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Comment by tallgiraffe | Hacker News Reader

Love this. One addition, consider reducing the brightness on text so it doesn't glare as much.

Please don't. Strong contrast helps readability; grey-on-color is lower contrast than white-on-color.

Most HN threads linking to a site that has light-grey-on-dark-grey or dark-grey-on-light-grey text have at least one (off-topic) complaint about site style. Let's not make HN one of those sites.

> grey-on-color is lower contrast than white-on-color.

> Let's not make HN one of those sites.

The OP of the thread you are replying to is #828282 on top of #f6f6ef. That is lower contrast than black on white.

I was responding to the comment I directly replied to, not commenting on the specific color scheme of the style.

You said: "Let's not make HN one of those sites."

Either it is already one of those sites or there is room between the most extreme contrasts. Pick one.

HN is currently "black on very light background". The equivalent dark mode would be "white on very dark background". I hope we end up with either that, or even better, white on a black background (because that would be great for devices with OLED screens, including many phones).

The top post is #828282 on top of #f6f6ef, a pretty low contrast of 3.541 compared to 21.000 for black on white.

For me strong contrasts, especially on dark backgrounds, give me retina burns and eyestrain. I find pastel shades more comfortable. That said the grey text on white fad that happened a few years ago was a very silly idea.

I guess everyone's mileages vary depending on their eyesight, my eye's are 53 years old now and aren't as spritely as they used to be.

It's all about your monitor settings. High contrast monitor - you prefer low contrast style. Low contrast monitor - you prefer high contrast style.

This is something I don't like about VS Code. by being low contrast it means I have to turn up monitor contrast meaning everything else burns.

Sorry for asking but is there any reason why you don't just use a different color theme for VS Code?

Fair enough. It's because it's not my main editor, and I didn't look into theming.

Great point. Our environmental factors are so easy to forget. I do use a very high contrast monitor and definitely prefer pastel colors at night, so my eyes dont hurt, but now I can clearly see how someone with low contrast wont' see a damn thing.

There is a solution, but it's a bit more complicated and requires introducing additional user preferences. Supply two color options in the css, and allow user to choose high/low brightness.

HN already has some profile filters, so adding one more might not be a problem, but I can also see how it becomes a slipper-slope of new features.

Most modern monitors (and operating systems for that matter) have functions for day and night colour temperature schemes. I use it a lot since I love reading in bed but don't want to give night blindness to my other half.

If the OS has it, you can set it to gradually phase in and out of the temperature change at a particular time. The Radeon drivers go one step further by understanding that as the year progresses, "night" and "day" happen at different times.

I have three Dell 24" panels dating from 2005/7 ( 1 x 2405FPW and 2 x 2407FPW). They're not really what you'd call "high contrast" these days given their age.

There's plenty of space between #000 on #fff to provide an on style with high contrast.

https://contrastrebellion.com/

I agree, that level of white usually gives me eye strain after several minutes, even in a well lit room. The readability mode of Firefox for example uses #eeeeee for the text and #333333 for the background [1], I'd suggest using the same tones which are still very high contrast but don't cause nearly as much strain.

[1]: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/07/10/firefox_68_arrives_...

Tricky balance there. I was going for good contrast even when screen is dimmed or color shifted (think night modes, f.lux, etc.

Maybe try to swap the #fafafa rule with #eaeaea? Does that feel better? It's still very high contrast so maybe that could be a happy medium.

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