3 ms·

I don't understand why you'd change foreground colours instead of background colours.... Either way, quick experiment shows it to be horrid for me.

by cbsmith 13y ago

anotherbadlogin 13y ago
Amen. The continued use of the asinine, glaring white background with dark text on it doesn't make sense. It's a failed product of the late-'80s/early-'90s "desktop publishing" fad in which developers sought to make the screen an analogy for a piece of paper. The error here is that a piece of paper doesn't EMIT light. Current default GUIs are the equivalent of reading text off the surface of a light bulb all day. Stupid. At least every GUI except the Mac's lets you set up a readable system-wide color scheme. Sadly, Microsoft's engineering has degraded to the point where they don't remember how simple color settings work; many of their UIs are unusable now because of hard-coded colors and invisible text: http://www.flickr.com/photos/forensicpics/5115887665/in/set-72157600304785497 http://www.flickr.com/photos/forensicpics/5115887665/in/set-...
tomkarlo 13y ago
There's an existing, broadly used method for solving the line transition errors - you background color every two lines in an alternating set of colors. There used to be ribbon-feed printer paper pre-colored with this for certain applications that involve reading across lines a lot (like database output.) Seems like that is a more practical solution. Here's what I mean: http://www.stationerytrade.com/upfile/images/big/2012222111249256.jpg http://www.stationerytrade.com/upfile/images/big/20122221112... What about using eye tracking? A device could just detect you're at the end of a line, and put a small marker at the start of the next line.
- Groxx 13y ago
  I'm not aware of eye tracking setups that are reasonably priced and that accurate, but I like the idea quite a bit :) I'll have to test it out some time - should be relatively fake-able by just moving a marker up/down with keys.
- cbsmith 13y ago
  I thought it was every three lines, but yeah.
  - tomkarlo 13y ago
    I think you're right. It's been a few years since I saw one of these in person.
HNLogInShit 13y ago
Amen. The continued use of a glaring white background is asinine. It's a failed product of the late-'80s/early-'90s "desktop publishing" fad, in which some developers sought to make the screen an analogy for a piece of paper. This fails because paper does not EMIT light. A white background on a screen essentially forces people to read text off the surface of a light bulb all day. Dumb. At least every modern GUI except the Mac's allows you to set up a decent, non-inverse color scheme like this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/forensicpics/528235909/in/set-72157600304785497 http://www.flickr.com/photos/forensicpics/528235909/in/set-7...
mkl 13y ago
Here is a quick hack that does line-by-line background colours (excuse any crappy code; I'm not a web developer). http://jsbin.com/avuku/166/edit http://jsbin.com/avuku/166/edit

I don't understand why you'd change foreground colours instead of background colours.... Either way, quick experiment shows it to be horrid for me.

by cbsmith 13y ago

I don't understand why you'd change foreground colours instead of background colours.... Either way, quick experiment shows it to be horrid for me.

anotherbadlogin 13y ago

Amen. The continued use of the asinine, glaring white background with dark text on it doesn't make sense. It's a failed product of the late-'80s/early-'90s "desktop publishing" fad in which developers sought to make the screen an analogy for a piece of paper. The error here is that a piece of paper doesn't EMIT light. Current default GUIs are the equivalent of reading text off the surface of a light bulb all day. Stupid. At least every GUI except the Mac's lets you set up a readable system-wide color scheme. Sadly, Microsoft's engineering has degraded to the point where they don't remember how simple color settings work; many of their UIs are unusable now because of hard-coded colors and invisible text: http://www.flickr.com/photos/forensicpics/5115887665/in/set-72157600304785497 http://www.flickr.com/photos/forensicpics/5115887665/in/set-...

tomkarlo 13y ago

There's an existing, broadly used method for solving the line transition errors - you background color every two lines in an alternating set of colors. There used to be ribbon-feed printer paper pre-colored with this for certain applications that involve reading across lines a lot (like database output.) Seems like that is a more practical solution. Here's what I mean: http://www.stationerytrade.com/upfile/images/big/2012222111249256.jpg http://www.stationerytrade.com/upfile/images/big/20122221112... What about using eye tracking? A device could just detect you're at the end of a line, and put a small marker at the start of the next line.

Groxx 13y ago
I'm not aware of eye tracking setups that are reasonably priced and that accurate, but I like the idea quite a bit :) I'll have to test it out some time - should be relatively fake-able by just moving a marker up/down with keys.
cbsmith 13y ago
I thought it was every three lines, but yeah.
- tomkarlo 13y ago
  I think you're right. It's been a few years since I saw one of these in person.

HNLogInShit 13y ago

Amen. The continued use of a glaring white background is asinine. It's a failed product of the late-'80s/early-'90s "desktop publishing" fad, in which some developers sought to make the screen an analogy for a piece of paper. This fails because paper does not EMIT light. A white background on a screen essentially forces people to read text off the surface of a light bulb all day. Dumb. At least every modern GUI except the Mac's allows you to set up a decent, non-inverse color scheme like this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/forensicpics/528235909/in/set-72157600304785497 http://www.flickr.com/photos/forensicpics/528235909/in/set-7...

mkl 13y ago

Here is a quick hack that does line-by-line background colours (excuse any crappy code; I'm not a web developer). http://jsbin.com/avuku/166/edit http://jsbin.com/avuku/166/edit