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

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.