

The world wide web in black and white - jacquesknie
http://www.unclrd.com/

======
TranceMan
As part of the LinkedIn design process, mock ups are made of new layouts in
black and white.

This forces people to test and comment on the functionality rather than simple
aesthetics.

~~~
malandrew
It actually forces something even more fundamental. In the HSV colorspace, a
black and white image has no hue or saturation, only value. Since value is the
main contributor to contrast it is the color dimension that contributes most
to usability, comprehension and attention.

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Maci
Who needs plugins.

MacOS X > System Preferences > Universal Access

\- Seeing -

Display: [x] Use grayscale

~~~
motdiem
Thanks - this strangely makes using the computer a more soothing experience.
Tried it for a few minutes, when I turned the color back on, it seemed
suddenly very loud.

~~~
navs
I don't know. I have trouble reading text on these white backgrounds. More now
than ever before.

This might be the dumbest question but is there a system performance benefit
in using grayscale?

~~~
tomjen3
It is not a dumb question, but the answer is almost certainly not.

It wouldn't be that difficult to design a computer to process graphics a lot
faster in greyscale (you need to use one byte for the color and one for the
alpha) since each pixel requires less computation.

In practice if your graphic card only worked in greyscale, it wouldn't be
worth the cost of development and so nobody would do it.

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tudorizer
I did this experiment 1 year ago. This was my result back then
[http://tudormunteanu.com/post/1341815876/a-day-without-
color...](http://tudormunteanu.com/post/1341815876/a-day-without-colors)

~~~
_hiss
Oddly, this is how your link looks in Firefox with the (un)clrd plugin
applied: <http://i.imm.io/H8V6.png>

I'll be reading it with the plugin deactivated ;)

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
I think that's a hardware acceleration issue, since these filters tend to be
applied with GL shaders.

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padolsey
It's amazing how something so seemingly minor can make such a huge difference.
I feel like I'm traversing the web of yesteryear (true yesteryear, not the
animated gif'd web of 1997). Thanks for the link OP! One critique: The
desaturation occurs a noticeable ~300ms after the page starts displaying,
which means I always get a brief flash of colour.

~~~
judofyr
You can avoid the flash by adding this into the Custom.css:

    
    
        html {
          -webkit-filter: grayscale(100%); 
        }
    

On Mac it's in ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/User
StyleSheets/Custom.css.

~~~
jontro
On windows it's located in: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome\User
Data\Default\User StyleSheets\Custom.css

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PostOnce
I had to go look at <http://www.colourlovers.com/> ...

~~~
mojuba
... and suddenly many beautiful landscapes started looking like Ansel Adams

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Hopka
You still have some lorem ipsum text on the bottom of your front page.

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bwm
It's incredibly simple:
document.documentElement.style.webkitFilter='grayscale(1)'

~~~
PanMan
Really useful: That also works in a bookmarklet!

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TazeTSchnitzel
On Windows, the Visual Impairment Simulator ( <http://vis.cita.uiuc.edu/>) is
even better.

It allows not just grayscale viewing, but colourblindness of different forms,
and other visual impairement. Really fascinating. Runs for your whole
computer, so you can test apps and other stuff too.

~~~
sspiff
The equivalent under Linux is available in Compiz Configuration Settings
Manager (ccsm), listed as "Color filter". It includes grayscale, several forms
of color blindness as well as some novelty effects.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Thanks! I'm actually on Ubuntu just now (I haven't used Windows in quite a
while), so I'll have to try this.

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gbvb
I have been using [http://code.google.com/p/blacktree-
nocturne/downloads/detail...](http://code.google.com/p/blacktree-
nocturne/downloads/detail?name=Nocturne.2.0.0.zip) (Nocturne) which
essentially turns the entire desktop darker. It is very soothing to turn
everything monochrome.

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capex
Combine this with F.lux, which adapts your display according to the time of
day (at night you'll find your monitor quite pleasant to look at).
<http://stereopsis.com/flux/>

~~~
jere
F.lux changes the "color temperature" only, so I imagine there would be no
perceptible difference when dealing in greyscale.

~~~
hollerith
>I imagine there would be no perceptible difference when dealing in greyscale.

Not so: changing the color temperature changes how white looks.

It's night, so F.lux has lowered the temperature of my Mac, and if I hold my
iPad up in front of my Mac's display white on the Mac look distinctly red-
tinged compared to white on the iPad.

~~~
jere
Damn, you're right. I also just tested it (a better test is to hit the "24
hour preview", though I must warn you it is overwhelming).

I was figuring it would only change the hue, but in retrospect that doesn't
make any sense. It wouldn't do a lot of good since a great deal of
websites/apps use white heavily.

Thanks for pointing that out.

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gearoidoc
A great addon but I don't like the flicker from color to BW on page load.

~~~
PostOnce
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/high-
contrast/djcf...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/high-
contrast/djcfdncoelnlbldjfhinnjlhdjlikmph)

Google's official high contrast accessibility plugin has a greyscale option,
and no flicker on page load.

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hollerith
Hitting the (un)clrd button in the nav bar, then hitting the "Open a new tab"
button (i.e., the "mini-tab") reliably crashes Firefox ESR.

(Firefox ESR is Firefox's analog to Ubuntu LTS.)

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skreech
Is this a conspiracy of the color blind to level the playing field?

~~~
hayksaakian
On a related note, an extension that modifies colors to be colorblind friendly
may actually be useful.

~~~
GuiA
Adding to the list of suggestions by other commenters, Sim Daltonism:
<http://michelf.ca/projects/sim-daltonism/>

I remember using it for a university project in 2007, in which we had to build
a movie lookup website from scratch. I used Sim Daltonism to design 3
alternative CSS that would cater to the needs of people with different types
of colorblindness (there's not just one type, although deuteranomaly
(red/green colorblindness) is the most widespread).

The teacher thought it was superfluous and took points off. _sigh_ :)

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trotsky
It seems to blur all my fonts a decent bit on os x with a hidpi display in a
way that doesn't happen with accessibility. sub-pixel rendering issue?

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ojii
It would be better if it grayscaled the favicons too. They look like out of
place splashes of color in the browser now.

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honkadori
i kind of like it! but i dont really know what to use it for?

