You know who you are.
You have a fancy-pants blog with white writing, or sometimes red or blue on a black background. And you write brilliantly, poignantly even, and have many ideas I'd like to discuss.
This is your notification that I can't read your blog.
My eyes are weak, I'm night blind, and for some reason I really can't see white on a black background. I try, and sometimes get my kids to read parts that look too good to miss, but it's too much of a struggle.
I know I'm just one blogger who might make a comment once in a blue moon, and often just something flippant or off-topic even. But there might be a few more like me out there suffering quietly from missing your posts.
I'd love it if you could find a different, yet equally creative way to display your blog. Maybe dark purple on a pale yellow background. That'd be pretty special!
But I'll understand if you don't.
Sigh.
Thursday, September 21, 2006
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23 comments:
Yes! I have the same trouble. The only thing I can do is cut and paste the text into a document so I can read it. But often as not I give up.
Oh, me too.
I often highlight text that I can't read - so white on black would become white on blue. Much easier for me to read, but possibly you've already tried this without success.
Eleanor
hear, hear.
I can read them but not nearly as fast or as accurately.
Me too! It's true: I just click away with a sigh.
It's the same if the font is too big or too small. (Tho' I'm a bit worried I'm guilty of smallness as a blog-crime!)
Thanks for mentioning this sage. I think I read a few months ago where you mentioned this in passing (I think it was this blog) and since then I've noticed how many blogs are white on black and how hard it is to see. For me it's small fonts and single spacing (altho you don't see that too often).
My eyes, weak to begin with, have gotten worse with age. Bifocals don't help enough.
Count me in! I can't read light type on dark backgrounds... the worst is stark white on stark black but others are difficult too. And I have the same frustration because sometimes the glimpses of the text I can see just look so good.
There is just no way I can read more than a paragraph of it at a time though and still see.
Yours is not an uncommon problem by any means. My father is a graphic designer, so I learned some good design tips over the years. Light text on a dark background is harder for people to read. I can read it, but I find it annoying. Typically, I won't read blogs that are designed that way. When I was still using Safari as a browser, I found a great Safari plug-in that would strip away the color formatting, leaving you with a white background and black text. I haven't check to see if there are any such plug-ins for Firefox, but there might well be. Worth looking into.
Sorry Sage, I hadn't thought about that. I've done something about it on mine. :)
Sage, if you use firefox, you can also install a plugin that will remove all the special formatting -- for when you run into blogs or web sites that are hard to read but it's not likely that you can ask them to change it.
On the Mac, Apple Menu > System Preferences > Univeral Access> White on Black.
Or hit Command-Option-Control-8.
There are varioius refinements to the basic setting.
I don't have a Windows machine handy, but I presume there's a similar setting in the OS.
Good luck on getting designers to limit their palette to accommodate you (i.e., ain't gonna happen).
The "zap colors" bookmarklet, which you can find here, will work with IE, Firefox, and Opera. (In Opera, I think you can also just use "control G").
Like you, I can't read a thing in white text on a black background. The "zap colors" thing really makes a lot of otherwise impossible pages readable for me.
Me too. Some months ago I asked two of my favourite blogs if they could make adjustments, for me and the others who were likely out there. BB (Biting Beaver) and Nubian did.
Thanks to both of them. I still prefer a blog like yours or Twisty's, but what they did was quite an improvement and has gone a long way to allowing me to read.
I'm in too. although I think it looks pretty to have lots of different colours of text and stuff like that, and a dark background looks cool, it hurts my eyes. I can't read for very long on a blog like that. I'm definitely a fan of the light background, or at least a soft colour, with a dark colour text.
Oh no! I had no idea. My other blog is bright white on black! I will change template forthwith.
"Good luck on getting designers to limit their palette to accommodate you (i.e., ain't gonna happen)."
I did...
Thanks for all the computer suggestions. And thanks to all the people who are actually being accomodating!!
"Good luck on getting designers to limit their palette to accommodate you (i.e., ain't gonna happen)."
By "you" do you mean the market you're being paid to reach?
As much as web designers would like to think the internet is a visual medium, it is not. It is a readers medium. If the web designer does not understand that design follows text then he/she is confounding communication, which is after all the purpose of publishing in the first place, and should be fired.
That is just so basic that a web designer who didn't understand that would never have been hired at any newspaper or publishing house I've ever worked for.
If the purpose of publishing (in any medium) is to communicate and people cannot read it, you have not communicated.
I totally agree with this article and the comments. So much so that I have linked to it and written my own post with credit to your article on my blog. This subject is one of my pet beefs about blog design. YOu can read the article here:
Have You Communicated?
Thanks for highlighting it!
I'm working on it. Thx for the heads up.
actually, you are wrong. It is a lot more damaging to the eye to read black writing on a white background. The monitor is NOT a piece of paper, and staring at a white screen is equivalent with staring into a white neon light. You wouldn't naturally do that, would you?
Turn the light off in your work room at night and turn the monitor on. make the difference between the white background and the white background.
I'm one of them and I know. One of my jobs in real life is web designer, and I never allow light writing on dark background at work. I picked the blog template I have out of the choices they had at the time, but yes ... like Sea, I'm working on it.
I've done it:
http://profacero.wordpress.com.
I had started, but you got me to finish making the move. :-)
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