Comments on: When to Use White Text on a Dark Background

By: steve

steve — Sun, 16 Oct 2022 18:58:51 +0000

White text on an e-ink display—what about that? What does this alter? In that situation, there is no light to stimulate the eyes because the entire “Paragraph Text” has changed.

By: QPP MIPS

QPP MIPS — Wed, 21 Sep 2022 13:47:25 +0000

Making the claim that the reflection of light off a computer monitor affects text reading would only undermine your case. A white pixel is fully translucent, allowing the monitor’s brilliant, white backlighting to shine through.

By: John kelsey

John kelsey — Wed, 27 Jul 2022 12:09:58 +0000

On an e-ink display, what about white text? What changes with this? There is no light stimulating the eyes in that case because the entire “Paragraph Text” changes.

By: Bryan Mulligan

Bryan Mulligan — Thu, 12 May 2022 02:22:36 +0000

Thanks for reminding designers to make it easy for people to read the copy in their designs! Too often designers create web pages, for example, that look “funky” but make readers’ lives miserable. Among the other common problems I see (I’m a content writer) are an obsession with centred text (which changes the starting place of each line, forcing users to work harder to find where each line begins to continue reading), and font sizes and line heights that are too small (no prizes for guessing why that’s bad). If designers spent just a day learning about typography, the world would be a better place!

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 06 May 2021 01:23:17 +0000

The answer to this article is that “it depends.” For those who mentioned how programmers tend to use dark backgrounds, the actual reason for it is that it is easier to pick out colored text on a black background. IDEs color syntax so that the programmer can scan and find parts of code quickly and efficiently. To be honest, I don’t really know of any programmers that read code the same way that a person reads prose. When reading code and coding, I don’t really spend much time “reading.” The time is spent scanning for errors or matching variables, classes, operators, etc. When I read an article on the web, I prefer dark type on light background. When watching video, I prefer dark backgrounds. When coding, I often have my IDE set with a dark background and whatever resources open in windows with white background.

As for the science of all this, the poster who wrote about the irises is correct. In the end, the REAL solution to eye fatigue is not to stare at a computer screen for hours on end. Take regular breaks.