3 ms·

I hate that websites don’t use pure black for text anymore. As someone with an astigmatism, it makes the text much harder to read. I keep finding myself disabli

I hate that websites don’t use pure black for text anymore. As someone with an astigmatism, it makes the text much harder to read. I keep finding myself disabling css with inspector tools until the text is back to the user agent’s default of #000 again.

r00fus 5y ago
Just use a reader mode / extension that respects your preferences. I honestly have set my iPhone to open all pages in reader mode (and if that doesn't work, I turn it off or whitelist the site).
dredmorbius 5y ago
Where you can do so, use your browser's Reader Mode. It's possible to further tune Reader Mode (using userContent.css) to your personal preferences, though I believe you can also directly set colours, typically to Black-on-White, White-on-Black, or a Sepia (usually dark brown on smokey white) theme. When using a full-powered desktop, I'll use Stylish to adjust site CSS to my preferences, usually nuking distractions, though also occasionally modifying colour schemes. That's problematic as there are often many elements to change (nuking all but the principle payload has the side benefit of simplifying this problem).
- chrismorgan 5y ago
  Relevant excerpt from my Firefox profile’s userContent.css as an example: @-moz-document url("about:reader") { body.dark { --main-background: #000; --main-foreground: #aaa; } }
praash 5y ago
I don't understand the reasoning behind using some "designer black" for large blocks of text. Especially when the background is also chosen to be a softer tone, contrast is reduced even further. Imagine you're walking outside, trying to read an article with your phone, having trouble reading the text due to bright reflections. After finally managing to maximize your display's brightness, you realize that the website designer has decided to use these "nice" colors. You crouch down, cupping your hands over your phone to educate yourself about how to never ever use #000000 black.
- dylan604 5y ago
  >Imagine you're walking outside, trying to read an article with your phone, I'd suggest stop walking and reading a phone at the same time.
  - praash 5y ago
    I agree with this. Just paying more attention can bring so much joy.
- hypertele-Xii 5y ago
  Imagine you're trying to listen to classical music at a steel mill, but because the piece is mixed "correctly", you can't actually hear it. You turn up the volume to max but it's still too quiet to hear through the industrial noise and your ear protectors. Now, is it the mixer's fault you're trying to listen to the music at a steel mill? A lot of people answered "yes" and that's how we ended up with the "loudness wars" lowering the quality of all music to shit. A mistake that's ruined entire generations of music, only available at crap, compressed radio quality.
chrismorgan 5y ago
The advice against using pure black is reasonable and sound for areas of colour and for art that is trying to match how things appear in nature; but I don’t believe it was ever correct to apply it to simple text when your goal is reading rather than art. The original article here doesn’t even not use pure black, it uses a quite saturated dark blue for its text, which I find quite obnoxious. I find fully desaturating its #113654 to #303030 improves things markedly, and darkening it to #000 makes it even better. Mind you, I’ve recently shifted to using mildly-off-black (no lighter than #222, which is I think about the lightest you should go) for normal text and true black for bold text and titles (currently demonstrated on my personal website). I think this works pretty well.

r00fus 5y ago

Just use a reader mode / extension that respects your preferences. I honestly have set my iPhone to open all pages in reader mode (and if that doesn't work, I turn it off or whitelist the site).

dredmorbius 5y ago

Where you can do so, use your browser's Reader Mode. It's possible to further tune Reader Mode (using userContent.css) to your personal preferences, though I believe you can also directly set colours, typically to Black-on-White, White-on-Black, or a Sepia (usually dark brown on smokey white) theme. When using a full-powered desktop, I'll use Stylish to adjust site CSS to my preferences, usually nuking distractions, though also occasionally modifying colour schemes. That's problematic as there are often many elements to change (nuking all but the principle payload has the side benefit of simplifying this problem).

chrismorgan 5y ago
Relevant excerpt from my Firefox profile’s userContent.css as an example: @-moz-document url("about:reader") { body.dark { --main-background: #000; --main-foreground: #aaa; } }

praash 5y ago

I don't understand the reasoning behind using some "designer black" for large blocks of text. Especially when the background is also chosen to be a softer tone, contrast is reduced even further. Imagine you're walking outside, trying to read an article with your phone, having trouble reading the text due to bright reflections. After finally managing to maximize your display's brightness, you realize that the website designer has decided to use these "nice" colors. You crouch down, cupping your hands over your phone to educate yourself about how to never ever use #000000 black.

dylan604 5y ago
>Imagine you're walking outside, trying to read an article with your phone, I'd suggest stop walking and reading a phone at the same time.
- praash 5y ago
  I agree with this. Just paying more attention can bring so much joy.
hypertele-Xii 5y ago
Imagine you're trying to listen to classical music at a steel mill, but because the piece is mixed "correctly", you can't actually hear it. You turn up the volume to max but it's still too quiet to hear through the industrial noise and your ear protectors. Now, is it the mixer's fault you're trying to listen to the music at a steel mill? A lot of people answered "yes" and that's how we ended up with the "loudness wars" lowering the quality of all music to shit. A mistake that's ruined entire generations of music, only available at crap, compressed radio quality.

chrismorgan 5y ago

The advice against using pure black is reasonable and sound for areas of colour and for art that is trying to match how things appear in nature; but I don’t believe it was ever correct to apply it to simple text when your goal is reading rather than art. The original article here doesn’t even not use pure black, it uses a quite saturated dark blue for its text, which I find quite obnoxious. I find fully desaturating its #113654 to #303030 improves things markedly, and darkening it to #000 makes it even better. Mind you, I’ve recently shifted to using mildly-off-black (no lighter than #222, which is I think about the lightest you should go) for normal text and true black for bold text and titles (currently demonstrated on my personal website). I think this works pretty well.