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Comment by papln | Hacker News Reader

Web devs, please don't do this:

    p { color: #707070 !important; }
    body {     color: #7b7b7b; }

This is a deeply hostile attack on your users, telling your users that you don't want them to read your site's primary content.

If you think you need this, UI development is not a good career choice for you.

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You hold UI Development in too high esteem. It is not a graceful and delicate art, narrated by a smooth voice as the hints of a beautiful interface coming together are seen as reflections on a developer’s glasses, contemplating the placement of pixels quietly and softly in a dimly lit room on well calibrated monitors, thinking of the people who will consume the content.

It is loud boiler room sweatshop where a low wage Javascript assemblyman slumped in his chair looks away from his laptop to eye the clock while his manager stands over his shoulder with arms crossed nodding his head and suggesting to give the page some more pizazz.

Jony Ive would agree. The dichotomy is strong.

The site runs on Joomla (https://www.archaeology.org/administrator/), so it might've just been default CSS from a template.

By this logic, all CSS is an attack on your users, forcing them to see your sites content under the assumption that you know better than them how it should be presented.

I tend to agree with this sentiment, but it's a lost war at this point.

Why? I can read the grey for the most part, which doesn't seem too hostile.

> for the most part,

is a terrible standard for main content. You should be able to read it for the all.

You can read it, but many people do not have high-performance monitor and high-performance eyes.

Users can configure monitor/browser defaults for contrast and text however they like; web devs shouldn't try to forcibly reduce constrast for the primary content that is supposed to be the main recipient of visual attention.

How about not trying to back your personal dislike with some army of phantom users?

Do you disagree that there exists people with bad eyesight?

I myself have bad eyesight. I can read that website perfectly fine. And author owns the original commenter nothing so does not really deserve this kind of attack. And most importantly — very high contrast (pure black on pure white) is actually bad.

I can assure you that developers are not the archenemy of implementing good color schemes...most of the time. The Creative Director and six Editors listed on the About page probably have more say in why they can't read their own work on certain monitors.

>I can read the grey for the most part, which doesn't seem too hostile.

for the first 30 years behind monitor (and that is if you start with perfect eyesight).

It is really hard to understand/fell issues of the others until you hit the same issues yourself. This is why there are accessibility and good (not pretty/cute/beautiful/etc.) design guidelines which one has to follow even if the one doesn't see the need for it. ~15 years ago i noticed when some of my older colleagues started to use eyedrops, to mention eye fatigue, etc. while i was easily doing 12 hours almost non-stop, and i was pretty dismissive about their "minor" issues. Well, these days, closing on 50, i understand much better what they were talking about back then :)

And for those healthy&happy youngsters who may want to walk a mile in someone else's shoes or just read a light gray text with white background :) - aging/disability simulation GERT suit:

https://diamedicalusa.com/medical-equipment/manikins/wearabl...

"The age simulation suit GERT offers the opportunity to experience the impairments of older persons even for younger people. The age-related impairments are: opacity of the eye lens, narrowing of the visual field, high-frequency hearing loss, head mobility restrictions, joint stiffness, loss of strength, reduced grip ability and reduced coordination skills."

This is why I appreciate reader mode in browsers that support it.

Totally agreed. If users can’t consume the data then whats the point of the website.

It actually reads really nice with inverted colors (using Dark Reader extension).

What in particular is wrong with this?

I think he's mad about !important, maybe he uses an extension to add css to the page, perhaps to make dark mode

no, he's mad about the color.

He's mad about the order and the usage of important

That !important makes it tough for Browser user-styles to override, which can be an accessibility issue for some users.

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