from Hacker News

Ask HN: Why did you decide to make the background a bright white color?

by 9o1d on 12/3/24, 1:29 AM with 9 comments

I remember when the first CRT monitors were around, the brightness was not enough, and it was considered normal to make a bright background to improve the contrast of the text. But now, when LCD monitors are very bright, it is harmful to make the entire screen bright.

I will make a tour into history to better understand the question. In 1990, I had a ZX Spectrum computer. It was called that because it was color, and the previous model was black and white. The computer had 8 colors, and also had a high-brightness mode, which gave 8 more colors. This palette was similar to GCI and used 4-bit RGBI palette.

You can find the CGI palette and it says that white (also called light gray) has the code #AAAAAA , and high-brightness white (HI) has the code #FFFFFF .

If you look at the source code of a web page, many sites have a background with the code #FFFFFF , that is, high brightness. In fact, the background color code should be #AAAAAA .

I propose to organize a community to explain to page authors that they cannot use the color #FFFFFF as a background, and to reduce the relevance of bright pages to search engines.

  • by solardev on 12/3/24, 4:59 AM

    By contrast (no pun intended), HN's grey on light grey is very hard to read for me (with poor eyesight), especially in dim light. It fails accessibility best practice standards, having a contrast ratio of only 3.54:1: https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/?fcolor=828282&...

    Black and white may be jarring, but it's easier to turn down the brightness than to have to use a custom stylesheet just to make grey-on-grey more readable.

  • by PaulHoule on 12/3/24, 1:36 AM

    Are you also going to insist that The New York Times have the print equivalent of #AAAAAA?

    It could get a lot worse in the HDR age where the screen has an ability, limited in time and space, to get super bright and you might have to play a video (not an image or web page glyph) to get at the ability.

  • by sfmz on 12/3/24, 1:33 AM

    DarkReader will save your eyes, I'm not fond of extensions, but this one is worth it: https://darkreader.org/

  • by hollerith on 12/3/24, 5:10 AM

    Ever used an iPhone or iPad?

    For apps made by Apple, like Settings or Mail.app, the dominant background colors are white and light gray.

    (The App Store uses more colorful backgrounds because it is trying to sell you stuff.)

    Why does Apple choose those colors? Because the typical Apple user is intimidated by computers, and those are the most calming colors.

  • by smallerize on 12/3/24, 2:50 AM

    If your screen is too bright, turn it down. Don't make it everyone else's problem.