which gray is best for print?

[cpghost]

On Sat, Sep 06, 2008 at 10:38:45AM -0700, Kent wrote:
> But the ability of people to read it is an important consideration. I hate 
> those web pages with dark backgrounds that I have to use the mouse to select 
> the text so that I can read it. I am a speed reader and basically see words 
> as images. Dark backgrounds strain my eyes and I can't read as fast as I can 
> with dark text on light backgrounds. I get bored really fast when I start 
> reading at 150-200 wpm instead of my normal 700-1200 wpm.
>

(...)

> IIRC, dyslexics have a much harder time reading when the background is dark.
> 
> Kent

That's really interesting! ... But everyone's different:

Personally, I really dislike pure white backgrounds on light-emitting
surfaces. When reading from a physical book, white is the best background,
but when reading it from a CRT or LCD, it hurts my eyes very fast up to a
point where I start to get a headache and have to stop after 10 to 20
minutes. That's why I usually use a user-specific CSS to override that
pure-white background and change it to light grey. I even wrote a little
transparent web proxy many years ago, that would rewrite HTML back in the
days when CSS was not yet as popular, just to grey-ish this hurting white
background.

Of course, the ideal solution would be to offer visitors switchable or
even freely-configurable color themes to satisfy everyone's tastes and
preferences. But the issue is then still that of the default theme would
usually still be (sadly IMHO, luckily in most other peoples' mind) pure
white background... so it's still 'user-specific CSS' for new websites.

-cpghost.

-- 
Cordula's Web. http://www.cordula.ws/