Dark web pages

6 Dec 2007 12:56:33

John Surtees

Am I the only one who finds an increasing amount of web pages hard to see, due to the use of very dark background colours? When combined with type and images in other dark colours, the pages become almost unreadable.

The situation is sometimes so bad, that I am increasingly having to do the old Command, Option, Control, 8 trick, to invert the colours, just to be able to see what's on screen.

I mainly use an old, much loved 22" Mitsubishi CRT monitor and have noticed things are sometimes a little better on an LCD iMac and Powerbook but its still far from good.

Is this a CRT / LCD thing, or perhaps a Mac / PC thing? Do these pages look better on the platform they were constructed on?

Re: Dark web pages

6 Dec 2007 19:08:13

Chris Willis

Can you provide some example web sites that demonstrate this behaviour.

Re: Dark web pages

8 Dec 2007 23:00:34

Alan Cox

This isn't just a problem with websites. I get a surgical journal which has many pages with with dark fonts on a dark background (eg. black on a very dark green. At least one of the Mac magazines is equally guilty. I have written to protest in both cases but nothing changes. There is a lack of commonsense among some of these chap/esses who are in design.

Re: Dark web pages

13 Dec 2007 14:49:25

John Surtees

Here is a site, from a person who really should know better. It's not the worst, but it's not easy reading. Well not on my monitor. <www.artofadambetts.com/weblog>

Alan. Full agreement. It's a sad fact that although the Mac was instrumental in simplifying origination in print. It also allowed publishers to bring it in-house. And they naturally thought, why pay for experience, anybody can use a mouse. While they had a 'backbone' of 'experienced' people to put things right before publication, they got away with it. Sadly, a lot of the 'experienced' generation have now left the trade.

Re: Dark web pages

14 Dec 2007 13:30:07

Terry Willis

I'm a little puzzled at the example given, as I've no problem reading www.artofadambetts.com/weblog, in fact it's very well designed. Are you sure your monitor is not on the way out? Are you able to test it on another screen? I suppose it could be a colour perception thing! Any one else have problems viewing it?

Re: Dark web pages

14 Dec 2007 15:30:00

Mick Burrell

I found it O.K. too. Not my personal choice of colour scheme and not one I'd use if it were for a site that I wanted to bring in business in case people found it difficult to read.

Re: Dark web pages

18 Dec 2007 11:34:39

John Surtees

Thanks for the feedback. Ho hum. Slightly red face. Looks like its going to be a new screen in the New Year. Bit too late to worry Santa!

The deterioration has been so gradual, I just didn't see it creeping up on me. Perhaps some calibration gear might be a good investment as well.

Personally, I still feel that that particular site is too dark, but at least on the iMac, and Powerbook I can read the black on grey line below the heading. I couldn't even see it on the Mitsubishi.

Re: Dark web pages

18 Dec 2007 11:57:29

Mick Burrell

Come on John, admit it! You just fancied a new monitor and you wanted to be able to tell Joy we all said you needed one ;-)