Why Andy shouldn't design things

[andrewducker]

I vastly prefer reading light text on a dark background - something I discovered when using MS Word in its "White Text on a Blue Background" mode many years ago. I find it much easier on the eyes.

This has led onto my habit of selecting text while I'm browsing so that the colurs invert to ones I find easier to read. And eventually to my current redesign of my journal colours. Which isn't total (I've left a lot of the colours at default), but has taken most of the colours and made then light text on a dark background. It doesn't look in any way pretty (especially with some of the background colours still being light), but it's definitely easier on my eyes.

And because it works better than before it will undoubtably stay like this until I can be arsed to actually finish it off. Which means it will remain ugly for the forseeable future.

And, of course, it's taken me longer to write this than it would have done to just fix it.

Huzzah!

Comments

[sterlingspider.livejournal.com]

The mauve in the side bar is a bit ill advised, but other then that it looks pretty readable.

Like I should talk with my "red, on darker red, on darker red" style, but I really do find it so much easier to read that way. Then again I do most of my computing at night and was definitively noctournal for a while.

I dont remember the specific setting, but theres a windows setting (if indeed you are using windows, if you're using unix you already fixed this and if you're using mac I got nothing) which lets you change window text area backgrounds. I generally set this to a very pale pink (not that I like pink, but it doesn't clash with my theme) which is enough to break the harshness of the white text box. People at work are always doing double takes at my screen asking why the colors are off.

[andrewducker]

How about now? It's entirely shades of brown, green and yellow, which seems to work better.

[sterlingspider.livejournal.com]

Not my style in the least (would it make me too much of a star wars geek to say it makes me think of tattooine?), but certainly much easier on the eyes.

[darkoshi]

I think it's pretty. Although the green text on light green background is still hard to read.

I like bright text on dark backgrounds.... as well as dark text on light colorful backgrounds; generally a white background is too bright for me... I do the select-text thing too sometimes. I think it may be related to astigmatism.

A couple weeks ago my supervisor was in a meeting with me and 2 members of our GUI team, and he said I was the most visually creative person in our team... surprised me in a pleasant way... which is why he wanted me involved with the GUI aspect of one project... Although I think many people would dislike my color choices.

[andrewducker]

How about now? I've played around with the colours a bit more and it seems more coherent to me.

[darkoshi]

Seems fine to me. Oh but I don't see the browns, heheh, because they look like black at my brightness setting. But the important things are visible regardless.

[azalemeth.livejournal.com]

Not bad. I too prefer light-on-dark (naturally, azalemeth.livejournal.com is the other...), but still, not bad at all. Remove the brown though :P.