456bereastreet.com— What?s up with the current design trend of light text on dark backgrounds? Many web designers seem to favour inverted colour schemes, but what happened to readability and usability?
Aug 21, 2006View in Crawl 4
So I guess street signs, highway signs, advertising agencies are all a bunch of dumbasses for even considering to use dark backgrounds on white text? Yeah....thats it.....Migraines?? Migraines only come around when you say the words "I DO".
It has to do with the nature of the light being observed. There are essentially two ways we perceive light: (photons coming through something transparent or translucent) and reflected (photons bouncing off of something).Generally speaking, people find it easier to read light-on-dark for transmitted light (because transmitted light is generally more powerful than reflected light -- Hold a business card up to your monitor and tell me whether white on the screen or white on the card appears brighter to you) as it's easier on the eyes. Photons also have a tendency to bleed toward the brighter of two points in the event of any defocusing (this is easy to illustrate via what is commonly termed 'bokeh' in photography), meaning if the transmitted light source isn't perfectly focused, dark letters get squeezed out by the light but light letters grow over a dark background.Even though reflected mediums can be orders of magnitude brighter than just about any artificially created transmitted light source (e.g. the sun), your eyes iris according to the level of ambient light to expose the average contents of your vision accordingly.There are a few other reasons for black text on white backgrounds, although only a few have to do with legibility:* Paper products are naturally light in colour and are easily rendered white via bleaching* Ink costs money; the less ink you use, the cheaper your written/printed work* Since most media buildup (including ink) is additive in nature, it is significantly easier to darken something that is light than it is to lighten something that is dark (anyone who has screen printed on a dark t-shirt or painted a darkly-coloured wall to a light color can attest to this)* Ink has a higher specular reflection than most papers, making the printed material "shine" when the incident angle of the light is right to reflect it directly into your eyes* Ink has a tendency to bleed, especially in uncoated papers; dark characters printed on light backgrounds become bolder through bleeding, but printing a dark "background" around the paper-white of characters would lead to them being thinned or fine serifs etc. even being obliterated.
If you've worked on a command line and have grown accustomed to the old black background over the years, I think you've probably just grown accustomed to it. I would say that most people would disagree with this guy.
There are ways of making light on dark work. Using bold text helps a lot as stuff apprears thinner on dark backgrounds (optical effect). FWIW I find Sun's Terminal really freaky to use becuase it uses bolt black text on a white screen. It's very hard on the eyes I find. In contrast, DOS and PC Linux/UNIX termminals are light grey on black and are much easier on my eyes.As far as web design goes I tend to stick to dark on light pastel shades for block text, but tend to use bold light text on darker backgrounds for stuff like header stripes etc.@baconmanOh and FWIW how the hell can a persons opinion be 'inaccurate'? An opinion is one persons interpretation - if it doesn't work for you or the other 99.999% of people then that makes it 'differing' not 'innacurate'. Get your head sorted...
We can stare at the moon because its "reflected light"? That's the stupidest thing I've heard in weeks. We can stare at the moon because it's not reflecting 100% of the brightness put out by the sun. If it were a perfectly mirrored surface you'd be nicely blinded, I can assure you.My point about the green screen was that the technology exists today to let you read anything you want in green on black and yet we mostly read black text on a white background. The technology did not exist to cheaply make black on white crt's back in the day.Apple spent a bundle researching this before the intro of the Macintosh and the black on white display accounted for much of its popularity.
everfresh59Aug 22, 2006
So I guess street signs, highway signs, advertising agencies are all a bunch of dumbasses for even considering to use dark backgrounds on white text? Yeah....thats it.....Migraines?? Migraines only come around when you say the words "I DO".
v1ncentAug 22, 2006
I prefer black text on a light grey background myself. The black background / white text drives me buggy.
Closed AccountAug 22, 2006
It is quite possible to choose settings in Firefox and reverse the text and background colors; here's a screenshot of Digg in reverse:<a class="user" href="http://penguinpetes.com/b2evo/index.php?title=title_2&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1">http://penguinpetes.com/b2evo/index.php?title=title_2&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1</a>
isolationismAug 22, 2006
It has to do with the nature of the light being observed. There are essentially two ways we perceive light: (photons coming through something transparent or translucent) and reflected (photons bouncing off of something).Generally speaking, people find it easier to read light-on-dark for transmitted light (because transmitted light is generally more powerful than reflected light -- Hold a business card up to your monitor and tell me whether white on the screen or white on the card appears brighter to you) as it's easier on the eyes. Photons also have a tendency to bleed toward the brighter of two points in the event of any defocusing (this is easy to illustrate via what is commonly termed 'bokeh' in photography), meaning if the transmitted light source isn't perfectly focused, dark letters get squeezed out by the light but light letters grow over a dark background.Even though reflected mediums can be orders of magnitude brighter than just about any artificially created transmitted light source (e.g. the sun), your eyes iris according to the level of ambient light to expose the average contents of your vision accordingly.There are a few other reasons for black text on white backgrounds, although only a few have to do with legibility:* Paper products are naturally light in colour and are easily rendered white via bleaching* Ink costs money; the less ink you use, the cheaper your written/printed work* Since most media buildup (including ink) is additive in nature, it is significantly easier to darken something that is light than it is to lighten something that is dark (anyone who has screen printed on a dark t-shirt or painted a darkly-coloured wall to a light color can attest to this)* Ink has a higher specular reflection than most papers, making the printed material "shine" when the incident angle of the light is right to reflect it directly into your eyes* Ink has a tendency to bleed, especially in uncoated papers; dark characters printed on light backgrounds become bolder through bleeding, but printing a dark "background" around the paper-white of characters would lead to them being thinned or fine serifs etc. even being obliterated.
ksterAug 22, 2006
If you've worked on a command line and have grown accustomed to the old black background over the years, I think you've probably just grown accustomed to it. I would say that most people would disagree with this guy.
zip000Aug 23, 2006
Yes, but if you suddenly switch from light on dark to dark on light you will go blind! (not really, but you do get this funny lines)
joosAug 23, 2006
get over it, all of you!
bobsmonAug 23, 2006
When I cannot read text because of the color, I highlight it. This usually makes it easier to read.
svpirateAug 23, 2006
There are ways of making light on dark work. Using bold text helps a lot as stuff apprears thinner on dark backgrounds (optical effect). FWIW I find Sun's Terminal really freaky to use becuase it uses bolt black text on a white screen. It's very hard on the eyes I find. In contrast, DOS and PC Linux/UNIX termminals are light grey on black and are much easier on my eyes.As far as web design goes I tend to stick to dark on light pastel shades for block text, but tend to use bold light text on darker backgrounds for stuff like header stripes etc.@baconmanOh and FWIW how the hell can a persons opinion be 'inaccurate'? An opinion is one persons interpretation - if it doesn't work for you or the other 99.999% of people then that makes it 'differing' not 'innacurate'. Get your head sorted...
yahoofromAug 23, 2006
No. blinking text is the worst.
medarbyAug 25, 2006
Check out Usability.gov (<a class="user" href="http://usability.gov),">http://usability.gov),</a> especially their section on text appearance (<a class="user" href="http://www.usability.gov/pdfs/chapter11.pdf).">http://www.usability.gov/pdfs/chapter11.pdf).</a>Apparently, research shows that: "Black text on a plain background elicitedreliably faster reading performance than on amedium-textured background. When compared to reading light text on adark background, people read black text on a white background up to thirty-twopercent faster. In general, the greater the contrast between the text andbackground, the easier the text is to read."
nightsweatAug 30, 2006
We can stare at the moon because its "reflected light"? That's the stupidest thing I've heard in weeks. We can stare at the moon because it's not reflecting 100% of the brightness put out by the sun. If it were a perfectly mirrored surface you'd be nicely blinded, I can assure you.My point about the green screen was that the technology exists today to let you read anything you want in green on black and yet we mostly read black text on a white background. The technology did not exist to cheaply make black on white crt's back in the day.Apple spent a bundle researching this before the intro of the Macintosh and the black on white display accounted for much of its popularity.