Why "cool" websites and apps are hard to read

[Richard Lundberg]

From Scientific American latest issue online:

Only now, with Kremkow and colleagues’ new study, has science finally zoomed in and illuminated the scope of the problem. It’s a feature of how we see everything, no less. By examining the responses of neurons in the visual system of the brain—to both light stimuli and dark stimuli—the neuroscientists discovered that, whereas dark stimuli result in a faithful neural response that accurately represents their size, light stimuli on the contrary result in non-linear and exaggerated responses that make the stimulus look larger. So white spots on a black background look bigger than same-sized black spots on white background, and Galileo’s glowing moons are not really as big as they might appear to the unaided eye.

This effect is responsible for how we see everything from textures and faces—based on their dark parts in bright daylight—to why it is easier to read this very page with black-on-white lettering, rather than white-on-black (a well known, and until now, unexplained phenomenon).

By tracing these effects as a function of the way neurons are laid out and interconnected in the retina and brain, the authors found that these effects are potentially derived from the very origin of vision—in the photoreceptors of the eye themselves.

[Mike Buckley]

It gets worse. In the photography book of the temples of Angkor, Cambodia by Steve McCurry of "Afghan Girl" fame, the text is very cleverly a light saffron color on white paper. The clever aspect is that the color of the text reminds the reader of the robes worn by the monks. The only problem is that saffron text on white paper is nearly impossible to read. Now that I think of it, there is a second problem: as if the color of the text on its own doesn't make it difficult enough to read, the font is really small.

[NorthernFocus]

This website is a good example. The white text on dark grey is tiny on my 15 in. full HD monitor at zero magnification. Yet I have no trouble reading it at all. Unlike the black text on the white label of the asprin bottle...

[Colin Southern]

I don't get it. If white spots on a black background appear bigger, then wouldn't white text on a black background appear bigger too, and thus be easier to read?

[LocalHero1953]

I find oddities here as well. My experience goes back to computing in the 70's when the only option was white text on a black screen, and it didn't worry me particularly (the only thing that did was dropping a stack of carefully ordered punch cards, or tearing a hole in my paper tape). I also remember when word processors moved towards WYSIWYG: Wordperfect was white on blue for a long time, and again I had little difficulty. OTOH, I have set CiC to show black text on white, so I am not consistent.

[Richard Lundberg]

Some additional material on this:

http://www.livescience.com/43243-gal...roscience.html

I, too have the forum set to black on white. Photoshop CS5 is black on white and so is my third party RAW processor which allows adjusting the UI.

[davidedric]

I know that this has been said before, but on this site if you scroll down to the bottom, you will likely see a box labelled "dark - fluid". Click on the drop down thingy, and choose your preferred style.

[Colin Southern]

I know that this has been said before, but on this site if you scroll down to the bottom, you will likely see a box labelled "dark - fluid". Click on the drop down thingy, and choose your preferred style.

+1

It's also been said before that images are very difficult to setup correctly if the surrounding matte and general UI are too bright or too dark.

[Glenn NK]

I don't doubt the research, however . . . .

A computer screen is white, but it also emits light - and quite a bit of light. Turn off all the lights at night and it's quite apparent how bright it is.

A bright, white, light-emitting screen is hard to look at for very long.

I do quite a bit of computer drafting and neither I nor anyone else I've watched doing this uses a white background - it's too hard on the eyes.

I use white letters on black BG for this forum.

Luminous Landscape is well named in this respect - the luminous white BG is very bright (and tiring). On another forum (Naturescapes) there is an option when viewing people's posted images - click on the image and the BG turns entirely black. This isn't by accident. http://www.naturescapes.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=241931

DPR forum is also white letters on black BG.

Glenn

[AndrewMcD]

I don't doubt the research, however . . . .

A computer screen is white, but it also emits light - and quite a bit of light. Turn off all the lights at night and it's quite apparent how bright it is.

A bright, white, light-emitting screen is hard to look at for very long.

I do quite a bit of computer drafting and neither I nor anyone else I've watched doing this uses a white background - it's too hard on the eyes.

I use white letters on black BG for this forum.

Luminous Landscape is well named in this respect - the luminous white BG is very bright (and tiring). On another forum (Naturescapes) there is an option when viewing people's posted images - click on the image and the BG turns entirely black. This isn't by accident. http://www.naturescapes.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=241931

DPR forum is also white letters on black BG.

Glenn

I expect that the research is dealing with a very specific hypothesis in closely controlled circumstances and may not be directly applicable to our experience as users of radiating data screens...
I too use a dark background for all my AutoCAD work and agree that white screens or light colored backgrounds generally cause an earlier onset of eyestrain.
Other users mileage may vary.....

[Colin Southern]

I don't doubt the research, however . . . .

A computer screen is white, but it also emits light - and quite a bit of light. Turn off all the lights at night and it's quite apparent how bright it is.

A bright, white, light-emitting screen is hard to look at for very long.

I do quite a bit of computer drafting and neither I nor anyone else I've watched doing this uses a white background - it's too hard on the eyes.

I use white letters on black BG for this forum.

Luminous Landscape is well named in this respect - the luminous white BG is very bright (and tiring). On another forum (Naturescapes) there is an option when viewing people's posted images - click on the image and the BG turns entirely black. This isn't by accident. http://www.naturescapes.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=241931

DPR forum is also white letters on black BG.

Glenn

After reading this the first time it was posted, I tried the CiC black background with white writing for a day, but didn't like it. I know what you mean, but I also like lots of ambient light, so the two light sources cancel out and I don't have any issues using a mostly white background for many hours at a time (and I run it at 200 cd/m2). The only time it's a problem for me is if I have a bit of a restless night and get up at 3am - then, with no room lighting, it's like having red-hot needles stuck in my eyes!

I think the physics are one thing, but the brain's wiring are another -- from my "previous life" that involved (to some degree) advertising copy-writing, one of the rules was "avoid white text on black backgrounds" because research has shown them to be far less effective. The reasoning at the time was that our brains are pretty much still hard-wired for black ink on a white page. Having just said all that though, I'd never adjust an image with a strong and large white surround -- that would throw my ability to adjust levels off considerably.

PS: When Sean was designing the colour scheme for here I remember that one of our initial feedbacks was that the white was too bright - so the black writing on white background isn't actually a white background - it's very light gray.

[ajohnw]

I find oddities here as well. My experience goes back to computing in the 70's when the only option was white text on a black screen, and it didn't worry me particularly (the only thing that did was dropping a stack of carefully ordered punch cards, or tearing a hole in my paper tape). I also remember when word processors moved towards WYSIWYG: Wordperfect was white on blue for a long time, and again I had little difficulty. OTOH, I have set CiC to show black text on white, so I am not consistent.

I had the miss fortune of having to work on a paper white monitor with black lettering for rather a long time so have a natural aversion to very bright white back grounds on PC's. For software especially in assembler green on black is oh so much more peaceful. Fortunately brilliant full house white is seldom used these days.

I recently persuaded the author of the software package I use most often to change the background colour from mid grey. He's gone full black now. I was having problems making final brightness adjustments with the grey as most often they are displayed against near black on the web.

I just posted a shot that to me looks too dark in the thread but some what better when expanded to view.

John
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[Colin Southern]

I had the miss fortune of having to work on a paper white monitor with black lettering for rather a long time so have a natural aversion to very bright white back grounds on PC's. For software especially in assembler green on black is oh so much more peaceful. Fortunately brilliant full house white is seldom used these days.-

Just so long as you remember the decrementing the HL register pair on a Z80 doesn't set the zero flag when you hit 0000000000000000B, all will be fine!

[Richard Lundberg]

Eight inch floppies make good bullseyes at 200 yards.
What were those mass storage disks that held about 10MB called. They were in a big separate drive. We used lots of them to record telemetry. I think the name began with a G. Thirty years ago.

[Richard Lundberg]

A reference says that with your digital camera set for f/8. ISO 100, shutter 1/15; spot metering should show correct exposure of a blank document if the brightness is 100 cd/m2. There's also a reference for a Sekonic exposure meter if you have one.

[Colin Southern]

What were those mass storage disks that held about 10MB called. They were in a big separate drive. We used lots of them to record telemetry. I think the name began with a G. Thirty years ago.

I can't recall anything removable with 10MB @ 30 years ago, but we did have zip drives with 100MB @ 20 years ago. 30 years ago we had the first 5 & 10MB Hard Drives though.

[ajohnw]

I can't recall anything removable with 10MB @ 30 years ago, but we did have zip drives with 100MB @ 20 years ago. 30 years ago we had the first 5 & 10MB Hard Drives though.

The only ones I remember are winchesters. The lid could be removed to replace the actual platter. I can't remember the capacity but recollect that they could be 19in rack mounted. Bit bigger than what came not all that much later on really.

There are some interesting optical illusions here

http://michaelbach.de/ot/

One of the best that shows how much the brain dictates what we see is this one

http://michaelbach.de/ot/lum_adelson-plaid/index.html

John
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[dabhand]

I can't recall anything removable with 10MB @ 30 years ago, but we did have zip drives with 100MB @ 20 years ago. 30 years ago we had the first 5 & 10MB Hard Drives though.

Hewlett Packard introduced their floor based 'washing machine' drives for around £20,000 in the late 70s - just lift the lid, click the release and walk away with a 10 to 50 MB drive - we were using them for navigation and deep water exploration. I remember we paid £5000 for a 5MB (yes MB) winchester in 1982 which was 'only' one foot cube in size !

steve

[Colin Southern]

The only ones I remember are winchesters. The lid could be removed to replace the actual platter. I can't remember the capacity but recollect that they could be 19in rack mounted. Bit bigger than what came not all that much later on really.

I used to work on the Dynex 6+6 in the mid to late 80's (6MB fixed, 6MB removable) Quite advanced compared to the Inforex data capture systems where we had to initialise the platter by strobing binary instructions into an FE panel (magnetic core memory too).

[ajohnw]

I used to work on the Dynex 6+6 in the mid to late 80's (6MB fixed, 6MB removable) Quite advanced compared to the Inforex data capture systems where we had to initialise the platter by strobing binary instructions into an FE panel (magnetic core memory too).

I had the misfortune to have to kit the company up with a DEC mini a few months before IBM released the PC spec's. Company accounts - bought software, stock control, did on my todd - never again and for use as an engineering tool. Much more my line mostly vehicle simulation work in Fortran and me and other rolling our own bits and pieces mostly in Basic for electronics work. No one provided auto backup to tape so also had the assembler out and messed with dma etc.

The misfortune came later when secretaries were computerised. DEC charged too much for stand alone kit and in those day even a main frame might have problems with 1/2 dozen of them typing away. Misfortune is the wrong word really. In some ways it helped me escape.

I've also used core memory on a fearsome programmable data logger. It was always blamed for crashes. Bit odd as it ran for several years without a single hiccup after I had finished with it.

It all started for me with a simple job. I needed to calculate size of a component that had a taper going one way on the outside and the opposite on the inside to obtain a very precise volume. No one could cope with the algebra so was sent to see the marketing manager who it seems had an MSC in computing. We did it on a teletype connected to a time sharing system. Later they bought me a paper tape machine to save 'me' programs too. Later a computerised factory was buildt on the same site so a number of ladies punched my Fortran cards for me. Then came electronics mostly analogue over several years and a certain amount of electrical engineering. Later came automotive ECU's. Happily did that for some time.

John
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