[ANN] Redesign 2005 Blog

[Bill Guindon]

very informative and useful link, thank you

With some interesting contradictions. Verdana 10 is one of the
slowest to read, with sub optimal legibility, but the most prefered.

Then again, most of us type on a Qwerty keyboard, guess it all evens
out in the end

 

[Francis Hwang]

Sans-serif is the better choice for screen fonts:
http://psychology.wichita.edu/optimalweb/text.htm

Is that what you'd take away from this study? What about the author's
statement that "...it is really too early to draw any definitive
conclusions from this. Studies need to further examine the effect of
different fonts on reading comprehension." ?

Personally I'd at least like to see some sort of a publication date
(other than the "Last update" notice at the bottom of the page; those
are often not that reliable.) I'd also be interested in what OS was
used in the study, since different OSs can make fonts look much more or
less legible.

Mostly, though, I'm just looking for an excuse to not use any more
Arial or Verdana ... At some point this past year I realized I was just
getting really tired of looking at those fonts.

Francis Hwang
http://fhwang.net/

 

[vruz]

Your feedback is essential to this project! If you have comments, post

them on the blog soon so we can move this project along.

Thanks, Rubyland.

This is something I've made using the (IMHO) best features of the
proposed designs:

http://vworkers.com/vruz/stuff/screenshots/ruby-home.png

The logo is basically a re-arrangement of 'Clean', sans-serifing
everything, shifting the colour palette, using 'Ruby-Red' as the base
and borrowing some sections from 'Clean'.

I'd be happy with a polished version of this combined look, but I'd
still debate a little more about the content.

 

[Martin Ankerl]

Mostly, though, I'm just looking for an excuse to not use any more Arial

or Verdana ... At some point this past year I realized I was just
getting really tired of looking at those fonts.

Heh, I also got tired of Arial and Verdana. I have switched to Tahoma on
Windows, and to Bitstream Vera in Linux which there has the best
subpixel hinting I have ever seen.

I think the link I posted is quite old, at least I have known this page
for several years now. but it looks like a very good scientific study,
and there is much more:
http://psychology.wichita.edu/optimalweb/default.htm

martinus

 

[vruz]

This is something I've made using the (IMHO) best features of the

proposed designs:

http://vworkers.com/vruz/stuff/screenshots/ruby-home.png

forgot to add
http://www.vworkers.com/vruz/stuff/ruby.graphics/

the logo in SVG and other formats

 

[Josef 'Jupp' Schugt]

Almost every web site uses black on white because it gives the *most*
contrast... if you have a problem, or know anyone with such a
problem, suggest to them to make their monitor less bright.

That does not solve the problem. The problem is that modern monitors do
not have phosphors that match their refresh rate. Given the phosphors
that are used these days I would need a monitor with a refresh rate of
about 400 Hz to find black on white acceptable. No chance to compensate
using lower brightness. I wished this *were* a hypothetical problem :-|

Josef 'Jupp' Schugt

 

[Douglas Livingstone]

That does not solve the problem. The problem is that modern monitors do
not have phosphors that match their refresh rate. Given the phosphors
that are used these days I would need a monitor with a refresh rate of
about 400 Hz to find black on white acceptable. No chance to compensate
using lower brightness. I wished this *were* a hypothetical problem :-|

How do you handle browsing the web then? I don't quite understand your
problem, especially considering I am writing this with black on white
in gmail. Can you not read
http://www.ruby-doc.org/docs/ProgrammingRuby/ ? How about Google, is
that off limits too? If not, what is your workaround?

Douglas

 

[vruz]

How do you handle browsing the web then? I don't quite understand your

problem, especially considering I am writing this with black on white
in gmail. Can you not read
http://www.ruby-doc.org/docs/ProgrammingRuby/ ? How about Google, is
that off limits too? If not, what is your workaround?

Sometimes I wish I was unable to read certain posts too.

 

[Josef 'Jupp' Schugt]

How do you handle browsing the web then?

I use browsers that either allow me to override the color scheme or per
default use gray on black (like links in text mode).

I don't quite understand your problem, especially considering I am
writing this with black on white in gmail.

If possible I am using a terminal emulation with green (lime) on black
(as it was used by ancient monitors . In Thunderbird I use black on
gray - and start cursing when someone sends me an HTML-Mail with
hard-wired black on white.

The problem is not that I cannot read the text if it is black on white
but it is definitely stress for my eyes. I only have this problem with
monitors. Books are something different but I must admit that I prefer
recycling paper because it is somewhat gray (unless it smells).

Josef 'Jupp' Schugt

 

[Francis Hwang]

If possible I am using a terminal emulation with green (lime) on black
(as it was used by ancient monitors . In Thunderbird I use black
on gray - and start cursing when someone sends me an HTML-Mail with
hard-wired black on white.

Ideally, mail clients would give you the ability to override HTML
emails with your own custom CSS -- maybe this is a feature request
somewhere in the Thunderbird Bugzilla repository? Anyway, I generally
expect CSS support of any level to be shoddy in mail clients ....

The problem is not that I cannot read the text if it is black on white
but it is definitely stress for my eyes. I only have this problem with
monitors. Books are something different but I must admit that I prefer
recycling paper because it is somewhat gray (unless it smells).

Well, like you said, refresh rate is part of it. Also, don't
underestimate the importance of DPI, or the fact that a CRT monitor is
basically a gun shooting light at your eyes, as opposed to the passive
diffusion you get out of reading text on paper. BTW, have you tried
those anti-glare screens?

Francis Hwang
http://fhwang.net/

 

[Douglas Livingstone]

I use browsers that either allow me to override the color scheme or per
default use gray on black (like links in text mode).

Hmm, have you had any success with client side CSS? Even IE supports that

You could have something like this in your user CSS file:

body { background: grey !important; color: black !important; }

Or if you wanted something more aggressive:

* { background-color: grey !important; color: black !important; }

Douglas

 

[martin.ankerl]

That does not solve the problem. The problem is that modern monitors do

not have phosphors that match their refresh rate. Given the phosphors
that are used these days I would need a monitor with a refresh rate of
about 400 Hz to find black on white acceptable. No chance to compensate
using lower brightness. I wished this *were* a hypothetical problem :-|

Perhaps you should get a graphic card with DVI and a decent LCD monitor,
if this is such a big problem. I also could not stand anything below
100Hz. The problem is that most monitors have a blurry display if using
100Hz or above, so LCDs are the way to go. Your eyes will thank you

martinus

 

[Jon A. Lambert]

That does not solve the problem. The problem is that modern monitors
do not have phosphors that match their refresh rate. Given the
phosphors that are used these days I would need a monitor with a
refresh rate of about 400 Hz to find black on white acceptable. No
chance to compensate using lower brightness. I wished this *were* a
hypothetical problem :-|

I agree 100%. I also alter the background from white to offwhite, light
grey or some pastel as I simply cannot read black on white. The
comparision to books is not quite the same thing as most paper is not even
close to the white of a CRT monitor.