4 ms·

Did Windows 98 really have such laughably low contrast between text and that dark grey background?

quickthrower2 4y ago
Yes!
jeroenhd 4y ago
To give it some credit, CRTs handle such contrast quite differently to modern screen technologies. The CRT itself added a tiny bit of colour bleed and blurring and the fact the colour is radiated out (rather than filtered out, like on LCD based technologies) gave it more contrast than you'd think looking at these colours now.
- marmetio 4y ago
  Is it possible to reproduce that effect on an LCD to restore the original contrast?
- crazygringo 4y ago
  - matsemann 4y ago
    WCAG defines different contrast rules for different font sizes. Thus "colors are colors" is not strictly true when it comes to evaluating contrast. On an old CRT, this elements were probably huge (measured in centimeters) compared to how I look at them on my 4k screen now. And that matters when talking about contrast.
    - crazygringo 4y ago
      No, elements were not "huge" on old CRT's. That's just a fact. Absolute text sizes have remained approximately the same. Have you ever used one? Nothing has changed in terms of information density that would lead to higher contrast now being required. To the contrary -- increased sharpness means you might be able to get away with lower density.
    - anthk 4y ago
      No. At 1024x768, a 19" screen was perfectly usable.
  - jeroenhd 4y ago
    Colours on a properly calibrated CRT are indeed the same as on a calibrated LCD. However, most screens in the world are far from calibrated. CRTs definitely had worse sharpness, but their colour contrast in areas where light and dark were next to each other was better then even some monitors sold today. I think the blur of the CRT screen is essential for the pixel-perfect look of 90s GUIs as they were designed with the colour stretching in mind. My computer screens have about four or five dimming zones between them at best and this becomes painfully obvious when trying to watch high-contrast imagery. Single-pixel lines also need to align perfectly with the pixels on my screen or require some kind of blurry processing or you'll get weird artifacts (as others mention, this CSS adds a green tint to some LCD displays). When my screen renders mostly black it's black enough, but when it needs to render black lines over a grey background, the result just doesn't work like it would've on a CRT screen, which has an entirely different image buildup. Sure, I know that HDR screens with 600 nits exist and I know that they're better than any CRT ever produced has ever been, but for most people, those fancy expensive screens are simply out of reach for the majority of people because of their price. The mediocre mid-range screens are what most people actually rely on for their business and that's the painful truth when designing anything. We can compensate for that in our designed by using the higher pixel densities of modern monitors and adding all kinds of effects, but in my experience, this simply wasn't necessary for CRTs exactly because of their flaws. CRTs have also been obviously superior for quite a lot longer than people seem to remember. The first generations of LCD screens were simply awful to look at. They were unresponsive, bland, had terrible contrast, the colour representations were all over the place because of needing analog to digital conversion, the UIs of the time were all designed with the blurry CRT effect in mind, the viewing angles were atrocious, it was all quite bad unless you went for the top of the market. I'm sure the more modern flat design and newness of these devices made people buy them before they were any good, but back in those days a high-res CRT would've been a far superior option for anyone not constrained by physical space. I've recently turned on an old flat screen I found lying around at my parents' place that I thought back in the day was a good screen back then. Looking at it with modern eyes, it's absolutely terrible, actually worse than the 90s CRTs I've used.
    - crazygringo 4y ago
      I appreciate your comments, but I still have literally no idea what you're talking about. I think you might be confusing contrast with something else, but I don't know what. There's no difference in colors between LCD/CRT, as calibration can be good or bad for either, and you can calibrate yourself. The idea of color contrast between light/dark being better on CRT makes no sense -- the colors are the same, although LCD's are sharper and actually have darker blacks. Dimming zones can similarly only darken blacks even further which is desired for contrast. And when you talk about "Single-pixel lines also need to align perfectly with the pixels on my screen or require some kind of blurry processing" that's to do with anti-aliasing or scaling, none of which have anything to do with CRT/LCD. "Black lines over a grey background" will always be worse, not better, on CRT due to the gray blurring into the black since phosphors "bleed" more. And we're not talking about first-generation LCD's (or first-generation CRT's), we're talking about the regular LCD's that come on average computers today. It's clear that you genuinely seem to be perceiving some difference that leads to a preference for CRT... but it's definitely not contrast. The only thing I can guess is it's a preference around disliking antialiasing or disliking "jaggies", or scaling modes, or subpixel rendering maybe? All of those are generally adjustable in system settings though. And the only one specific to LCD's is subpixel rendering, and you can always turn that off. (Macs got rid of it years ago already, anyways.)
crazygringo 4y ago
Yes and no? I mean yes it was black text (0, 0, 0) against light gray background (192, 192, 192) as shown here. But there's no universe in which that is "laughably low contrast". It's a full three-quarters of maximum contrast (not accounting for gamma). In fact, the WebAIM contrast checker says that's a contrast ratio of 11.54:1 which far surpasses even the AAA standard of 7:1 [1]. So not really sure what you're talking about. Also, this was only for UX elements in things like dialogs and toolbars. Obviously content areas like inside a text editor were against a white background. [1] https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/ https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/
- tshaddox 4y ago
  It does pass the old WebAIM contrast test, although that test doesn't consider font size or font weight. The proposed WCAG 3 contrast test, the Advanced Perceptual Contrast Algorithm, does consider font size and font weight. If I'm reading this correctly, the minimum recommended font size for normal 400 font weight with these colors is 16.75px, and the 11px seen in this 98.css demo is indeed laughably small: https://www.myndex.com/APCA/?BG=dfdfdf&TXT=222222&DEV=G4g&BUF=A22 https://www.myndex.com/APCA/?BG=dfdfdf&TXT=222222&DEV=G4g&BU... That said, what I was referring to primarily was the blue text color (#007AFF) against that grey background color (#dfdfdf), but reviewing that now it appears that blue text color is the default button color in iOS Safari, and likely not the intention of the 98.css authors. I'm only seeing this blue color in iOS Safari, so it likely merely indicates some CSS bug somewhere between 98.css and iOS Safari. But for reference, this blue color scores a dreadful 3:1 on the old WebAIM contrast test, and according this this APCA Contrast Calculator is only suitable for 400 font weight at 37px font size: https://www.myndex.com/APCA/?BG=dfdfdf&TXT=007aff&DEV=G4g&BUF=A22 https://www.myndex.com/APCA/?BG=dfdfdf&TXT=007aff&DEV=G4g&BU...

Yes!

To give it some credit, CRTs handle such contrast quite differently to modern screen technologies. The CRT itself added a tiny bit of colour bleed and blurring and the fact the colour is radiated out (rather than filtered out, like on LCD based technologies) gave it more contrast than you'd think looking at these colours now.

marmetio 4y ago
Is it possible to reproduce that effect on an LCD to restore the original contrast?
crazygringo 4y ago
- matsemann 4y ago
  WCAG defines different contrast rules for different font sizes. Thus "colors are colors" is not strictly true when it comes to evaluating contrast. On an old CRT, this elements were probably huge (measured in centimeters) compared to how I look at them on my 4k screen now. And that matters when talking about contrast.
  - crazygringo 4y ago
    No, elements were not "huge" on old CRT's. That's just a fact. Absolute text sizes have remained approximately the same. Have you ever used one? Nothing has changed in terms of information density that would lead to higher contrast now being required. To the contrary -- increased sharpness means you might be able to get away with lower density.
  - anthk 4y ago
    No. At 1024x768, a 19" screen was perfectly usable.
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  Colours on a properly calibrated CRT are indeed the same as on a calibrated LCD. However, most screens in the world are far from calibrated. CRTs definitely had worse sharpness, but their colour contrast in areas where light and dark were next to each other was better then even some monitors sold today. I think the blur of the CRT screen is essential for the pixel-perfect look of 90s GUIs as they were designed with the colour stretching in mind. My computer screens have about four or five dimming zones between them at best and this becomes painfully obvious when trying to watch high-contrast imagery. Single-pixel lines also need to align perfectly with the pixels on my screen or require some kind of blurry processing or you'll get weird artifacts (as others mention, this CSS adds a green tint to some LCD displays). When my screen renders mostly black it's black enough, but when it needs to render black lines over a grey background, the result just doesn't work like it would've on a CRT screen, which has an entirely different image buildup. Sure, I know that HDR screens with 600 nits exist and I know that they're better than any CRT ever produced has ever been, but for most people, those fancy expensive screens are simply out of reach for the majority of people because of their price. The mediocre mid-range screens are what most people actually rely on for their business and that's the painful truth when designing anything. We can compensate for that in our designed by using the higher pixel densities of modern monitors and adding all kinds of effects, but in my experience, this simply wasn't necessary for CRTs exactly because of their flaws. CRTs have also been obviously superior for quite a lot longer than people seem to remember. The first generations of LCD screens were simply awful to look at. They were unresponsive, bland, had terrible contrast, the colour representations were all over the place because of needing analog to digital conversion, the UIs of the time were all designed with the blurry CRT effect in mind, the viewing angles were atrocious, it was all quite bad unless you went for the top of the market. I'm sure the more modern flat design and newness of these devices made people buy them before they were any good, but back in those days a high-res CRT would've been a far superior option for anyone not constrained by physical space. I've recently turned on an old flat screen I found lying around at my parents' place that I thought back in the day was a good screen back then. Looking at it with modern eyes, it's absolutely terrible, actually worse than the 90s CRTs I've used.
  - crazygringo 4y ago
    I appreciate your comments, but I still have literally no idea what you're talking about. I think you might be confusing contrast with something else, but I don't know what. There's no difference in colors between LCD/CRT, as calibration can be good or bad for either, and you can calibrate yourself. The idea of color contrast between light/dark being better on CRT makes no sense -- the colors are the same, although LCD's are sharper and actually have darker blacks. Dimming zones can similarly only darken blacks even further which is desired for contrast. And when you talk about "Single-pixel lines also need to align perfectly with the pixels on my screen or require some kind of blurry processing" that's to do with anti-aliasing or scaling, none of which have anything to do with CRT/LCD. "Black lines over a grey background" will always be worse, not better, on CRT due to the gray blurring into the black since phosphors "bleed" more. And we're not talking about first-generation LCD's (or first-generation CRT's), we're talking about the regular LCD's that come on average computers today. It's clear that you genuinely seem to be perceiving some difference that leads to a preference for CRT... but it's definitely not contrast. The only thing I can guess is it's a preference around disliking antialiasing or disliking "jaggies", or scaling modes, or subpixel rendering maybe? All of those are generally adjustable in system settings though. And the only one specific to LCD's is subpixel rendering, and you can always turn that off. (Macs got rid of it years ago already, anyways.)

crazygringo 4y ago

Yes and no? I mean yes it was black text (0, 0, 0) against light gray background (192, 192, 192) as shown here. But there's no universe in which that is "laughably low contrast". It's a full three-quarters of maximum contrast (not accounting for gamma). In fact, the WebAIM contrast checker says that's a contrast ratio of 11.54:1 which far surpasses even the AAA standard of 7:1 [1]. So not really sure what you're talking about. Also, this was only for UX elements in things like dialogs and toolbars. Obviously content areas like inside a text editor were against a white background. [1] https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/ https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/

tshaddox 4y ago
It does pass the old WebAIM contrast test, although that test doesn't consider font size or font weight. The proposed WCAG 3 contrast test, the Advanced Perceptual Contrast Algorithm, does consider font size and font weight. If I'm reading this correctly, the minimum recommended font size for normal 400 font weight with these colors is 16.75px, and the 11px seen in this 98.css demo is indeed laughably small: https://www.myndex.com/APCA/?BG=dfdfdf&TXT=222222&DEV=G4g&BUF=A22 https://www.myndex.com/APCA/?BG=dfdfdf&TXT=222222&DEV=G4g&BU... That said, what I was referring to primarily was the blue text color (#007AFF) against that grey background color (#dfdfdf), but reviewing that now it appears that blue text color is the default button color in iOS Safari, and likely not the intention of the 98.css authors. I'm only seeing this blue color in iOS Safari, so it likely merely indicates some CSS bug somewhere between 98.css and iOS Safari. But for reference, this blue color scores a dreadful 3:1 on the old WebAIM contrast test, and according this this APCA Contrast Calculator is only suitable for 400 font weight at 37px font size: https://www.myndex.com/APCA/?BG=dfdfdf&TXT=007aff&DEV=G4g&BUF=A22 https://www.myndex.com/APCA/?BG=dfdfdf&TXT=007aff&DEV=G4g&BU...