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Comment by drusenko | Hacker News Reader

A bit off-topic, but Dustin Curtis' site really hurts my eyes reading on my MacBook pro... I have a really hard time reading his text, and when I look away, I have very pronounced stripe patterns in my vision.

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I have the exact reverse here. I love sites and applications that use a dark background; bright backgrounds are like staring into a lamp. It probably depends on the environment you tend to read in; I usually read in a darker room.

I'm quite OK with a lot of dark sites, but this one produces an insane "buzzing" feeling. Might have something to do with the gray-ish text. I couldn't get through the entire article even if I wanted to.

I'm reading in a dark-ish room right now. I suspect it may have something to do with the type of monitor used to view the site, because on mine the physical effects are very pronounced.

I agree. I can't put my finger on it, but the white/red text on the page positively glows at me, not in a pleasant way either. It feels like I'm staring at a lit light bulb.

If he changed the background color to a very dark shade of grey rather than straight black, it would lessen the contrast and ease the strain on your eyes. If you're feeling buzziness from reading inverted type, there is also a good chance your screen is at an unhealthy brightness. Great for picking out contrast, but painful on the eyes. One trick my friend taught me was to place a light source off in the distance to the side, to break up the focused source of light from the screen. It cured his computer-induced headaches immediately, along with lowering his brightness.

I'd guess that it's a difference in screen brightness. Try turning down your brightness and see if that helps.

The lamp-effect depends on your monitor. I hated white screens when I was using a CRT. Now it doesn't make any difference to me with an LCD.

Yeah, this happens on some screens. I spend all day looking at and designing white websites, and I just enjoy playing with dark on my own site.

I feel I can take risks with my blog that I can't take elsewhere. Sorry if it bothers you.

You certainly have that right :) It doesn't really "bother" me in an emotional sense as much as I just can't read much of it whether I'd like to or not -- I'm not complaining, just pointing out that fact.

But some people seem to find it more appealing, so I suppose it works both ways.

I have the same issue with light text on dark background pages, I generally dislike them. It actually affects my vision for a few seconds after I look away from the page, before my eyes adjust again. That page could certainly do with a little more contrast between text and background at any rate. I recently created a site that does make some limited use of light text on dark background and found this post from a few years ago to be a good resource for looking at the issue from both sides (the comments are an important part):

http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200608/light_text_on_d...

For as long as I can remember I have not liked reading large amounts of light text on dark backgrounds. It's always felt as if this was some kind of genetic predisposition for me. While for others, the opposite (i.e. strongly preferring light text on dark background) seems to be true.

I'd be really interested if anyone has heard of some solid research on why certain people prefer one over the other.

Same problems on my macbook pro as well - but http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ fixes it, of course.

I have to admit, looking at Dustin's site, I thought "huh, interesting choices from a UX designer." I also found it hard to read now that you mention it...

cmd+opt+ctr+8 unless you're not on a Mac in which case too bad for you.

If you're using GNOME and Compiz, this feature is buried in the settings (run 'ccsm' aka 'Compiz Config Settings Manager'). It's called 'negative' or something like that. I don't recall off-hand if it is enabled/disabled by default or what the default keybinding is, but it's there.

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