{"id":165,"date":"2006-11-04T23:26:05","date_gmt":"2006-11-04T23:26:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.gregbueno.com\/wp\/sakufu\/2006\/11\/04\/light_on_dark\/"},"modified":"2006-11-04T23:26:05","modified_gmt":"2006-11-04T23:26:05","slug":"light_on_dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/2006\/11\/04\/light_on_dark\/","title":{"rendered":"Light on dark"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago, I gave up.<\/p>\n

Many years back, I set the settings on Windows to display white text on a black background. My eyes were hurting from staring at white backgrounds for long stretches of time, so I took matters into my own hands.<\/p>\n

Well, it was a futile effort.<\/p>\n

Interface developers seldom, if ever, take into consideration a user’s custom settings. How do I know? I know from all the times I’ve encountered my default white text blanched out by an interface’s white background. Or an interface’s black text camouflaged with my black background.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A few weeks ago, I installed a piece of software I’ve found to be so invaluable, I was willing to change my behavior to accommodate it. No, I wasn’t happy that I<\/em> was forced to make the change, but given the number of quirks I’ve faced because of my custom settings, I figured I may as well stop fighting.<\/p>\n

The software in question is Mp3Tag<\/a>. Here’s a screenshot of the file system listing with the settings on white text\/black background:<\/p>\n

\"[Mp3Tag<\/p>\n

Now here it is with black text\/white background:<\/p>\n

\"[Mp3Tag<\/p>\n

I don’t develop Windows software, so I’m not sure how much trouble it would be to specify the color of the foreground, especially since setting the color of the background is doable.<\/p>\n

Here’s what the beginning installation screen of Apache 2.0 looks like:<\/p>\n

\"[Apache<\/p>\n

If you set your text to white, it looks like this:<\/p>\n

\"[Apache<\/p>\n

Now, I do know how to develop a website, and it’s not difficult at all<\/em> to set a background color with your foreground color. But it doesn’t seem to occur to very many web developers to do so.<\/p>\n

Check out the search box of APNIC, the lookup service for IP address originating from Asia:<\/p>\n

\"[APNIC<\/p>\n

The colored text is a nice shade, but that beauty can be lost since the developers at APNIC didn’t set a background color for the text box. What happens when your system settings is set to a dark background?<\/p>\n

\"[APNIC<\/p>\n

Monster.com is the worst offender. Although the front-end of the site’s résumé editing tool is easy to use, it’s a different story when custom settings are used.<\/p>\n

Without custom settings:<\/p>\n

\"[Monster.com<\/p>\n

With custom settings:<\/p>\n

\"[Monster.com<\/p>\n

I like the freedom of setting the colors of my operating system in such a way to reduce the strain on my eyes, but majority rules, I guess. It’s tough exercising that freedom when developers don’t provide the option.<\/p>\n

I won’t rag on software developers since I don’t know the nuances of the code to facilitate foreground and background colors. (Although, how hard is it?) But I will rag on web site designers who aren’t vigilant enough to include a color<\/tt> statement alongside a background-color<\/tt> statement in their CSS. It should be an automatic reflex to set color<\/tt> when you set background-color<\/tt>. Why isn’t it?<\/p>\n

I’m not asking developers to use a white text\/black background. Go ahead and use black-on-white, if you prefer. I just ask that you be diligent. When you set one, set the other as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interface developers seldom, if ever, take into consideration a user’s custom settings. How do I know? I know from all the times I’ve encountered my default white text blanched out by an interface’s white background. Or an interface’s black text camouflaged with my black background.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technophilia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Bkjq-2F","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/sakufu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}