readability for aesthetics, in my opinion. That said, if I were you, I wouldn't trust my opinion or anyone else's really. Seeing as you made it to HN, you could run an A/B test to see if serving a higher contrast page causes people to spend more time on that page on average, presumably because they're spending more time reading the content, instead of just skimming it like me. That way you'd be making informed changes based on data, not people's subjective experiences (including mine and yours). Just for fun, I fiddled with the text color on your webpage and I'd say anything lighter than #555 for the body and #666 for the h2 seems too washed out (with the same background color). Finally, I do want to note that the content is excellent. Happy Memorial Day!