This Morning I Are Bin Mostly

[miss_s_b]

... adding the final polish to my maiden post for Lib Dem Voice.

* wibble *

I'm ridiculously nervous about it. Hopefully it will go down all right. I've hit send on it now, and any misgivings I might have will have to just remain.

I'm also, in light of this rather passive-aggressively worded comment, and because the subject keeps coming up, becoming resigned to the fact that people who aren't on DW or LJ (and maybe even some who are) don't know how many useful features are available to readers, and/or can't be bothered to click the links that appear at the top of every sodding page.

I am therefore tweaking my footer a bit. Hopefully this will work, but if it doesn't, expect more tweaking. ETA: more tweaking ahoy SUCCESS!

The next person to complain about my colour scheme, which (I re-iterate) is set up to be comfortable for MY EYES because DW is my feedreader as well as my blog, will not be met with such a polite response.

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Comments

[telegramsam]

My response to those comments would just be to ignore them completely and not reply at all because really who gives a shit anyway.

Anything else I think is just going to result in dwama, most likely, if I know anything about how the intarwebs works...

[davegodfrey]

I thought your LDV post was excellent. As for the "Waah I don't like dark colours" he can frankly piss off. Your blog should be decorated in the manner you prefer, just as it should be written in the manner you prefer- and that's largely how I leave my settings. I suspect that the poor chap doesn't understand how LJ/DW work.

[innerbrat]

Your footer looks great, but something in the style makes the feed to LJ look funny - the 'this post is imported from' footer is now double small and illegible.

Y'know, FYI.

I wish I could get an auto footer on LJ. I keep trying to remember to add them and failing.

Dreamwidth is my feedreader as well as my blog

[po8crg]

Well, isn't that the problem?

Why can't you have a public stylesheet that everyone else sees and a personal stylesheet that (a) you see and (b) your reading page uses?

Of course, the answer to that is "DW won't let me", which feels to me like a problem with DW - if you can't have a public-facing website in a design that the general public likes without messing up your own reading page, then that feels like a design problem with DW to me.

This is exactly the sort of thing that puts me off DW/LJ as a reader, and if I never use the reading page then I know I'll never really get the best out of the community. Really, are you writing for strangers or for your friends? If you're writing for strangers, then DW probably isn't the best place.

And, you know what, this is completely the wrong place for this rant. So sorry, but I wanted to get it off my chest.

Re: Dreamwidth is my feedreader as well as my blog

[miss_s_b]

Actually, it's perfectly possible to have two seperate designs, but why the fuck should I have to? I keep coming back to this point, but just because YOU don't like it, does not mean that I should be forced to change it, when you can do so yourself with one solitary click. Why do people who are theoretically Liberals keep ripping into me for this? Because it always IS people who claim to be Liberals, who signed up to a party which says that nobody should be a slave to conformity, who without the slightest fucking HINT of irony, keep telling me that my blog is rubbish because it doesn't conform to their notions of what a blog ought to look like. If YOU don't like it. YOU can change it to WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU WANT WITH ONE CLICK. How many other blog platforms give the reader this option? And yet, bizarrely, you think that this is a problem...

I am not the only person in the world who prefers a dark colour scheme. About a third of people find the colour schemes that people like you keep trying to force me to adopt very annoying and headache inducing. I like to cater for them because I am one of them. And, as I said last time, if people would rather make others suffer than click one sodding link, then frankly they are wearing their privilege on their sleeves and I'm not going to lose much sleep about pissing them off.

(I did say that the next person wouldn't get such a polite response...)

Re: Dreamwidth is my feedreader as well as my blog

[po8crg]

Well, I deserved that, didn't I?

I got spectacularly the wrong end of the stick. I thought you *wanted* a black-on-white blog for other people.

You have your blog how you like. Suits your personality anyway.

Re: Dreamwidth is my feedreader as well as my blog

[miss_s_b]

I don't think you did deserve it really. And my nose bears my comeuppance for being horrible to you.

I'd like to say I've learned my lesson, but this IS me we're talking about... ;)

Re: Dreamwidth is my feedreader as well as my blog

[po8crg]

Awwwww! I don't believe my dharma is nasty enough to attack your nose. I certainly hope it isn't. If you are, then bad dharma, bad. Stop hurting my friends, even if they're horrible to me.

I was picking on you for having a bad argument, not for being wrong. That's just plain cruel, and I should stop.

Re: Dreamwidth is my feedreader as well as my blog

[miss_s_b]

It might be a bad argument, but empirical testing shows that it is the one which shuts whiners up most often, which is why I use it.

Whiners seem to prefer me being selfish, than me trying to cater to and help out a minority.

Re: Dreamwidth is my feedreader as well as my blog

[po8crg]

Is there any real study into preferences on dark-on-light v light-on-dark screens. Certainly there is a minority who really struggle with dark-on-light but is there another minority, perhaps larger, who struggle with light-on-dark?

Given that those who don't suffer either way tend to prefer dark-on-light, we don't hear a lot about the people who can't cope with dark-on-light, since they rarely have to.

Wonder if there's a good study on this.

Re: Dreamwidth is my feedreader as well as my blog

[miss_s_b]

I saw some research somewhere which said that about 50% of people with normal eyesight don't really care. Of those who do care, 2/3 find that light on dark is hard to read, and thus causes headaches after a time of reading, and 1/3 (myself included) find that dark on light causes immediate headaches without even getting to whether or not it's hard to read. I can't remember where it was, though. I just remember feeling grateful to not be alone, after being browbeaten a lot by people about my colour preferences.

And then there are the people with impaired/unusual eyesight...

I have my browser preferences set up to alter website colours as much as possible to prevent eyeball-burning whiteness, but you would not BELIEVE how many websites (including the BBC) hard code their colours so you can't change them with browser preferences. So I tend to rely on RSS feeds and adding them to my f-list.

Re: Dreamwidth is my feedreader as well as my blog

[po8crg]

Yeuch! That's horrid for you. Fiddling with colours like that is silly - have you tried using a bookmarklet? Something like this:

javascript:(function(){var newSS, styles=’* { background: black ! important; color: white !important } :link, :link * { color: #0000EE !important } :visited, :visited * { color: #551A8B !important }’; if(document.createStyleSheet) { document.createStyleSheet(%22javascript:’%22+styles+%22’%22); } else { newSS=document.createElement(‘link’); newSS.rel=’stylesheet’; newSS.href=’data:text/css,’+escape(styles); document.getElementsByTagName(%22head%22)[0].appendChild(newSS); } })();

You'll probably want to tweak the link colours

I'm in the 50% that don't really care, as long as the font weight is heavy enough. Super-light fonts in white-on-black drive me nuts. Yours is just heavy enough for me. I use TweetDeck's default colour/font scheme and am happy with it - that's white on dark-grey, but a heavier font than your site.

Also, on my old laptop, I preferred a bright screen so I could switch the lights off; my new laptop has a backlit keyboard and I don't care any more.

Re: Dreamwidth is my feedreader as well as my blog

[miss_s_b]

I have a bookmarklet, but it's annoying having to click it for every page.

There's a firefox extension that lets you override hard coded colour, but it's fiddly to use and I've never really got it set up to my satisfaction.

But, in terms of website design, I think the way forward is to make it as easy as possible for users to ovverride.

Re: Dreamwidth is my feedreader as well as my blog

[po8crg]

Agreed completely. CSS makes it much easier for people to read websites how they want. We just need to kill off the remaining ex-print designers who think they can tell the reader how to read.

Re: Dreamwidth is my feedreader as well as my blog

[miss_s_b]

... and the people who added aqua to the lib dem colour scheme LOL

Re: Dreamwidth is my feedreader as well as my blog

[po8crg]

You might think that but I couldn't possibly comment.

Re: Dreamwidth is my feedreader as well as my blog

[miss_s_b]

A quick google finds these, neither of which are the one I remember reading

http://www.beta-research.com/121296abstract.html
http://www.wdvl.com/Graphics/Color/color2.html

This one simply says that "preferences for color combinations of font and background depended on the individual participants" which is what I have been saying, but doesn't really help...

Re: Dreamwidth is my feedreader as well as my blog

[cesy]

I really struggle with both light on dark and the kind of low contrast miss_s_b has here, so I usually switch it to my style using the navbar.