[HN Gopher] Never Use Black (2012)
___________________________________________________________________
Never Use Black (2012)
Author : josephwegner
Score : 233 points
Date : 2021-12-03 14:21 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ianstormtaylor.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ianstormtaylor.com)
| steerablesafe wrote:
| Now turn off your monitor! Do you see pure black, or maybe you
| see the reflection of your room and yourself? #000000 might not
| be pure black.
| djsbs wrote:
| Agreed 00000 is not black, but the reflection is not from the
| backing layer but from the transparent glass.
|
| if the glass' reflection is greater than the emissivity of the
| actual screen, isn't the screen black for all purposes? After
| all, even if you painted the back of a pane of glass with
| vantablack you would still have a reflection of the glass!
| Minor49er wrote:
| This reminds me of some difficulty I've encountered with
| printing computer images. #000000 often comes out as just-off-
| black. Computers use RGB while printing uses CMYK, with the K
| meaning "black". So in some places, like Vistaprint, I would
| have to specifically set K to a max value to make it look right
| stopachka wrote:
| ...this is a good point!
| efields wrote:
| I have a design background and have written a lot of CSS, and I
| have opinions so just interpret this all as a personal preference
| if you want.
|
| * It's basic floor/ceiling stuff. Once you go #000000, you can't
| go any darker. Are you 100% sure the thing you're making #000000
| is the absolute darkest thing on your site/app you'll ever need
| to declare?
|
| * Conversely, never use white! Modern macOS sucks at this! A
| large window of Mail.app in light mode is pretty blinding. What
| if you want to add a subtle highlight to a button border on a
| white background? #fafafa was always a go-to white for me because
| its easy to remember.
|
| * Shadows are really never black and your CSS shadows will look
| better if you don't default to black. Toggle 'tint shadows' on
| the _excellent_ css shadow palette generator:
| https://www.joshwcomeau.com/shadow-palette/. Play with background
| colors, you'll see.
|
| * Your design will never please everyone, especially anything
| close to a majority on certain tech news aggregators.
| fatbird wrote:
| A colleague who's a CSS wizard was working on a site where a
| defined colour in SCSS was "black" and it was #333333. He added
| a darker black at #222222, and then didn't call it "dark_black"
| and I've never forgiven him.
| brianwawok wrote:
| Could have been blackblack or blacker. Leaves room for the
| next level to be blackblackblack or blackest.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| 1) darker_blackblackest vs 2) darkest_blackblack, vote for
| the one closer to #000, GO!
| frandroid wrote:
| There's VantaBlack for that...
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Inb4: "We can't use #000000 because we don't have a
| license for VantaBlack."
| tim333 wrote:
| Blackadder maybe.
| cobbal wrote:
| blacker_than_the_blackest_black_times_infinity
| jawilson2 wrote:
| How does a software engineer pass up the opportunity to
| reference either Spinal Tap or Douglas Adams?
| efields wrote:
| What a missed opportunity.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Device-specific limitations and concerns should be addressed
| on-device rather than globally.
|
| If a device's white is excessive _then have that device correct
| for it_. Attempting to treat special or exceptional cases as a
| general rule, _or even the current primary modality_ leave you
| with such disasters as presuming all devices will have some
| fixed maximum display size (320, or 640, or 800, or 1024, or
| ... pixels), or refresh rates, or palettes ( "Web-safe"
| colours, anyone), etc., etc.
|
| We're working in a digital medium. The domain _we_ can control
| is the _content_ itself --- text, the source images, audio,
| etc. _All of those are going to be interpreted and mediated by
| the devices and tools through which they 're accessed._
|
| NB: In my far-more ambitous youth, I'd have said "people can
| choose their own preferences _. While I 'd very much prefer
| that that capability be preserved, _in the overwhelming
| majority of cases, people stick with defaults and won't change
| even the most basic of settings.* This is why _both_ content
| and UI /UX designers _and_ device manufacturers should ensure
| that 1) defaults are sane and that 2) automatic adjustments
| occur and are well-suited to circumstances.
|
| Pixel-perfect presentation is a persistant pox on publishing
| predicated on ... the Web. (I ran out of Ps....)
|
| I've railed against it for decades.
| userbinator wrote:
| The default brightness of a monitor is optimised for looking
| good in a brightly-lit showroom (and also for stressing the
| backlight enough to ensure it fails just outside of warranty,
| but I digress...), not for comfortable reading in an average
| room.
|
| I started with brightness and contrast set to 0 on a pair of
| LCDs over a decade ago, and they've only gone up to around 20
| after all this time to compensate for wear.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _(I ran out of Ps....)_
|
| Predicated on poorly-picked presumptions. (On the web.)
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Patently perfect!!!
| layer8 wrote:
| > A large window of Mail.app in light mode is pretty blinding.
|
| Honestly, if that is the case then the display is set much too
| bright.
| ddingus wrote:
| I much prefer managing my own contrast levels. Always have.
|
| The product of all these attempts to do things for people
| results in a mess. It's one of those, "if only everyone
| would..." scenarios. Fact is they just won't.
|
| All that said, leaving some room makes sense. That's likely in
| the median of the mess and not contributing to it all that
| much.
|
| macOS doesn't suck at all. It's the device performance being
| exemplary and people not realizing what that means that sucks.
| jraph wrote:
| if the white is blinding, isn't it because your screen is too
| bright?
|
| If you force me a reduced contrast, I can't adjust. If you give
| me black on white, I can always set my screen at a comfortable
| level for me.
|
| With reduced contrast, you also might force me to increase the
| brightness of my non OLED screen, which will use draw more
| power from my battery.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I've always been of the opinion that if you find a completely
| white screen to be blinding or even painful, then you either
| need to turn down your brightness or add additional ambient
| light to your room, or both.
| hcarvalhoalves wrote:
| This. People use 100% screen brightness then try to
| compensate w/ low contrast colours.
|
| I see a lot of colleagues messing with low-contrast color
| themes for their editors. I use the default Emacs one (black
| on white), but my screen brightness is always at around
| 20-30%.
|
| I've learned the rule is to set your screen brightness _as
| if_ it were a piece of paper being illuminated by the ambient
| light.
| notriddle wrote:
| What's blinding when it fills the whole screen might not be
| blinding if it was used in moderation.
|
| For example, take this photograph:
| https://monovisions.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2015/04/10-famous...
|
| There is pure #fff in that photograph, but it's used very
| sparingly, so the overall picture is still pretty dark.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| https://hypertele.fi/temp/gin3r0fe2rb9feqb9ufe90iun.png
|
| You are correct, there's very little pure black and white
| in the photo. Only a handful of pixels.
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| Most of the apps text editors etc. I use are in dark mode. So
| yes, my screen brightness is set to above 50%. When I switch
| to a white-background page I get instantly blinded.
| efields wrote:
| Maybe not blinding but not pleasant. Keeping brightness in
| check is something I do often but I doubt many people do --
| notice how bright everyones devices are in public next time
| you're in a restaurant or theater.
|
| I'm with you that you want high contrast, but you also want
| balance. I think the #000 on #FFF of this textarea I'm in
| works because the leading is tight, the kerning is
| appropriate... its information dense. The NYT website is
| information dense.
|
| If I squint and I see a grayish blob I feel like good
| decisions were made. If I still see mostly white then there's
| work to be done.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| > * Conversely, never use white! Modern macOS sucks at this! A
| large window of Mail.app in light mode is pretty blinding. What
| if you want to add a subtle highlight to a button border on a
| white background? #fafafa was always a go-to white for me
| because its easy to remember.
|
| I always thought the grey window backgrounds used by the
| Classic Mac OS Platinum appearance were great for this. Bright
| enough to not be dingy and depressing like the more middle-
| greys used by Win9x, but dark enough to not be blinding, and
| also dark enough to use actual black for text to maintain high
| contrast ratios.
|
| Platinum was designed at the height of CRTs, which were
| considerably brighter and higher contrast compared to the LCDs
| that followed them -- even run of the mill budget CRTs
| outperformed the average early LCD, and consumer LCDs didn't
| really catch up for a good 10-15 years after CRTs went out of
| style (in some aspects, LCDs are _still_ playing catch-up). I
| wonder how much the hardware was responsible for shaping screen
| content design trends.
| krisoft wrote:
| > Are you 100% sure the thing you're making #000000 is the
| absolute darkest thing on your site/app you'll ever need to
| declare?
|
| What kind of fear mongering is this? :D If I ever feel we
| should have made something less dark I will just change it.
| It's not like I signed a deal with the devil which locks me
| into that particular colour choice.
|
| I understand if you ask a similarly worded question about some
| choice in a database schema, but colours on a UI? Fleeting like
| a butterfly.
| lumens wrote:
| Consider the following: if your design expertise was as
| significant as your database expertise, perhaps your view of
| the downstream implications of decisions in each would be
| more alike than not.
| rytill wrote:
| Downstream implications are less important in some fields
| than others.
|
| Can you present an argument for your case that downstream
| implications in design are about as important as they are
| in databases instead of appeal to imaginary authority?
| mckeed wrote:
| All the colors in a design are chosen to look good
| together. Changing one major color could necessitate
| changing all of them, and likely also icons and image
| assets. Even photos could be tuned to the contrast ratios
| of the design.
| efields wrote:
| Precisely. They're "just colors"? "Just integers"?
| bigbillheck wrote:
| Don't hardcode integers either if you can help it.
| drittich wrote:
| https://www.npmjs.com/package/true
| dylan604 wrote:
| >* It's basic floor/ceiling stuff. Once you go #000000, you
| can't go any darker. Are you 100% sure the thing you're making
| #000000 is the absolute darkest thing on your site/app you'll
| ever need to declare?
|
| That's kind of like in BASIC incrementing line numbers by 10
| instead of one so you can more easily add lines that you will
| eventually realize are needed to be shoehorned in.
| dsizzle wrote:
| This site uses white (on the sides). Does that bother you?
| Seems fine to me.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > Are you 100% sure the thing you're making #000000 is the
| absolute darkest thing on your site/app you'll ever need to
| declare?
|
| Assuming you have a well-managed CSS architecture, you could
| use black for the darkest thing on your site _now_ and change
| it later if it absolutely becomes necessary! I don 't quite
| follow the logic of not using pure black _now_ because you
| _might_ need it in the future, since that same argument will
| apply just as much at that future time! Besides, there are only
| 256 shades of neutral gray (black #000000 to white #FFFFFF), so
| even if your "black" background is #333333 one could still
| argue "Are you 100% sure there won't be more than 50 darker
| shades of grey on your site you'll ever need to declare?"
| [deleted]
| djsbs wrote:
| Very interesting and true.
|
| Reminds me when my mom taught me that in oil paintings the
| "black" colour of a scene should be made by mixing all the
| colours used - there is information in "black". Look closely at
| an oil painting, you'll see that "black" has hues of red in it.
|
| Also interesting, in the winter an asphalt road is even less
| black than typical due to the evaporated salt on it. This is a
| key way to notice if your tires will have grip on it (if a patch
| looks black, it could be black ice).
| cyber_kinetist wrote:
| Windows 10's dark theme basically has this problem: it makes
| everything #000000 black, which is not most people usually want.
| It's really tiring to the eyes and I switched back to the light
| theme instantly.
| discreditable wrote:
| Speak for yourself. I love it!
| moffkalast wrote:
| Well at least the left explorer windows in a somewhat higher
| value, so we have that going for us which is nice.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Windows 10 dark mode is unusable.
|
| I don't understand how anyone can read white on _black_ without
| their eyes hurting.
|
| When I first tried it out I was instantly taken aback at how MS
| had used full black for their darkmode. Not suprising,
| considering their inability to implement reasonable design, but
| ridiculous nonetheless. I can't fathom how no one on their
| design team stepped back and thought 'maybe there's a reason
| dark mode is usually a dark grey instead of black'.
| tentacleuno wrote:
| > When I first tried it out I was instantly taken aback at
| how MS had used full black for their darkmode. Not suprising,
| considering their inability to implement reasonable design,
| but ridiculous nonetheless. I can't fathom how no one on
| their design team stepped back and thought 'maybe there's a
| reason dark mode is usually a dark grey instead of black'.
|
| It is most likely due to AMOLED and their big investment in
| mobile technology (Surface, etc.) I imagine a lot of them
| have AMOLED screens, so a pure-black dark mode pays off here.
| Nevertheless, I can't imagine it would be hard to just let
| people choose the colour of the dark variant, like GTK / Qt
| theming systems do on Linux.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| If anything AMOLED would make it even worse in terms of
| readability.
| monocasa wrote:
| The win is it saves on battery life.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| > I imagine a lot of them have AMOLED screens
|
| Not designing for a variety of displays and viewing
| conditions is frowned upon in general, but should be
| inconceivable for a company the size of any MS org.
|
| On that note, this is one of the reasons I still use a 1x
| display as my main. Currently it's a comically large 43"
| 4k@1x, so it's only representative of "normal" usage when I
| remember to shrink windows, but still.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| White text on black is terrible with LCDs, but with OLED it
| is wonderful. Imagine dimming your screen just right, the
| only thing you can see is the text you want to read. It is
| much more easy on the eyes than even paper or e ink devices
| IMO, as long as the display isn't turned up too bright.
| qalmakka wrote:
| Most applications look very weird on Windows 10 dark mode,
| especially some older Win32 apps that were not clearly designed
| around a dark theme. Windows Explorer looks particularly bad
| IMHO, it's just too dark and the icons clash badly with those
| almost pitch black folder backgrounds.
|
| I generally avoid dark themes because 1. they are IMHO very
| ugly, 2. I find that "night mode" apps like redshift are much
| better for tired eyes, and 3. I noticed that black themes users
| often end up keeping a higher screen brightness level than me,
| which counters IMHO any benefit you may ever gain from night
| mode.
| amelius wrote:
| He should tell this artist:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/aug/21/holed-u...
| foobarbecue wrote:
| What a relief to click on this and see it isn't a screed against
| https://github.com/psf/black
| jlongster wrote:
| Funny too because Ian (author of the posted article) designed
| the Prettier logo
| gurleen_s wrote:
| Thought the same thing. It's such a godsend, and the first
| thing I install on every new machine or virtualenv.
| neves wrote:
| he, he, me too. It really transformed the way I program. No
| more mental cycles devoted to best formatting.
| abdusco wrote:
| `prettier`, `black`, `go fmt` and other opinionated
| formatters must have saved tens of thousands of man-hours.
|
| No more fiddling with getting format juuuust right. Save
| the file and accept the result.
|
| Sometimes it tries to break long lists that better stay
| horizontal or matrices into long lists, in which case,
| wrapping the block with `# fmt: on/off` saves the day.
| mherdeg wrote:
| Huh, some of this may have to do with the medium?
|
| Where I've done the most graphic design, offset printing, you get
| 4 colors (CMYK), and you can pay a little extra to run another
| plate of a spot color.
|
| In that environment, if you use rich black instead of just K,
| you'll see registration errors that hurt legibility, especially
| for small print and at any light/dark boundary. I've got this
| deep, deep muscle memory of checking the separations to see if we
| used any accidental rich blacks -- fairly common with advertiser
| art, but also common in illustrations.
|
| Of course on color pages things are a little different -- looking
| at the separations, and watching how our photo editors edited
| levels to make them look good in print, definitely made me think
| hard about how much hidden detail is in the blue part of an image
| and how colorful shadows are!
|
| But we were usually on a budget and usually stuck in K. This has
| for sure colored my design choices, and it's helpful to see the
| reminder to try designing away from pure black on the screen.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| I got similar advise from a graphic designer with a background
| in printing when I wanted to design my own business card.
|
| Don't tint your black, black is one of the most amazing colors
| you can choose, there's a reason why it's such a classic.
| junon wrote:
| Rich black, for anyone wondering, is when you not only use K
| (black) pigment, but layer on C, M, and Y, too.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| Wow, this threw me back to the early 90s when I did print
| graphic design.
|
| It's common to use one of the Pantone "rich black" options for
| spot color, because our eyes see it as "blacker" than 100% K.
| But yep, if you were doing 4 color work, it was a different
| kettle of fish.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| And we have to live with the consequences of this advice today.
| People misinterpreted it in all possible ways, often by using
| gray instead of black - which might be nice for some, but is
| terrible fore readability. Fortunately we have the reader mode so
| I can ignore their design choices.
| donkeyd wrote:
| Since getting OLED displays I've started using more all black
| themes. Especially at night it helps decrease the amount of light
| my phone emits significantly (or so it seems).
| uplifter wrote:
| And OLED screens power consumption is proportional to how much
| color/white is displayed, so black uses less power. Good for
| your battery, and the environment too.
|
| In a dark room or outside at night, black on an OLED is truly
| black and everything else floats magically in the void, it's a
| wonderful effect.
| nottorp wrote:
| Back when we had CRTs where black also meant no light, you
| could have real dark in the room if you only had a terminal
| with green on black or white on black on the screen :)
| Klaster_1 wrote:
| At night, I can barely see my finger against the empty Feedly
| screen. Too bad not all applications (looking at you, Strava
| and MFP) provide an OLED-compatible dark theme and the "Force
| dark mode" dev setting does not persist after a restart.
| campital wrote:
| There is the problem of "OLED smearing"[0] with pure black that
| makes using it somewhat unviable. It seems that some OLEDs are
| more susceptible than others, though. Also fairly certain that
| this only happens with #000.
|
| [0]
| https://twitter.com/marcedwards/status/1053519077958803456?l...
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| That's only relevant for animations.
| officeplant wrote:
| That and doom scrolling on on my pure black theme'd apps at
| night. Although I've gotten used to the smearing and don't
| really mind it anymore.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Including scrolling, which is an extremely common
| interaction. I still stick with pure black whenever
| possible though, despite that.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| I do the same thing. Black background with white text is by far
| the best contrast setup for reading hands down, it's better
| than reading paper or e ink. The only thing entering my eyes is
| the information I want to see, since I started reading this way
| I cannot purchase a mobile device without OLED.
| qubyte wrote:
| This is why I use black for the background on my own site, and
| high-contrast dark themes where available.
| LinAGKar wrote:
| Light on black severely hurts readability though.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| That depends on the background light in the room. In a dark
| room, light on black is the most readable.
| kps wrote:
| Light on black is wretched for people with astigmatism.
| officeplant wrote:
| Astigmatism in both eyes and I still use it although my
| glasses help somewhat. I find that it's usually not all
| that bad at night when it comes to the halos around text
| or doesn't really bother me enough vs adding more light
| by going with a lighter grey theme.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| pavon wrote:
| I don't have an extensive design background, but took art classes
| through out high school and college. What he is saying as
| absolutely true for painting and drawing images - pure black or
| even mixing with black puts a hole in the page that is almost
| never the effect you are going for.
|
| But when we moved on to graphic design, that advice changed. Pure
| black ink on white has been used as an art form for centuries.
| The sharp lines and contrast create an effect that really pops
| which is often what you want. And the gamut of (non-HDR) monitors
| isn't wider than what you would get in these mediums, so that
| isn't a concern.
|
| You don't want to use it everywhere, but it absolutely has its
| place. If anything, the trend towards low-contrast design is
| worse than over-use of high contrast elements these days.
| bin_bash wrote:
| This is terrible advice for a world with OLED. In an OLED display
| #000 means the light is off which about as "natural" as you can
| get.
| ahurmazda wrote:
| One of the reason I was so disturbed by Github's dark mode when
| they first introduced it. And I was not the only one [1].
| Thankfully, they have tried to address with different shades of
| dark (`dark dimmed` and `dark high contrast`) since then.
|
| [1] https://blog.karenying.com/posts/github-darkmode-sucks
| seyz wrote:
| And suddently, OLED screens become useless
| thom wrote:
| What's the actual research on reading performance with various
| colour schemes on relatively modern screens?
| rogual wrote:
| If nothing is truly black, the black paint isn't black either, so
| I can use it. Checkmate!
| jetrink wrote:
| The reason outdoor shadows appear blue is obvious in retrospect
| (think about it for a second if you want to...):
|
| Objects in the sun's shadow are usually lit primarily by the sky
| and the sky is blue! Maybe this occurs naturally to others, but I
| never thought about it until it was pointed out to me in a
| photography article.
| Steltek wrote:
| Now you have a new problem of no one agreeing on a standard
| saturation level. I'm noticing this more with "dark themes":
| everyone has a different idea of dark gray.
|
| Since dark themes naturally lead to subduing all other colors
| except for little accent pieces, the screen is a collage of dark
| grays to the point that, instead of the background fading away,
| the background is now stealing the show from everything else.
| It's this dismal bouquet of gloomy colors and it's hard to focus
| on the content.
|
| Contrast this (pun!) with terminals and console apps: your
| terminal is a constant background color while you're working. It
| doesn't change its shade of gray as you go so it really does stay
| as a "background" and isn't distracting.
|
| Finally, I feel dark themes exhibit this more than light themes.
| I feel years of different subtle paper whites has made me less
| sensitive to variations.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> everyone has a different idea of dark gray._
|
| There are a few factors causing this:
|
| * People have monitors with different gamma curves, and even if
| you try to match them slight different output for top white and
| bottom black. Heck, on bad monitors these things can vary
| across the screen or if you aren't sitting perfectly head-on.
|
| * People are working in different environments so ambient like
| that they are seeing the screen against (home & office
| lighting, light from windows, reflections of those off
| home/office decor, and so forth) will vary.
|
| * Peoples eyes vary in a considerable number of ways, even
| ignoring those with variations significant enough to be
| considered "defects" from the norm.
|
| * These things can all vary over time, over different cycle
| times.
|
| It doesn't just affect blacks and grays: on a simple dashboard
| I've created pastel colour backgrounds are used as subtle
| highlights (used to separate things, guide the eye a little, to
| indicate status of things (though there are other, less subtle,
| indicators when this is significant), and to just make it look
| nicer (as coldly objective as I can sometimes be, even I
| appreciate a bit of effort there)) that are useful (you miss
| them if they go) but don't want to be attention grabbing. I've
| needed to tweak the colours chosen because while they did the
| job on my screens they were too similar or too almost-not-
| there-at-all on other people's.
| tshaddox wrote:
| And don't forget about the most obvious factor, which is that
| people simply want their website to look a certain way and
| don't want all websites to look the same.
| Steltek wrote:
| I think the variations are intentional. If I were a designer
| and looking to match backgrounds, I wouldn't eyeball it. I'd
| screenshot the target and eyedropper the color - that's
| independent of panel differences. But maybe I'm old fashioned
| and not a designer anyway.
|
| "Dark themes" are the new sexy right now and everyone's
| having a play at making their design palette stand out. I
| think good usability is taking a back seat to artistic
| freedom and expression.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Maybe, but now that I have an OLED, I really want blacks to be
| truly black.
| Jemm wrote:
| Please please please us black. The web is not a painting Be nice
| to us folks with less than perfect vision.
| bob332 wrote:
| Agree, the use of the colour black is also racist too
| QuadrupleA wrote:
| Whatever. Why throw away 8% of your monitor's color gamut /
| dynamic range? Tip to the author, just turn up brightness on the
| monitor, or shine a desk light on it. Or get a monitor that
| bleeds some backlight or light from neighboring pixels.
| Unnaturalness fixed.
|
| It's like saying digitized audio should never have complete
| silence in it because you rarely hear that in nature. Well, you
| rarely hear that in the room you're listening in either, or your
| own inner ear. Doesn't mean you have to add those sounds to the
| audio.
| throwuxiytayq wrote:
| > Tip to the author, just turn up brightness on the monitor, or
| shine a desk light on it. Or get a monitor that bleeds some
| backlight or light from neighboring pixels. Unnaturalness
| fixed.
|
| While I agree with your sentiment, none of those are good
| solutions. Turning up the brightness influences the bright
| pixels much more than the black pixels (especially on decent
| displays). The desk light and bleeding backlight sound like a
| nightmare.
|
| A much better idea would be to change your monitor's
| calibration (either in the OSD or in the OS settings), or to
| use a browser extension for color adjustments.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| Monitors have contrast setting for this exact same purpose
| jerrre wrote:
| Funnily most digital audio is never fully silent for a
| different reason. Noise is added for the least significant bit,
| because otherwise you can hear artifacts (deemed less
| attractive than noise) on silent parts that are close to the
| threshold of the bitdepth.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dither#Digital_audio
| stefan_ wrote:
| Dither works for images too, e.g. for cheap displays that
| only have 5 bits of color depth. It's hardly a problem for
| audio anymore which is now almost universally 24 bits (and
| arguably already wasn't an issue at 16..).
| tshaddox wrote:
| That's the noise floor, which should be below the threshold
| of human hearing unless you turn the volume up so high that
| the loudest signals would be uncomfortably/damagingly loud.
| 16-bit digital audio has a dynamic range of 96 dB. Even in an
| extremely well-insulated anechoic chamber where we
| (unrealistically) assume the ambient noise level is 0 db, you
| would theoretically hear extremely quiet white noise when
| playing back a plain old 16-bit CD, but that CD would still
| be able to blast out 96 dB which in nearly all imaginable
| circumstances would be louder than desired. In a more
| realistic scenario wearing well-isolating headphones in a
| very quiet normal room, the ambient noise level is probably
| more like 30 dB, and plain old 16-bit audio gives you plenty
| of dynamic range to perfect reproduce any conceivable digital
| audio signal for the vast majority of use cases. Certainly
| for things like music, I think it would be quite rare for a
| recording to have a dynamic range greater than, say, 60-70
| dB.
| kurthr wrote:
| Honestly, I just find this kind of weird. Unless you had a
| plasma display in 2012 (or a CRT?) you were using an LCD which
| have a realistic luminance ratio of ~200:1. Even the good
| FFS/IPS panels weren't better and the rest of the luminance
| range was taken up in the backlight... and unless you're in a
| blacked out basement you have reflection/scatter off the
| screen, which is already additive.
|
| Most screen gammas are/were roughly square law (sRGB=2.2) above
| a small linear region below 16 (8bit) so green 0xFF is more
| than 256x brighter than 0x0F. This has changed with HDR and
| modern OLED and miniLED backlights that in a perfect
| environment (not your office) can achieve >1000:1 luminance
| ratios.
| namibj wrote:
| Even AMVA3 goes to 5000:1, and that's just a "normal" LCD
| panel, usually used edgelit from my experience with them.
| [deleted]
| robertlagrant wrote:
| When I did (pre-GCSE) art at school I remember the teacher saying
| that shadows look like the opposite (yes, I can't remember on
| what axis!) colour to the light casting them.
| [deleted]
| felizuno wrote:
| But can we still paint the bike shed black?
| david2ndaccount wrote:
| I hate that websites don't use pure black for text anymore. As
| someone with an astigmatism, it makes the text much harder to
| read. I keep finding myself disabling css with inspector tools
| until the text is back to the user agent's default of #000 again.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Where you can do so, use your browser's Reader Mode.
|
| It's possible to further tune Reader Mode (using
| userContent.css) to your personal preferences, though I believe
| you can also directly set colours, typically to Black-on-White,
| White-on-Black, or a Sepia (usually dark brown on smokey white)
| theme.
|
| When using a full-powered desktop, I'll use Stylish to adjust
| site CSS to my preferences, usually nuking distractions, though
| also occasionally modifying colour schemes. That's problematic
| as there are often many elements to change (nuking all but the
| principle payload has the side benefit of simplifying this
| problem).
| r00fus wrote:
| Just use a reader mode / extension that respects your
| preferences. I honestly have set my iPhone to open all pages in
| reader mode (and if that doesn't work, I turn it off or
| whitelist the site).
| praash wrote:
| I don't understand the reasoning behind using some "designer
| black" for large blocks of text. Especially when the background
| is also chosen to be a softer tone, contrast is reduced even
| further.
|
| Imagine you're walking outside, trying to read an article with
| your phone, having trouble reading the text due to bright
| reflections. After finally managing to maximize your display's
| brightness, you realize that the website designer has decided
| to use these "nice" colors. You crouch down, cupping your hands
| over your phone to educate yourself about how to _never ever_
| use #000000 black.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >Imagine you're walking outside, trying to read an article
| with your phone,
|
| I'd suggest stop walking and reading a phone at the same
| time.
| k__ wrote:
| For me, it helped to stay away from RGB and CMYK.
|
| HSL and the like delivered better results.
| sofard wrote:
| I struggle with any article that uses the word "never." We use
| black (or near to it #101010) on our mobile app. It's great for
| usability and makes select use of colors standout.
| dylan604 wrote:
| But you're not using black. So never is applying to you as
| well.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| This 2012 advice has aged poorly, and as with all absolutes,
| fails to consider context, capabilities, and functional goals.
|
| In the specific case of e-ink, where colour is usually
| nonexistent (there are some colour devices, these are the
| exception and have limited rendering), where greyscales are
| limited (16 shades on high-end devices, and often less), and
| total foreground/background contrast is limited (restricted more
| by the dark "white" than the light "black"), the advice to avoid
| saturated blacks is quite poor.
|
| This is most applicable to text, where the most frustrating
| experience is reading a greyed-out or coloured text, often on a
| shaded background. Firefox's Reader Mode is a lifesaver, as is
| the EInkBro browser. _High-contrast text and black-on-white
| themes are strongly preferred._ Ironically, I use the Dark Reader
| extension to force _light_ themes on numerous websites. The fact
| that the extension itself features a dark theme for its controls
| is ... unfortunate.
|
| Generally for e-ink, I'd suggest:
|
| - Use solid blacks and high-contrast whites where possible. This
| should _always_ be the case for text if at all possible. Reversed
| white-on-black should be reserved for controls and emphasis.
|
| - Line art and etchings render wonderfully. There's a reason Onyx
| features these in its marketing and screensavers, they look truly
| delicious on the devices. See for example: https://blog.the-
| ebook-reader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03... and
| https://www.e-readerweb.nl/test/data/articles/images/lightbo...
|
| - For photographic and shaded images, halftoned or dithered
| images are an improvement over shading which is at best
| posterised. The high DPI (200--300 on most screens) achieves
| near-photographic quality at a modest viewing distance.
|
| - For icons and UI elements, line- and solid-block art is much
| clearer and more distinctive than shaded or coloured elements.
| The top four lines of icons in this image are Onyx-provided
| applications, the lower rows are third-party apps. Onyx's icons
| are much better suited to the device:
| https://sm.pcmag.com/t/pcmag_au/review/o/onyx-boox-/onyx-boo...
|
| - Yes, there are some colour devices available. They're the
| minority, saturation is limited, and hue fidelity varies markedly
| from original art. See: https://www.liseuses.net/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/08/onyx-boo...
|
| Keep in mind that _all_ display systems offer limited ranges of
| darkness, intensity, hue range, and saturation, and that their
| _best_ capabilities can be severely degraded depending on viewing
| conditions. Emissive displays achieve their best results under
| dark ambient conditions, and become difficult or impossible to
| read under bright light or sunlight, whilst e-ink devices shine
| (or more accurately, _reflect_ ) at their brightest under direct
| sunlight.
| catsarebetter wrote:
| Thought you meant the python linter, was already crafting an
| argument for it before I read your article lol
| quercusa wrote:
| Along the same lines, Edward Tufte recommends Josef Albers's book
| _Interaction of Color_ , which teaches that there's no absolute
| colors - it's all relative.
|
| Magazine piece on Albers and his work:
| https://www.schirn.de/en/magazine/context/josef_albers_inter...
| jacobmischka wrote:
| > Why does the Facebook Mobile interface feel so nice?
|
| _Checks publication date_
|
| Ah.
| w0mbat wrote:
| Talking about text, as my eyes get older I need more contrast to
| make things legible. This low-contrast nonsense is anti-
| accesibility and makes the web harder to read for a lot of the
| population.
|
| As for artwork, using this for foreground artwork makes things
| look hazy and over-exposed. Have a look at a good quality black
| and white print and see how black the blacks are. I want to see
| real blacks in images.
| corysama wrote:
| A lot of blogs over the last decade took this advice too
| seriously and set up dark grey on light grey color schemes that
| are really hard to read.
|
| I can see using 08 for general text so that headers and other
| stand-out bits can be 00. And, I can see using an off-white to
| tone down a bit from paper-white.
|
| But, monitors in general only cover a tiny bit of the brightness
| range you are accustomed to in daily life. Pretty much the range
| from "black paper" to "white paper" in a normal office setting.
| Certainly not "Vanta Black^(TM)" to "Staring at the Sun". And,
| 256 steps is only just barely enough to cover that tiny range
| semi-smoothly. Using that tiny range effectively is a struggle.
| Restricting yourself to subset of that range is an even bigger
| challenge.
| fabiospampinato wrote:
| > Whenever you're working with grays, add a bit of color to them
| and they will feel less dull.
|
| This is such a great advice, and one that's easy to not think
| about if you are not experienced enough. Just tweaking grayscale
| colors a bit like that makes a huge difference.
|
| I'm not sure I agree when OP says that shadows are not black
| though, like sure a road with a whole bunch of stuff around it
| and some lighting source somewhere can look blue-ish, that's not
| measuring the color of the shadow though (whatever that means,
| it's not like shadows are actual physical things), that's
| measuring the color of the road.
| Tagbert wrote:
| A shadow is not a physical thing, it is the area where the
| light sources are blocked by objects. Objects in that area are
| darker but never black due to ambient light from the general
| environment. If there is only one light source and very little
| other scattered light from the environment, you can get a very
| dark shadow that will seem close to black. Situations where the
| lighting is so extreme are rare and it makes them look
| unnatural.
| tim333 wrote:
| That said I rather like black and white for readability. I've
| even got a chrome extension to be able to read stuff without all
| the grey on grey, cool but almost can't read it stuff.
| mroche wrote:
| 80-90% grey background with 10-15% grey foreground (text) is an
| ideal contrast ratio/color scheme, for me. It doesn't burn my
| eyes out at night on my panels, in contrast to white-on-black
| schemes.
|
| During the day, though, black-on-white all the way.
| notRobot wrote:
| (2012)
| lgleason wrote:
| I know that this is meant more towards design for digital
| screens, but I recently learned something interesting about black
| and gray tints when I was looking for colors to repaint some
| rooms in my house and ran across full spectrum colors.
|
| The theory behind this is that actual black and gray tints put in
| paints absorb light and most main stream paint colors use it to
| tone down colors. It does the job and is less expensive, and will
| make the color a bit more consistent in all light settings, but
| the colors tend to be a bit more muddy looking.
|
| This was why the impressionist painters generally didn't use
| black or gray tints directly. If they wanted a shade that looked
| black etc. they would combine tints from the ROYGBIV spectrum to
| create them which is why you see a bit of a vibrance in their
| paintings.
|
| Now that I've done a few rooms with the full spectrum and can
| compare you can definitely see the difference. Another fun
| benefit it that the full spectrum has more nuance depending on
| the light etc.. It is also why it is impossible to get an
| accurate color match of expensive full spectrum colors such as
| those by Farrow and Ball to try to save money with a less
| expensive paint. One is using several tints, the better ones a
| minimum of 7 different ones with no black and grey, while the
| standard paints use 4 (maybe 5).
| darepublic wrote:
| Years ago a dev on my team would harp on this. We replaced black
| colors with #333.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| From Fast Show to artistic advice: I shall have to get the black
| out.
|
| I just don't know, "never" is a big word. Black can be useful in
| kind of an absolute, floating in space, NOTHING IS HERE fashion.
| egypturnash wrote:
| I have been a professional artist for about twenty years and it
| is my considered opinion that any "rule" given out to beginners
| is actually a _warning_ : violate this rule and making something
| that looks good becomes _a lot harder_ , so you should probably
| better make sure you're not violating any other "rules"
| unknowingly.
|
| If you know damn well that you're violating multiple rules then
| sure, go for it - break your perspective, fill the drawing with
| tangents, shade with black, etc, break the _fuck_ out of these
| rules, and you can end up with something pretty good. You have to
| know your shit backwards and forwards to really pull this off; go
| look at how solid Picasso 's pre-Cubist stuff was, for instance.
|
| There are good reasons to choose to use black and there are good
| reasons to avoid using it; this article talks about several.
| IIRC, one of the reasons painting teachers traditionally like to
| tell you to avoid it is because most commonly available black
| pigments can very quickly ruin the saturation of any other color
| you mix it with, ending up with unpleasantly grey shadows. But if
| you do more graphic work that treats each color as a largely
| separate entity then a lot of solid black can make stuff
| positively _glow_.
| tyleo wrote:
| Idk, I really like the contrast against pure black on OLED
| screens. For some reason it infuriates me on LCD though.
| gren236 wrote:
| Agree, it's a different thing for OLED displays. Black here can
| be as pleasant as any other color. I guess it's the same for
| projectors.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Sosh101 wrote:
| Your screen probably can't display black anyway.
| bovermyer wrote:
| True black - that is, a black that absorbs almost 100% of light -
| is actually really freaking scary. And disorienting.
|
| I'm not talking about the absence of light, here - pitch black is
| something else - I'm talking about paint or other coloration that
| absorbs light.
|
| Black 3.0 is one of these.
| officeplant wrote:
| The vantablack void
| gadrev wrote:
| Article's CSS: --black: #113654
|
| Ok, black enough for me. The problem is when you see shit like:
| color: #555
|
| (or worse)
|
| On text that's supposed to be dark. Tires your eyes and makes
| reading anything long painful. But hurrrrr it's not black it's
| modern!!1.
| wffurr wrote:
| As an experiment, I edited the body text to be #000 instead of
| dark blue and it was instantly easier to read.
| progre wrote:
| Nice even hex numbers is a telltale of "designed by engineer".
| abdusco wrote:
| I design in the CSS and always stick to shades of gray until
| I get the layout and interactions right, which are easy to
| reason and conjure off the top of my head. I can always tell
| `#ccc` is lighter than `#cacaca` but it's not easy tell how
| luminant a color is just by looking at its hex.
|
| Lately, I've been playing with HSL, which makes the
| calculations easier, but luminescence is still difficult.
| Hopefully, LAB color space will be useful in that regard.
| laserbeam wrote:
| Except! For backgrounds on powerpoint slides around images. That
| black on a projector becomes invisible and you're left with just
| the image, or they just blend with the border of the monitor and
| you're left with just the image.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| For phones with OLED displays, I like to use pure black
| background for this reason. It feels like I'm interacting with
| an _object_ , rather than a portal into a 2D world.
| discreteevent wrote:
| Don't go to far in the other direction. Especially when it comes
| to text: https://www.contrastrebellion.com/
| wruza wrote:
| _non-black shadows_
|
| That's cool until it doesn't match with the lighting in your
| room. I believe that designers love to work in a complete
| darkness, otherwise all these shadows start looking very
| unnatural to the surroundings. We never get the "real" coloring
| (or contrast, or curves) on our screens, no need to make it worse
| by adding light sources that aren't there. You can't even make
| two identical part number displays look the same side to side,
| they're all different (esp. in 2012).
|
| The text in the article is blue, not dark. Paintings look very
| off too. Maybe that's the point, but my light isn't acid orange
| to begin with. Also, I feel dizzy by looking at colored shadows
| that some video bloggers use, it feels like looking at the cheap
| "white but not really, blinding but not bright" led bulbs.
| wffurr wrote:
| #000 on my screen isn't going to be pure black either. There's
| ambient light, the black level on the monitor, etc. Several of
| the examples of saturated grays in this article are low-contrast
| UI that's hard to read. Please don't do that.
|
| "Words on web pages aren't black". But they should be #000 or
| close to it. Let the user's screen and environment determine the
| rest.
|
| Interfaces are artificial constructs designed to be as readable
| and understandable as possible. Looking at the color of shadows
| and physically dark things is unhelpful for designing readable
| interfaces with sufficient contrast.
| lhorie wrote:
| > But they should be #000 or close to it
|
| You should use moderation. Guidelines for accessibility suggest
| a 3:1 contrast ratio as the minimum contrast level, but having
| too much contrast can also make reading more difficult (e.g.
| for people w/ dislexia)
| wffurr wrote:
| 3:1 isn't anywhere close to enough. That's the recommendation
| for graphics and UI components. For body text, WCAG suggests
| 7:1 and even that can be too light if the font is a thin
| style or is small.
|
| Not to mention the various environmental factors that affect
| the contrast ratio in practice. Crappy LCDs in poorly lit
| environments rendering with buggy software. Err on the side
| of darker is better.
|
| Here's an eminently readable site. Now sure it doesn't use
| #000 but it's also way more than 3:1 contrast ratio _and_
| uses reasonably sized generously-bodied fonts:
| https://www.contrastrebellion.com/
| imachine1980_ wrote:
| Not only that (dyslexic) but I see blurry faster if I Read
| epub whit black and white than Grey and white
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| And some people can't really see writing _at all_ if it 's
| grey and white.
|
| The best solution is user agents that actually convey a
| modicum of agency to the user. The second-best solution is
| adjusting your monitor; most monitors, you can reduce the
| contrast, but you can't really increase it.
| layer8 wrote:
| Black text on white background (#000 on #fff) used to be
| standard on computer displays, and still is for many desktop
| applications. The expectation is that one's display is set to
| a reasonable brightness & contrast settings for that, which
| usually means less than 50% brightness setting. In addition,
| as the GP notes, black usually isn't very black on LCD
| displays (IPS panels in particular).
|
| Web sites using noticably lower text contrast are bad in that
| one has to constantly adjust the display settings depending
| on the web site or app. Having less-than-optimal eyesight, I
| struggle with anything significantly less than pure black on
| white for running text, with regular contrast/brightness
| settings.
| junon wrote:
| Since you have eyesight considerations, I'm curious: what
| about white on black (#fff on #000)? Is there any
| noticeable impact, positive or negative, over black-on-
| white?
| layer8 wrote:
| There are a number of aspects to light mode vs. dark
| mode. One important aspect is ambient lighting: to avoid
| eye strain, the average display brightness should be
| similar to the ambient lighting level. At least that's
| the general recommendation, and it matches my experience.
| So unless one works in the dark, that means light mode is
| more ergonomic. At night in bed though I read with dark
| mode on an iPad.
|
| There also seems to be some scientific evidence that dark
| on light text is generally easier on the eyes than light
| on dark text:
| https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/a/15152. I don't
| know how well-grounded that is (and whether it's
| independent from ambient lighting), but from personal
| experience I tend to agree with it. With white text on
| black, there is some blooming effect that makes reading
| more straining.
|
| Finally, there are still many GUI applications that do
| not support dark mode very well (if at all), and a mixed
| environment (e.g. a dark-mode web site on a light-mode
| desktop) is just unpleasant.
|
| For all those reasons, black on white works better for
| me.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > One important aspect is ambient lighting: to avoid eye
| strain, the average display brightness should be similar
| to the ambient lighting.
|
| _Which_ average (mode, median, arithmetic mean,
| geometric mean, harmonic mean, other?) of _which_ measure
| of brightness?
|
| > So unless one works in the dark, that means light mode
| is more ergonomic.
|
| Does it? I'd like to see the work on that. IME, with
| common monitor settings, the brightness of most of the
| screen in light mode is typically much brighter than
| anything other thab directly looking straight at light
| fixtures in a typical work environment, it doesn't tend
| to approximate the ambient lighting level. Light mode on
| a purely reflective e-Ink type display would approximate
| ambient lighting, but that's not the kind of display
| usually used.
| mech422 wrote:
| >>There also seems to be some scientific evidence that
| dark on light text is generally easier on the eyes than
| light on dark text:
| https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/a/15152.
|
| I've seen this idea mentioned before, and while I don't
| know for 'average user' for my near sighted old butt,
| generally working in a fairly dark room... 'Dark themes'
| are much easier for me to work with for long periods.
|
| I like 'medium' contrast (ambers, yellows, greys, greens)
| on a dark background the best.
| jakear wrote:
| For my eyes black on white is far superior. White on
| black results in haloing around all text, whereas black
| on white results in generally pretty crisp text. This is
| why I use light themes and high-contrast mode for
| anything that supports it. (The glaring exception is
| Spotify)
|
| The basic idea is that for folks with blurred vision (not
| out of focus, literally blurred), bright colors will
| erode into dark surroundings. Dark text on light
| background means the text is uniformly slightly lighter
| than "ground truth", light text on dark background means
| a distracting halo forms around the text.
| sleightofmind wrote:
| This. A thousand times. I'm an oldster -- and no, 40 is
| not old. My vision varies from dead sharp to blurry
| depending on eye fatigue, probably blood sugar levels,
| and how my rather large floaters are behaving. But by the
| end of a day of reading, it's almost guaranteed that my
| eyes will be blurry from fatigue and age-related
| stiffness, complicated by that modern-day miracle --
| replacement lenses for cataracts. As a consequence,
| reading any light text on dark background when my eyes
| are blurry is just a mess of haloing. The haloing bleeds
| three or four lines above and below the line I am
| reading, creating a big fuzzy mess that's annoying and
| hard to read.
|
| To be clear when I mention floaters, I don't mean the
| little black squigglies that everyone experiences at any
| age. Rather mine are more like floating but not
| completely un-anchored translucent blurs that move right
| when my eyes move left. I suspect mine are Weiss rings.
|
| Know that all that time you spent choosing a font color
| that is one-level of gray removed from invisible ink will
| never be enjoyed by me. I've overridden the the default
| font and font color in my browser to be a nice large,
| heavy, mono-spaced black font. When my eyes are fresh,
| yeah, I can read your 300-weight pseudo-invisible ink
| just fine, but it flatly irritates me, hence the
| overrides. And right click inspect is my boon companion
| when reading any page too-trendily designed.
|
| If you're less than 40, it's hard to appreciate how age
| changes one's eyes. So if you're a youngster, have a bit
| of sympathy for us old folks when choosing color schemes.
| Or don't. I'm happy you can do creative, and that those
| of us with less-than-youthful vision can make
| adjustments. Best of both worlds.
| mech422 wrote:
| huh - oddly enough I have the opposite (over 50, near
| sighted, blood sugar issues)...
|
| but I find 'warm' colors with medium contrast on black to
| be easiest to work with (yellow, amber, green, etc.).
|
| I tend to work a lot at night/fairly dim rooms though,
| not sure if that makes a difference.
| junon wrote:
| This is great insight, thank you for commenting. I'm very
| much interested in design that is at the intersection of
| accessible and beautiful at the same time. Unfortunately
| those things seem to be pretty mutually exclusive but
| it's my belief they don't have to be.
|
| I always appreciate this sort of feedback - especially as
| a young guy! :)
| junon wrote:
| The halo coming from your own vision, not as an artifact
| of the LCD screen or something like that, right?
|
| Thanks for the information, this is interesting to note!
| layer8 wrote:
| Not the GP, but yes, it's a perceptual effect from one's
| own vision.
| lhorie wrote:
| > Having less-than-optimal eyesight
|
| Do you use custom setups to browse the web? I'm curious
| what your thoughts are on color schemes such as HN's or
| Google's. Those aren't #000 on #fff but also aren't
| egregious super low contrast either, and at least to me,
| moderately high contrast palettes are easier on my eyes
| when I'm situationally reading in a dark room than pure
| black on white.
| layer8 wrote:
| On Firefox I use the "Font Contrast" add-on.
|
| HN is acceptable (barely) on OLED mobile for me, but I'd
| prefer a white background and blacker text (like e.g.
| reddit). On other displays I often compensate by
| increasing the font size, but obviously that's not
| optimal.
| mech422 wrote:
| It might have been standard on web pages... But there was a
| reason green screens and especially amber/yellow displays
| were popular long after color displays came out...
|
| I still find amber on black one of the easiest color
| schemes to read.
|
| edit: s/on/one/
| simondotau wrote:
| If too much contrast is a problem for someone, that should be
| solved on the client side. And arguably by the operating
| system not the web browser.
| ericb wrote:
| I really like the crispness of actual black.
|
| Note: the font you're reading right now is #000000.
| namelosw wrote:
| I would say it's more of a fashion thing.
|
| Back when many people are still using black, more nuanced
| coloring would pleasantly stand out because it makes the former
| look _blunt_.
|
| Now, after the doctrine has taken over the world for quite some
| years (the article was from 2012), designs like Vercel landing
| page[0] feel like fresh air to me. I like the aesthetics because
| it's _clean and straightforward_ , and how it communicates in a
| clear way by punching important information in my face.
|
| There's a certain dynamic behind the game, since what I perceived
| as _blunt_ before, I perceive as _clean and straightforward_ now.
|
| [0] https://vercel.com/
| lxe wrote:
| I miss these design trends of decades past. The gradients. The
| skeuomorphism. The rounded corners. The buttons that look like
| buttons. The letterpress text.
| kuharich wrote:
| Past comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6581253,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24303042
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! Macroexpanded:
|
| _Design Tip: Never Use Black (2012)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24303042 - Aug 2020 (162
| comments)
|
| _Design Tip: Never Use Black (2012)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17334627 - June 2018 (44
| comments)
|
| _Design tip: Never use black (2012)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6581253 - Oct 2013 (63
| comments)
|
| _Design Tip: Never Use Black_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4357002 - Aug 2012 (210
| comments)
|
| Also somehow related:
|
| _Never Use White Text on Black: Astygmatism and Conference
| Slides (2017)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21367116
| - Oct 2019 (59 comments)
| opan wrote:
| I recall reading this once before, but I quite like full black
| backgrounds with full white text on them. I think it looks clean
| and sharp. Even on my IPS monitors.
|
| I've always been annoyed with dark modes using grays instead of
| black. Thankfully OLED stuff is getting more popular and I can
| use the setting meant for them on whatever screen I want.
| intrasight wrote:
| I always make my text black by overriding CSS that makes it some
| stupid shade of grey.
|
| But "never use black" is a good rule for backgrounds. I worked in
| military and nuclear UX, and the standards there were pretty
| clear to not use black backgrounds in software interfaces. Driven
| by solid human factors research I had always assumed.
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