Comments on: Black on White: Good; White on Black: Bad

By: itispals

itispals — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 06:10:15 +0000

The intention of the article, i feel, is all about indicating the present UI standards which primarily insists using White as a background. More than “White” it is about a clutter free environment, which makes the user feel ease with the website. Since the success of Google UI, the white background has got lot more priority is my general feeling. As other users feel, it is more of the individual preference too, when it comes to color combination. All the issues about UI would play a more crucial role in business websites than personal sites. And that is the reason why i feel, Blogspot gives the black background choices to its users.

By: anarchski

anarchski — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 07:51:14 +0000

I perfer a black background with red or green text. white backgrounds are garbage. its a lot harsher on the eyes. i only like white backgrounds when i’m shopping online or using a search engine.

By: john

john — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 21:21:26 +0000

I prefer white on black, yellow on black, acid green on black. All that white is just too harsh. Black is so nice and peaceful.

By: david

david — Wed, 24 May 2006 16:02:50 +0000

Actually you are wrong on the “Photos look better on white” too. I studied art at Cal Arts and the truth is, all colors are stronger against a black background.

By: DJNewStyle

DJNewStyle — Tue, 16 May 2006 14:42:26 +0000

How are you going to criticize Douglas Bowman’s work on a site that appears to come from 1996?

White text on a black background is hard to read… but a 3,000 pixel high electric neon green banner with white, poorly aligned text isn’t?

By: Anonymous C.

Anonymous C. — Mon, 08 May 2006 13:41:35 +0000

One acronym for you: YMMV. Taking a hard stance on this doesn’t make much sense: the world isn’t black or white (pun intended

Moreover, some people with very good eyesight don’t have your stance on that subject at all.

To me, it’s not black on white VS white on black. I hate white on black and I hate black on white. I think black on white kills my eyes. From day one when I configure a new system, I change all apps I use regularly to use a light-gray background instead of a white one (easy fix, for example, for a spreadsheet or a word processor). Way more friendly for my eyes (mid-thirties, still 10/10, no glasses, no lens, staring 8 hours+ a day at a computer screen since more than 20 years). If you’re coding black on pure white, you’re killing your eyes.

For coding, I use a font “made by a programmer, for programmers” and an IDE whose editor is configured to use light color foreground on a darker color background, but without much contrast (told you: mid-thirties, eyes still perfect… Maybe because I’ve had such habits since 20+ years).

White monitor background kills your eyes, too much contrast (wether it’s white or black background) kills your eyes.

If you’re not convinced that it’s not “one size fits them all”, here are some color scheme (warning: (X)emacs Lisp code :

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~maverick/GNUEmacsColorThemeTest/index-el.html

You’ll notice some highly contrasted scheme, but also some lightly contrasted scheme, for people who haven’t killed their eyes yet and who’d like to keep them for as long as possible.

Books are a whole different story: substractive != additive. The brain doesn’t perceive light emitted by a monitor (wether it’s a CRT or an LCD) in the same way that it perceives light reflected on a book page. For example, no matter the settings, it’s more relax to read a 300 pages book than a 300 pages pdf on a screen.

The point about real world photo galleries is completely moot too: substractive != additive once again, for a start.

If you’ve worked with professional photographers, then you may have noticed that many have “books” to show
samples of their work that have… Surprise! Black pages. This is for example very common with photographers
still doing B&W photography.

YMMV.

By: Dustman

Dustman — Tue, 02 May 2006 17:05:11 +0000

What even sillier is that we should have to care. Why should that be? Why can’t we just define content, and leave display options to the user?

Corporate logos? Render ‘em how I say. Big block of text? Hey, you render that however you like, whatever gets you to read it.

By: JP

JP — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 13:55:38 +0000

Firstly, a gallery and a monitor are 2 completely different things. Galleries tend not to be black because that would create a big sense of claustrophobia.

A computer screen isn’t covering your entire world - it’s just a 17 inch rectangle in most cases so black doesn’t have the same effect in such a small scale as it does in a real 3 dimensional environment.

As for being harder to read, well I agree for the most part black backgrounds actually reduce strain on your eyes - especially with TFT monitors which tend to be have bright whites.

Anyway, I wouldn’t beat those sites up too much about black - especially not when you have a 1000 pixel lime green gradient at the top of your page

By: Anthony

Anthony — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 03:24:31 +0000

Actually, many studies have shown that light text on darker backgrounds is easier to read. The reason that books are printed black on white is that white paper is easier to make and pages of mostly black ink would cost a fortune.

By: Sean

Sean — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 01:59:17 +0000

I have paradoxical tastes in that I find it easier to read black text on a white background but I often find the intensity of the white light uncomfortable, so I turn the brightness ALL the way down and keep contrast below half, which I always have to undo to watch a movie on my computer.
Conversely, I find white on black harder to read but much more comfortable.. :/