Somehow when we had only 16 colours to work with we didn’t have the worst of the designer-brain “grey on marginally different grey” eyestrain factories. High-enough contrast for accessinility was essentially guaranteed. And you could go even more restrictive for laptops with early washed out LCDs and only-shades-of-red plasma screens.
Would white-on-black cause the same problem or fix it? I’ve been curious about this kinda thing for a while, but never curious enough to research it since it’s never affected me.
I recall in the CRT era, yellow-on-blue was considered the most comfortable.
I can recall always typing “COLOR 15, 1, 1:WIDTH 40” to switch from light-grey-on-black to white-on-blue when I went to program my 386, much easier to read.
Not sure how those studies map to the different properties of LCD screens.
I know I read at some point a light gray (which is a shade of white I guess) and a dark gray (which is a shade of black) is ideal for reading for the most people. It shouldn’t be the highest contrast pure white on pure black, but something like that is the ideal.
What’s wrong with #ffffff?
Somehow when we had only 16 colours to work with we didn’t have the worst of the designer-brain “grey on marginally different grey” eyestrain factories. High-enough contrast for accessinility was essentially guaranteed. And you could go even more restrictive for laptops with early washed out LCDs and only-shades-of-red plasma screens.
Full-contrast black-on-white is also a common eye strain and/or migraine trigger.
Would white-on-black cause the same problem or fix it? I’ve been curious about this kinda thing for a while, but never curious enough to research it since it’s never affected me.
I’m honestly not sure; I expect it varies from person to person. I certainly find it difficult to look at either way around.
I recall in the CRT era, yellow-on-blue was considered the most comfortable.
I can recall always typing “COLOR 15, 1, 1:WIDTH 40” to switch from light-grey-on-black to white-on-blue when I went to program my 386, much easier to read.
Not sure how those studies map to the different properties of LCD screens.
I know I read at some point a light gray (which is a shade of white I guess) and a dark gray (which is a shade of black) is ideal for reading for the most people. It shouldn’t be the highest contrast pure white on pure black, but something like that is the ideal.
*puts fffffc background*
*where text*