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Comment by nicerobot | Hacker News Reader

Additionally, light on dark is horrible for readability. That theme is great for imagery but it's doesn't provide valuable contrast for clearly rendering fonts. Programming docs are typically mostly text so should provide the best colors that support readability.

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>Additionally, light on dark is horrible for readability.

I have a hard time understanding this. Staring at a bright background hurt my eyes after a while. White text on a black background feels much more comfortable to read. What am I missing?

I agree with this. We've gotten a bit of flack on blog.darknedgy.net for this, and we've been putting off making a light-background alternative theme. I'll get around to it eventually because people want it, but I prefer the darker background with lighter text. It feels easier on the eyes for me, personally.

And really, folks who have complained have been the minority anyway. For us anyway.

You should read the link I posted in the sibling to your comment[1].

You may personally feel that light-on-dark is better, but your visually-impaired users will disagree. This includes a huge number of older users, as eyes deteriorate significantly with age (even among people in their 40s and 50s).

Also, you have no idea whether the complainers are in the minority or not. The people it bothered probably didn't stay long enough to figure out how to complain. Do you get compliments from people who say that they're glad you use light-on-dark?

1. http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/15142/which...

This reminds me of the good old days when you could actually set your own fonts and colors in a browser and disable javascript.

The inventors of CSS have failed greatly.

You might like this, then: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clearly/iooicodkii...

I am not sure I agree. Do you know what I do when I have trouble reading the text in a page. I increase font size. It is only a flick of your finger (ctrl+mouse wheel). So the point is if you have a big enough font size, white on black can be just fine.

Also, should we assume that the people have their vision uncorrected?

I think that black on white is just a fad, perpetuated by following conventions. Like glossy screens.

yeah, black on white is a fad, based on existing conventions, such as the last couple thousand years of printing on paper

Yea. Totally same things. Paper and a display that actually emits light.

For a bunch who calls themselves as "nerds" and "geeks", the HN crowd is becoming pretty dumb lately..

Here is an explanation, including evidence from studies conducted over the years: http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/15142/which...

Reply depth reached I guess above, so I'll reply here.

Thanks, definitely never knew that. In that case I'll get on it sooner rather than later!

> What am I missing?

Context. If I'm in a bright room (office), and the last page I visited was black on white (the default/norm on the web), and the page I view after this one will be black on white (most likely), then viewing this one in the middle in white on black is jarring, annoying, inconvenient, distracting, hard to read (because my eyes have to adjust) etc.

If one is in a dark room, and has a custom stylesheet to display all pages in white on black, or if the web were predominantly white on black, then sure it's OK.

Yes, staring at pages with bright white backgrounds makes me see floaters and other things in my eyes. I very much appreciate light on dark.

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