5 ms·

Back when UI apps were first made, screen brightness was pretty abysmal. Thats why white was chosen. Today screens are so insanely bright that you either have

Back when UI apps were first made, screen brightness was pretty abysmal. Thats why white was chosen. Today screens are so insanely bright that you either have to add a red filter, turn down the brightness, work in a bright room, or use dark mode.

Tomte 3y ago
> turn down the brightness That is the correct answer. Hold a sheet of paper next to the display when it‘s showing a white (notepad windows or so). Is the display brighter than the paper? It‘s too bright. At home, the brightness of my display is set to 0 (zero!). At work, it‘s at around 15 and 20. It depends on the display. Looks weird for fifteen minutes, after that you never want to go back to "burning my eyes out with an energy beam".
- userbinator 3y ago
  Turning down the brightness also makes monitors last longer. LCD TVs and the like often come with the brightness set to the maximum, which is good for impressing people in a brightly-lit showroom but horrible for longevity and comfort.
- orwin 3y ago
  > Hold a sheet of paper next to the display when it‘s showing a white Tried this, this is a perfect idea. It doesn't work on my laptop (I'm not surprised) but now my desktop monitor is perfectly set. Thank you.
rglullis 3y ago
> turn down the brightness Which is easy, works in all OS, does not require any work from the developer and/or designers and solves the problem at the individual level instead of forcing some type of cultural fight.
blacklion 3y ago
Work in bright room is THE answer. It goof for your eye (it is natural!), it is very good for your seasonal depression (if you live in high latitudes, like Canada, North Europe, etc), and now it is easy to achieve with sunlike LEDs. It was a problem not so long ago,vwhen you needed a lot of expensive CFL lights, like Philips Graphica series with good (expensive) electronic ballast to avoid flicker. Now it is much easier and cheaper, you only need to sacrifice estetics :-)
- safety1st 3y ago
  Good grief this is narrow minded. Obviously we cannot limit all usage of screens to doing work in a bright room (and during the day presumably - you don't really want to have a sunlamp turned on next to you at midnight).
  - blacklion 3y ago
    We, as very high-paid professionals, should ask for most ergonomic workspaces. We (or our employers) spent thousands of dollars for latest macbooks, cool chairs, motorized stand-up desks, etc. Light is no less important than that. All the best conditions for «computer opetators» were studied in details in 1990s, really. What should be lighting conditions, what should be desk hight, which distance between screen and keyboard (say hello to laptops), etc. It is not a rocket surgery, all data are available, there is standards and recommendations («codes») in each developed country. It is shown, that proper workplace could double productivity, for both lathe machinist and computer user. And why sunlike lamp wil be turnedvon next to me in midnight if I'm at home, in the bedroom (presumably) and not in my working place (on site or remote, it doesn't matter)? You work from your bed? I have bad news for future your neck, back and hands. Enthusiasm of people who throw away all this research and work from beanbags in the twilight with laptop on their hips astonishes me.
    - kragen 3y ago
      no standard recommends illuminating workplaces at natural 10-kilolux levels for lathe machinists or computer users; most monitors are unusable in such an environment
    - safety1st 3y ago
      Me personally? I'm basically terminals everywhere. Whether it's work or play. Office, living room, bedroom, bathroom, on the train, at a bar, you name it. 2pm or 2am, I want a terminal and a browser. You better believe I'm not going to be in light mode and sitting under a sun lamp all the time. Edit: ok I do use apps other than a terminal and a browser on occasion. An ebook reader for instance. A great example. If I'm reading a book in bed before I sleep I'm going to do it in dark mode. Don't want the extra lumens before bed.
bad_user 3y ago
That's not true. UIs became light when CRT monitors became capable enough to display bright light colors, which people preferred due to resembling printed paper. Before that it was all white/gray/green text on black/dark blue backgrounds. E.g., DOS vs Windows. And people were adding filters to their CRT screens due to fearing brightness and radiation. Ofc, it was the flicker that actually made people's eyes tired, but filters have been common at least since the 90s, and mostly snake oil. Today's screens aren't insanely bright at all, due to auto-brightness setting, with devices able to detect the ambient lighting and adjust. You can also control the color temperature depending on tone of day, which became a standard feature. It's not 100% perfect, but has been working well for me with iOS, Android or macOS devices.
- lionkor 3y ago
  Yeah, I massively simplified the history for the sake of my argument. My monitors at home and at work do not detect ambient light, and some of them are ridiculously expensive! They, turned up to the highest brightness or even the default (80%?) are much brighter than older screens. I used to run an older screen and a new one next to each other, and the difference was very notable. Of course they ended up being the same brightness because I changed their settings, but by default, the new one was brighter (because it could).

Tomte 3y ago

> turn down the brightness That is the correct answer. Hold a sheet of paper next to the display when it‘s showing a white (notepad windows or so). Is the display brighter than the paper? It‘s too bright. At home, the brightness of my display is set to 0 (zero!). At work, it‘s at around 15 and 20. It depends on the display. Looks weird for fifteen minutes, after that you never want to go back to "burning my eyes out with an energy beam".

userbinator 3y ago
Turning down the brightness also makes monitors last longer. LCD TVs and the like often come with the brightness set to the maximum, which is good for impressing people in a brightly-lit showroom but horrible for longevity and comfort.
orwin 3y ago
> Hold a sheet of paper next to the display when it‘s showing a white Tried this, this is a perfect idea. It doesn't work on my laptop (I'm not surprised) but now my desktop monitor is perfectly set. Thank you.

rglullis 3y ago

> turn down the brightness Which is easy, works in all OS, does not require any work from the developer and/or designers and solves the problem at the individual level instead of forcing some type of cultural fight.

blacklion 3y ago

Work in bright room is THE answer. It goof for your eye (it is natural!), it is very good for your seasonal depression (if you live in high latitudes, like Canada, North Europe, etc), and now it is easy to achieve with sunlike LEDs. It was a problem not so long ago,vwhen you needed a lot of expensive CFL lights, like Philips Graphica series with good (expensive) electronic ballast to avoid flicker. Now it is much easier and cheaper, you only need to sacrifice estetics :-)

safety1st 3y ago
Good grief this is narrow minded. Obviously we cannot limit all usage of screens to doing work in a bright room (and during the day presumably - you don't really want to have a sunlamp turned on next to you at midnight).
- blacklion 3y ago
  We, as very high-paid professionals, should ask for most ergonomic workspaces. We (or our employers) spent thousands of dollars for latest macbooks, cool chairs, motorized stand-up desks, etc. Light is no less important than that. All the best conditions for «computer opetators» were studied in details in 1990s, really. What should be lighting conditions, what should be desk hight, which distance between screen and keyboard (say hello to laptops), etc. It is not a rocket surgery, all data are available, there is standards and recommendations («codes») in each developed country. It is shown, that proper workplace could double productivity, for both lathe machinist and computer user. And why sunlike lamp wil be turnedvon next to me in midnight if I'm at home, in the bedroom (presumably) and not in my working place (on site or remote, it doesn't matter)? You work from your bed? I have bad news for future your neck, back and hands. Enthusiasm of people who throw away all this research and work from beanbags in the twilight with laptop on their hips astonishes me.
  - kragen 3y ago
    no standard recommends illuminating workplaces at natural 10-kilolux levels for lathe machinists or computer users; most monitors are unusable in such an environment
  - safety1st 3y ago
    Me personally? I'm basically terminals everywhere. Whether it's work or play. Office, living room, bedroom, bathroom, on the train, at a bar, you name it. 2pm or 2am, I want a terminal and a browser. You better believe I'm not going to be in light mode and sitting under a sun lamp all the time. Edit: ok I do use apps other than a terminal and a browser on occasion. An ebook reader for instance. A great example. If I'm reading a book in bed before I sleep I'm going to do it in dark mode. Don't want the extra lumens before bed.

bad_user 3y ago

That's not true. UIs became light when CRT monitors became capable enough to display bright light colors, which people preferred due to resembling printed paper. Before that it was all white/gray/green text on black/dark blue backgrounds. E.g., DOS vs Windows. And people were adding filters to their CRT screens due to fearing brightness and radiation. Ofc, it was the flicker that actually made people's eyes tired, but filters have been common at least since the 90s, and mostly snake oil. Today's screens aren't insanely bright at all, due to auto-brightness setting, with devices able to detect the ambient lighting and adjust. You can also control the color temperature depending on tone of day, which became a standard feature. It's not 100% perfect, but has been working well for me with iOS, Android or macOS devices.

lionkor 3y ago
Yeah, I massively simplified the history for the sake of my argument. My monitors at home and at work do not detect ambient light, and some of them are ridiculously expensive! They, turned up to the highest brightness or even the default (80%?) are much brighter than older screens. I used to run an older screen and a new one next to each other, and the difference was very notable. Of course they ended up being the same brightness because I changed their settings, but by default, the new one was brighter (because it could).