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For paper you'd like the maximum contrast, but screens emit light, and maximum contrast puts additional strain on the eyes. There's a big but, though. This is f

For paper you'd like the maximum contrast, but screens emit light, and maximum contrast puts additional strain on the eyes. There's a big but, though. This is for people with normal eyesight. As far as I understand, some people require this hurtful (to me) level of contrast just to be able to read. Additionally, you can significantly lower contrast just adjusting your monitor's brightness, but there's a limit on how far can you go in the opposite direction and it doesn't help if there's not enough contrast to begin with. If you can't solve it with CSS presets, I think it's better to stick with higher contrast for these reasons. For my blog I just use black-on-white, even though for me personally it's too much if it's more than just a couple of paragraphs. I tend to lower my display brightness while checking my own blog. :) Another nuance I don't see discussed is at least not keeping the empty background around the content div at the maximum value level. It's just emitting pure light around the main content for no use.

chrismorgan 3y ago
> but screens emit light, and maximum contrast puts additional strain on the eyes Depends on the screen. You don’t know if the viewer is using e-ink or something like that (or even printing to paper—though in that case especially, colours specified in your stylesheet are more likely to be just ignored). If they’re using an LCD or similar, you also have no idea about their brightness settings. They might be ridiculously overbright, as is stupidly common, or “maximum contrast” may actually be delightfully pleasant because they’ve got sensibly-set brightness. Certainly for me in my current lighting circumstances, simple black on white will look delightful, matching the ambient lighting neatly.
- ZoomZoomZoom 3y ago
  Well it's just a problem of finding the baseline. I tend to think the "sensible" setting for the hardware is to afford the maximum dynamic range. This way no loss occurs if the material requires it, but if not, it needs to be limited it in software. This, of course, would lead to "ridiculously overbright" text, and limited contrast solves this problem more or less completely (this is why I override the background colour for my PDF viewer). My opinion is influenced by working with graphics, though. I also believe the most common display technology used for desktops should be this baseline, and currently it's LCD. However, this creates problems for people with different hardware and different eyesight and light sensitivity. Perhaps it's the OS that should provide some tooling to display the colours differently for different displays and different modes (image/text/other). The changes must be informed by the software, so for example, you could mark you site's colourscheme as "for reading" and the dynamic range would adapt properly. The way the OS adapts that I saw is atrocious, perhaps because optimized for a different metric. My laptop changing the display brightness and contrast when I use Windows on battery looks bad regardless of what's on display.
NathanielK 3y ago
> but screens emit light, and maximum contrast puts additional strain on the eyes. That's just a problem with manufacturers putting displays with high dynamic range into devices and not putting decent HDR software implementations in. Some apple devices are smart about it though. When you open up an HDR video, it cranks the backlight to make those highlights pop, but dims the LCD by lowering the contrast in software. This means high contrast websites don't sear your retinas while your media can still take better advantage of your display. https://prolost.com/blog/edr https://prolost.com/blog/edr

chrismorgan 3y ago

> but screens emit light, and maximum contrast puts additional strain on the eyes Depends on the screen. You don’t know if the viewer is using e-ink or something like that (or even printing to paper—though in that case especially, colours specified in your stylesheet are more likely to be just ignored). If they’re using an LCD or similar, you also have no idea about their brightness settings. They might be ridiculously overbright, as is stupidly common, or “maximum contrast” may actually be delightfully pleasant because they’ve got sensibly-set brightness. Certainly for me in my current lighting circumstances, simple black on white will look delightful, matching the ambient lighting neatly.

ZoomZoomZoom 3y ago
Well it's just a problem of finding the baseline. I tend to think the "sensible" setting for the hardware is to afford the maximum dynamic range. This way no loss occurs if the material requires it, but if not, it needs to be limited it in software. This, of course, would lead to "ridiculously overbright" text, and limited contrast solves this problem more or less completely (this is why I override the background colour for my PDF viewer). My opinion is influenced by working with graphics, though. I also believe the most common display technology used for desktops should be this baseline, and currently it's LCD. However, this creates problems for people with different hardware and different eyesight and light sensitivity. Perhaps it's the OS that should provide some tooling to display the colours differently for different displays and different modes (image/text/other). The changes must be informed by the software, so for example, you could mark you site's colourscheme as "for reading" and the dynamic range would adapt properly. The way the OS adapts that I saw is atrocious, perhaps because optimized for a different metric. My laptop changing the display brightness and contrast when I use Windows on battery looks bad regardless of what's on display.

NathanielK 3y ago

> but screens emit light, and maximum contrast puts additional strain on the eyes. That's just a problem with manufacturers putting displays with high dynamic range into devices and not putting decent HDR software implementations in. Some apple devices are smart about it though. When you open up an HDR video, it cranks the backlight to make those highlights pop, but dims the LCD by lowering the contrast in software. This means high contrast websites don't sear your retinas while your media can still take better advantage of your display. https://prolost.com/blog/edr https://prolost.com/blog/edr