4 ms·

I have found that high contrast is actually bad for my eyes. I regularly spend 8+ hour stretches programming. If my screen is black on white my eyes get tired a

I have found that high contrast is actually bad for my eyes. I regularly spend 8+ hour stretches programming. If my screen is black on white my eyes get tired after about 6 hours. If it's white on black I get similar but less pronounced results. However, if I use a light grey on a dark grey, with moderate contrast, I can work indefinately, or at least my eyes are no longer the limitation.

mikeash 12y ago
Rather than have web sites alter their color schemes to suit you, and cause trouble for others in the process, why not turn down the contrast on your screen?
- chc 12y ago
  Couldn't you say much the same to the person complaining about the text on this site?
  - mikeash 12y ago
    Could you? What fix can I reasonably (which I will arbitrarily define as excluding manual DOM/CSS twiddling) apply to this site to make it more suited to my high contrast desires?
    - CodexArcanum 12y ago
      I have Stylish installed on Firefox. Then I click the "Find styles for this site" menu item, download the "Hacker News Solarized (Dark)" theme, and enjoy high contrast YC on all my devices. Takes a few minutes at most, and one Firefox restart if you didn't have Stylish installed already.
- Avernar 12y ago
  I have my monitor calibrated for photo editing. I'm not going to mess with the brighhtness and contrast because some site is using a hard to read colour combination. If it's a site that's worth reading I'll overide the CSS with Stylish otherwise I'll just not bother reading the site. It's funny how many sites fall into the later category.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    Good answer! It didn't occur to me that there might be useful calibrations where, say, pure black on white is hard to read, but you still want pure black and white to be at those levels for other purposes.
kristopolous 12y ago
alright. I have a few questions: * What is the lighting condition of your work environment? * What kind of screen do you use? * What does your "normal" desktop look like? * What kind of programming do you do (scientific? web dev?)? I have assumptions about this and I want to see how they pan out.
vdnkh 12y ago
Why not use f.lux? At work I turn it up to max at all times of day and it's really much easier on the eyes. I hardly noticed the redness after a day or two.
- jcoffland 12y ago
  That's interesting. Haven't seen that before. I've already solved my own problem though.
edwintorok 12y ago
You can lower contrast somewhat without making text unreadable, this site suggests #333 on #fff. https://ia.net/know-how/100e2r https://ia.net/know-how/100e2r I think the lowest contrast that is still somewhat acceptable for me is the solarized theme, but even that goes over too close to the low contrast end: http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized
- citrin_ru 12y ago
  Contrast in solarized is too low for me - it is hard to read text on the website. Dark variant is more readable, though.
  - jcoffland 12y ago
    Part of the problem is that people see differently.

mikeash 12y ago

Rather than have web sites alter their color schemes to suit you, and cause trouble for others in the process, why not turn down the contrast on your screen?

chc 12y ago
Couldn't you say much the same to the person complaining about the text on this site?
- mikeash 12y ago
  Could you? What fix can I reasonably (which I will arbitrarily define as excluding manual DOM/CSS twiddling) apply to this site to make it more suited to my high contrast desires?
  - CodexArcanum 12y ago
    I have Stylish installed on Firefox. Then I click the "Find styles for this site" menu item, download the "Hacker News Solarized (Dark)" theme, and enjoy high contrast YC on all my devices. Takes a few minutes at most, and one Firefox restart if you didn't have Stylish installed already.
Avernar 12y ago
I have my monitor calibrated for photo editing. I'm not going to mess with the brighhtness and contrast because some site is using a hard to read colour combination. If it's a site that's worth reading I'll overide the CSS with Stylish otherwise I'll just not bother reading the site. It's funny how many sites fall into the later category.
- mikeash 12y ago
  Good answer! It didn't occur to me that there might be useful calibrations where, say, pure black on white is hard to read, but you still want pure black and white to be at those levels for other purposes.

kristopolous 12y ago

alright. I have a few questions: * What is the lighting condition of your work environment? * What kind of screen do you use? * What does your "normal" desktop look like? * What kind of programming do you do (scientific? web dev?)? I have assumptions about this and I want to see how they pan out.

vdnkh 12y ago

Why not use f.lux? At work I turn it up to max at all times of day and it's really much easier on the eyes. I hardly noticed the redness after a day or two.

jcoffland 12y ago
That's interesting. Haven't seen that before. I've already solved my own problem though.

edwintorok 12y ago

You can lower contrast somewhat without making text unreadable, this site suggests #333 on #fff. https://ia.net/know-how/100e2r https://ia.net/know-how/100e2r I think the lowest contrast that is still somewhat acceptable for me is the solarized theme, but even that goes over too close to the low contrast end: http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized

citrin_ru 12y ago
Contrast in solarized is too low for me - it is hard to read text on the website. Dark variant is more readable, though.
- jcoffland 12y ago
  Part of the problem is that people see differently.