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From "http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/" which is one up the chain: > A little less contrast WHY. WHY DO PEOPLE DO
by rkangel 6y ago
From "http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/" which is one up the chain:
> A little less contrast
WHY. WHY DO PEOPLE DO THIS. To give this person credit they have at least chosen some sensible values, rather than gone with something that was just about enough on an expensive graphic designer high-contrast monitor and then not tested it on anything else. Leaving the rest of us squinting to try and read text or manually overriding CSS.
Despite not being a complete idiot, they have still made the content harder to read. Contrast is good. It makes things easier to read. Why would you want less? Yes I know the art theory stuff about never using black because it doesn't appear naturally. You know what else doesn't appear naturally? TEXT. Black on white is a perfectly acceptable default, please don't change it for your body text without a really good reason.
(ranty style done in homage to the linked websites, but it felt good to get that out)
- mrweasel 6y agoCompletely agree, the weird dark grey text makes the whole site look foggy. It actually one off the most annoying colours I’ve seen used for text.
- chronogram 6y agoBecause they write the website on a high res Macbook and prefer their amazing artistic talents over the ability for people with cheaper computers or poorer eyesight to read their art.
- smiley1437 6y agoGod I hate lowered contrast on sites, especially as I'm aging. Give me the crisp edges of black and white, if I want to lower the contrast I'll turn down my brightness settings.
- camgunz 6y agoA fundamental design principle is that full black is unnatural. It's like, point three on "I don't know anything about design, give me a quick list" articles. And it's pretty true, frankly. Making text a little more navy or gray makes a big difference. Sure people have eyesight issues and not everyone has a great monitor, but most people prefer it this way.
- hinkley 6y agoVery true, however better has chosen #444 whereas #333 seems to work a bit more consistently. One thing you should always consider during the requirements phase of a web application is whether your app is likely to be used projected on a conference room wall. Things like contrast and fonts make huge differences in such hostile settings, and available screen real estate is also considerably limited.
- camgunz 6y agoGreat point yeah. I also think it should be easier to tell browsers to make text high contrast, design be damned. Fundamentally it's an accessibility issue.
- hinkley 6y agoLast time I was in this situation, the UX expert and I had the entire dev team stand at the back of a conference room and vote on which font was most legible. All but one agreed Verdana was the easiest. Not only that, but it was still more legible than our previous font at 1pt smaller text, which meant we could get more info onto the screen. Not tons more, but we were having to truncate text in some spots, and sometimes even one or two more letters is enough for people to get the gist without having to backseat drive the presenter. It's subtle but I was beginning to recognize this as an important waste of time and energy when we were dogfooding our app. When people are already getting short with each other before you even get to the actual reason for the meeting, you know it's going to be a long day. But corporate wanted our fonts to match their other product. I don't know if it was my imagination or not, but it felt like that act broke a couple people on the team, myself included.
- camgunz 6y agoOoof that burns. Feels weird to have a UX expert but then ignore them? But of course, corporate knows best haha.
- not2b 6y ago
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoIf you're within 10-15% or so of white or black, I am fine with the "slightly grey" look, assuming I don't have an AMOLED screen, where your dark grey is just wasting my phone battery. I really only get annoyed with the "less contrast" meme when it's something like a Google website where the UI disappears if your monitor's contrast settings weren't tuned professionally. (I used to have to adjust my monitor settings around making the UI elements on Google+ visible.)
- RandallBrown 6y ago> WHY. WHY DO PEOPLE DO THIS. Because too much contrast can be jarring and distracting, making it harder to read. These kinds of things are subjective.
- RedShift1 6y agoIs there any research that proves this?
- RandallBrown 6y agoMy sample size of 1 is really all that's needed to answer the question of "Why do people do this?" That is assuming that I'm a person.
- aidenn0 6y agoIf everyone could agree to not use black-on-white, we could set our monitor brightness to a sane value and have enough contrast to read. In order to read black on white text, I have to turn my backlight down to like 10%, and then turn it up to about 40% to watch a movie. More contrast isn't always better, or you would read text by printing out foil stencils and aiming them directly at the sun to read.
- Veen 6y ago> WHY. WHY DO PEOPLE DO THIS Because designers are taught that too much contrast causes eye strain. They're advised against putting pure black text on bright white backgrounds. https://www.wired.com/2016/10/how-the-web-became-unreadable/ https://www.wired.com/2016/10/how-the-web-became-unreadable/
- enraged_camel 6y agoI hate Youtube on dark mode for that reason: it's white text on black background and I struggle to read comments!
- iamacyborg 6y agoThey're doing you a favour.
- wrycoder 6y agoWhich leaves you seeing phantom lines when you look away from the screen.
- dathinab 6y agoBut to little contrast causes so much more eyestrain, and can't be fixed by changing your screens brightness.
- kuschku 6y agoToo much contrast can't be fixed by changing your brightness either unless you like spending several hours calibrating it again after every single blogpost you read.
- dathinab 6y agoI have said it pretty often in this comment section, but the huge majority of internet users has no finely calibrated screens at all. They also won't have screen where they are likely to feel anything has too much contrast. IMHO a screen which displays a common black and white website with so much contrast that it strains the eye is a 100% failed product which completely ignores reality.
- munchbunny 6y ago> Yes I know the art theory stuff about never using black because it doesn't appear naturally. I think the underlying reasons for that are underappreciated. When you pick #000000 for your text color, people won't see it as pure black anyway. Imperfections in your screen's backlighting aside, your screen reflects the ambient lighting, or, if you're outdoors and pointed the wrong direction on a sunny day, your screen reflects sunlight that is orders of magnitude brighter than the screen itself (measured in cd/m^2). #000000 never shows up as actual black either. So if you're going to put black text on white background, just use #000000 on #ffffff. Nature doesn't need any more help to make text on screens hard to read.
- kuschku 6y agoOn a good monitor, the color contrast between #ffffff and #000000 is far beyond the contrast possible in nature. No reflective material can reach those colors or that contrast. That color contrast is perfect for a game, a movie or an image. But you don't want the feeling of something as bright as looking into the fucking sun mixed with the darkness of the deepest starless night. That's just painful, both in light mode and dark mode. Just calibrate your monitor correctly, increase your contrast if your monitor can't even display Rec.709 sRGB, instead of compensating for your shitty monitor by making your website painful for anyone with a good monitor. EDIT: this comment puts it very well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26741285 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26741285
- jschwartzi 6y agoYeah definitely. And also be sure to switch all your keys on your keyboard to a hardwood. I prefer mahogany for its bright clicks and depth of response versus the equivalent plastic keycaps.
- kuschku 6y agoIf you use these high contrast colors, you will break it for users on good displays. That means potential investors, people on iPhones, people on expensive samsung phones. Those are the people you usually want as customers. And you're making your website painful for them. That's a decision you can make, but don't be surprised if you'll fail with that attitude.
- edoceo 6y agoPut #101010 on #f0f0f0
- new_here 6y agoLowering the contrast of text helps people with dyslexia (between 7.5% - 17.5% of users) to read the content more easily: https://www.w3.org/WAI/RD/2012/text-customization/r11 https://www.w3.org/WAI/RD/2012/text-customization/r11 High contrast text can appear blurred for them while reading.
- indigochill 6y agoAlso what's up with those side margins? A little margin is nice (HN's feel reasonable), but the margins on both PMFW and BMFW look like they follow the philosophy of maximizing scrolling and margins to cram a bunch of ads in the margins, only without the ads. One caveat might be that I'm viewing them on a desktop monitor and not on a cellphone. (Edit: Okay, I should have read TFW. They mention the reason for the line width)
- deergomoo 6y agoApparently optimal reading width is approx. 65 characters wide. There's definitely a sweet spot; I typically have my browser windows at 2/3 width on a 2560px wide monitor. 100% width lines are a chore to read honestly, there's definitely a higher cognitive load.
- kuschku 6y ago> WHY. WHY DO PEOPLE DO THIS. Do you like 400 nits of #ffffff right into your eyeballs? No? Me neither. The alternative is absolute darkness with extremely bright text, which in turn makes it unreadable (if you have astigmatism as I do) and literally causes pain due to the high contrast. Nothing in nature has such an extreme contrast. The only reason anyone would ever use full contrast is if they have a shitty 6-bit monitor panel that doesn't even reach the contrast ratio of a shitty 1990's monitor. And they don't even have a proper color profile, so their computer thinks their monitor has all the contrast ratio in the world, and doesn't tonemap fuckall. The only way to resolve this is if either everyone finally switches on a color managed workflow, or we outright ban the shitty panels where #000000 on #ffffff is necessary for readability instead of being just painful. #ffffff is the color of looking directly into the sun and absolutely painful bright, #000000 is the color of the deepest, starless night. You need these colors for movies, for games, for images. But your text should never be the contrast between a starless night and looking directly into a star. Increase the contrast of your monitor, calibrate your panel, but don't build a worse website to compensate for your shitty panel. EDIT: this comment puts it very well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26741285 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26741285
- u801e 6y ago> Nothing in nature has such an extreme contrast. What about black text on white pages in an actual hardback book? But since you referred to nature, what about zebras?
- yobert 6y agoIsn't the general theory about zebra stripes is they are designed to confuse and nauseate predators? :D (Poking fun, with love)
- jmondi 6y agoWhat books are you reading that have pure white pages with pure black text on them? At best they are eggshell or an off-white page. Also... books are nature now?
- ath92 6y ago
- lelandbatey 6y agoJoin the contrast rebellion and demand high-contrast text: https://contrastrebellion.com/ https://contrastrebellion.com/
- kstenerud 6y agoOMG that website is so easy to read! It's a breath of fresh air! What would be really cool is if web browsers offered a mode that forced a contrast minimum when viewing websites. This would benefit devs and users alike: Users would have a pushbutton way to make bad websites readable, and devs would have a push button to show what their site would look like to users who get annoyed enough to push that button.
- jdiez17 6y agoExcept they hijack scrolling (I think their intention is to “snap” to various sections). On my device, that puts the viewport at some point between sections, and I cannot manually scroll to correct it. So I can’t read the content either. Well done there.
- kuschku 6y agoI love that website. It has the perfect amount of contrast, not the harsh #000 on #fff half this comment section recommends. https://i.k8r.eu/dw9JsA.png https://i.k8r.eu/dw9JsA.png
- marzell 6y agoMaybe unexpected for you, but not everyone agrees that more contrast is always better. I specifically choose color schemes in application I use that have less contrast as that seems better for me. There is certainly a point where contrast is objectively too high, and increases in monitor contrast and the increased use of HDR monitors make this more of an issue these days.
- UI_at_80x24 6y agohttps://contrastrebellion.com/ https://contrastrebellion.com/ More high-contrast options exist then Black foreground on a White background. I'm not disagreeing with your point, I loathe grey on grey sites. Being visually impaired nothing makes me rage-quit your site quicker if my DarkReader extension can't unfuck a site. I'm posting https://contrastrebellion.com/ https://contrastrebellion.com/ so all the replies and followup conversations can see it too.
- codydh 6y agoThe scrolljacking on this site makes it literally unusable on my device.
- reacharavindh 6y agoThat is one awful website to read on mobile safari. The scroll bar is hijacked to make the text unreadable - how ironic!? May be some should make scrollhijackrebellion.com ;-)
- yoz-y 6y agoAdd teeny tiny text to it too. On a basic website i can at least pinch. With scroll jacking it’s all broken.
- iso1631 6y agoPurple on black is hardly "contrast" https://imgur.com/Q52ZxwS.png https://imgur.com/Q52ZxwS.png
- sxp 6y agoFrom what I can tell, this is due to designers cargo culting low contrast UIs. Whenever I've asked designers for citations that grey-on-gray UIs are better than black/white or white/black, I haven't gotten any good responses beyond some subjective answers. It's considered "general knowledge" but I haven't found hard data supporting it. There are good reasons to avoid bright white backgrounds in certain cases since it can be hard to read in dark environments as your eyes switch between the bright screen and dark world. But in this case, pure white on pure black is still the best option for contrast. And the correct solution is to dim the backlight of the display to reduce brightness.
- lucideer 6y ago> WHY. WHY DO PEOPLE DO THIS. To give this person credit they have at least chosen some sensible values, Dunno what the science says, but I really hate #000 on #fff, or vice-versa. Yes, a lot of websites now go to the opposite extreme, but the reaction should simply be: so DON'T GO TO EXTREMES! Neither too much nor too little contrast are good. And since you've pointed out they do go for sensible values here, why the outraged all caps???
- kstenerud 6y agoThis is one of my biggest pet peeves of "modern" websites. I've installed github.com/Fushko/font-contrast, and I've noticed myself clicking it on more and more in recent times. You don't need a pure white background, but for gods sake PLEASE stop making the text light grey! Having to squint to read a website is headache-inducing.
- cactus2093 6y agoObviously too little contrast is bad and makes text hard to read, but it doesn't at all follow that MORE CONTRAST is always better. In fact it's pretty clear that too much contrast (which is equivalent to too much brightness, since there's a floor on how black the dark parts can get) can be a negative thing, that's why we don't all leave our displays at maximal brightness in all lighting conditions. Another commenter mentioned that all text should just be black on white and people can dim their screens as necessary. It's somewhat a matter of personal preference, but this seems like a bad solution to me. Most people are not looking at exclusively text when browsing the web, there are lots of pictures and videos as well. Users shouldn't have to be constantly fiddling with screen brightness. In photos and videos, contrast is often used for dramatic effect, where you want some parts to get brighter than others. If the text is too high contrast so you have to dim your screen further to view it comfortably, then the photos or videos you see alongside the text won't be as impactful and enjoyable. Why should every piece of text you read be as dramatic as the most intense rays of sunlight or something in a photo or movie?
- tarsinge 6y agoHigh contrast is harsh on the eyes. Black on white is very tiresome for me, and can become harder to read at the end of the day. I always set the background of my text editors to dark grey.
- dorkwood 6y agoI personally find dark mode with too much contrast to be harder to read. I experience real discomfort otherwise, so I don't think it's as simple as "more contrast is always better". I think it comes down to what you're used to, what your vision is like, and how sensitive your eyes are. Some prefer high contrast, some don't.
- coldtea 6y ago>WHY. WHY DO PEOPLE DO THIS. Because too much contrast on a monitor means white on black, which on average (that is, 99% of people's setups) brightness levels settings strains the eyes and people actively dislike it. Its not some book reflecting ambient light, but a monitor with a led shining white (blue-ish) light on your eyes... >Contrast is good. Water is good too. Too much water though, and you die: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication
- zozbot234 6y ago> Contrast is good. It makes things easier to read. Why would you want less? One sensible reason for this is that it allows using higher contrast, or different hues w/ similar contrast, as a kind of emphasis that naturally stands out from the surrounding text. Same reasons why most terminal emulators display text as light-gray-on-black, while keeping pure white as a highlight color.
- neogodless 6y agoI was a little confused when I clicked through, but then I remembered I installed the Firefox add-on "Font Contrast" which has absolutely vital over the past several years, with so many web site designers who think `#666666` text looks good against a `#CCCCCC` background!