I clicked getting ready for a fight but no, this is actually very sane, coherent, and well put-together. A bit of it is more web-oriented but by and large, excellent rules of thumb to go by! Thanks for sharing this.
Is it a colour thing or a contrast thing – is grey on/under pure black okay to look at?
I think the rule “Use near-black and near-white instead of pure black and white” should include a warning that (a) the designer should be sure to leave enough contrast, and (b) that text that’s just-contrastful-enough to young eyes may have insufficient contrast for older eyes.
…actually, I just scrolled the article again, and noticed that in the tip “Elements that the user does not need to notice […] can use as little contrast as possible”, the picture contains a divider that I had completely missed first time around. So that illustrates my point. (Or it illustrates that “does not need to notice” was meant literally.)
I don’t know. It was fine until I needed glasses anyway. Even now I don’t see much difference between black and gray BG without glasses. Black on white is slightly better without them, though.
Some* people with astigmatism, maybe. As a person diagnosed with severe astigmatism in both eyes, I definitely prefer pure black backgrounds with high-contrast text (not necessarily pure white) over the alternatives.
Looking at the first image in the article, the example on the left is far more legible to my astigmatic eyes than the example on the right. Of course, I’m just one person, and this is just one anecdata point, but I am nonetheless suspicious of your claim.
To me, the clear sky at night, outside of light polluted areas, always looked more like a complex gradient of some very deep blues and almost blacks. The stars I see golden, silvery, white, and some flicker green/red/blue.
What bugs me about this is that there is no pure black or pure white anyway……. p sure the perpetual layer of dust on my monitor does something to the colors….
It’s kinda funny that the first rule is to not use pure black and pure white, but the whole article is pure black text in pure white background.
On an unrelated note:
Use a line length around 70 characters. It doesn’t matter too much if your line length is 60 or 80 characters, but go too far either side of that and you might run into subtle readability issues.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is why I leave black’s default column limit unchanged.
I clicked getting ready for a fight but no, this is actually very sane, coherent, and well put-together. A bit of it is more web-oriented but by and large, excellent rules of thumb to go by! Thanks for sharing this.
Doesn’t this prevent OLED displays from saving power on true black?
pure-white on pure-black looks very bad to people with astigmatism.
Is it a colour thing or a contrast thing – is grey on/under pure black okay to look at?
I think the rule “Use near-black and near-white instead of pure black and white” should include a warning that (a) the designer should be sure to leave enough contrast, and (b) that text that’s just-contrastful-enough to young eyes may have insufficient contrast for older eyes.
…actually, I just scrolled the article again, and noticed that in the tip “Elements that the user does not need to notice […] can use as little contrast as possible”, the picture contains a divider that I had completely missed first time around. So that illustrates my point. (Or it illustrates that “does not need to notice” was meant literally.)
Yes, “elements that the user does not need to notice”, such as unsubscribe buttons.
I don’t know. It was fine until I needed glasses anyway. Even now I don’t see much difference between black and gray BG without glasses. Black on white is slightly better without them, though.
Was there a research?
Some* people with astigmatism, maybe. As a person diagnosed with severe astigmatism in both eyes, I definitely prefer pure black backgrounds with high-contrast text (not necessarily pure white) over the alternatives.
Looking at the first image in the article, the example on the left is far more legible to my astigmatic eyes than the example on the right. Of course, I’m just one person, and this is just one anecdata point, but I am nonetheless suspicious of your claim.
I remember seeing something that said the difference is about a few seconds of battery life on a smartphone. I’ll look for it when I’m at a desk
Yes, but do you really want to risk being seen as unnatural?
The issue they allude to would definitely be better to leave to the client.
What even is “unnatural” about it? The night sky, one of the most natural things, is pure white on pure black.
To me, the clear sky at night, outside of light polluted areas, always looked more like a complex gradient of some very deep blues and almost blacks. The stars I see golden, silvery, white, and some flicker green/red/blue.
I much prefer pure black backgrounds than off-black. Is it okay for people with astigmatism to read off-white text on a pure-black background?
What bugs me about this is that there is no pure black or pure white anyway……. p sure the perpetual layer of dust on my monitor does something to the colors….
It’s kinda funny that the first rule is to not use pure black and pure white, but the whole article is pure black text in pure white background.
On an unrelated note:
That, ladies and gentlemen, is why I leave black’s default column limit unchanged.
It’s not. The background is
#FAFAFAand the text is#222222.Late at night to my tired eyes it was still to much contrast, but I stand corrected.
Said another way, you use pure black.
Took me a while XD