Comment by vladvasiliu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vladvasiliu | Hacker News Reader

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I used to think this way too, up until this summer when I spent a lot of time at my parent's house working from the garden.

My personal pc is a 2013 MBP, so glossy screen. My work pc is a hp probook 430 g5 (~2 years old) with a matte screen.

The one that I would take out in the garden when it was sunny was the mac. Sure, I could see myself in it, I had to set the backlight to 100%, but it was possible to focus my eyes such that the text on screen was actually readable. Of course, this implies black text on white background and to sit in such a way as not to have too contrasty a background.

The matte screen of the HP was completely useless. It was just a big blotch of white, it was next to impossible to see the text. I even took out an actual external monitor once to try it out, a Dell P2415Q with a backlight that's blinding inside. Same problem.

Now sure, when there's not a high level of ambient light, the matte screen is more easy to use as there are no reflections. But as soon as there's a source of light that shines on it (and there are cases when you can't control it) it's game over.

Protip: clean the macbook screen from time to time. Even if it doesn't look dirty. I wear glasses, so I use the cleaning spray on the screen. It always amazes me how much better it is afterwards.

The HP is only 208 nits of brightness. 300 nits is considered by many to be the absolute minimum for being outside. The Mac is probably 500 nits.

In general, and for working outside especially, i recommend the Solarized colorscheme. It is optimized for good readability and contrast, while being easy on the eyes. https://github.com/altercation/solarized

Solarized is diarrhea Christmas lights.

Pardon the choice of words, but it is the only effective way I could convey my opinion re solarized and most color schemes.

Most color schemes try too hard to differentiate everything, lack good contrast and do not aid in understanding the code. Many of them and as a good example solarized, lack good contrast. I had so many issues trying to find a good scheme, that I resorted to creating my own for Jetbrain software, and make due with some of the rainglow schemes on VSCode. The themes are mostly black text on white background and the highlights are not obtrusive so as to draw more attention that the core. In the end, I spend more effort trying to mute the loudness of the colours than reading the content.

> It is optimized for good readability and contrast

It most certainly is not. Solarized is a low contrast theme by design and fails accessibility standards for text contrast.

Honest question: what is an example of a good accessible color theme? I'm assuming Solarized is not a good choice for those with color blindness? Please explain, I'm very interested in color and accessibility.

> what is an example of a good

Good for you is the one you enjoy using. Good for me is the one I enjoy using. Even if I didn't have a problem with Solarized's lower contrast, I would still think that its colors are hideous.

The problem for many with low-contrast themes is that they often aren't focusing on keeping contrast high. They're mostly focused on keeping contrast low. They aim to avoid being "too contrasty" without targeting being "goodly contrasty".

> color blindness?

Color blindness is its own set of problems. To the best of my knowledge I'm not colorblind. I just can't easily read poorly differentiated text unless I really crank up my screen's brightness or make the text much larger. The problem I think is mostly one of pupil physics relating to the impact of external light on pupil dilation and how that affects both focus accuracy (pinhole cameras focus perfectly without lenses) and also the amount of light entering the eye (smaller aperture means less total light, less light means less difference between light things and and dark things). Neural color perception is another issue that is related but only sort of. Or maybe there's an analog to colorblindness that we just don't talk about that deals with sensitivity to luminosity variations. IDK.

I have a complete opposite experience. I recently switched from Thinkpad t490s to macbook pro 16". I tend to work outside in the mornings and the glare has been driving me crazy. I'd rather have slightly less bright screen but actually see the content instead of my own morning bed-hair!

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