
Ask HN: Light grey text is killing my eyes. - zepolen
Self posts like this one have very low contrast when they use grey text and I find it impossible to read them.<p>In contrast, the comments which are in black text are easy to read.<p>Can something be done about this?
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kennyroo
Light gray text is a DTD (designer-transmitted disease) that's rapidly
infecting sites across the Internet.

(When it's really light, I use Firebug to modify the CSS.)

~~~
eatenbyagrue
I second that. The designers I work with have this fetish for low contrast
designs that may be super mod and hip, but seem to lower usability to me.

In general I agree that black on white might be a little harsh, but when you
have squint to make out the text it's over the top.

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alabut
I haven't seen a rationale for it yet but I'd guess that it's a subtle way of
encouraging descriptions to be short (like the one you just wrote), it's
probably intentional that it's hard to read long rambling posts like
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=468139>

I read a pg comment somewhere that makes me think that's his design decision -
he already weighs "Ask HN" type of posts differently than the standard one
with links, for example. Maybe it's to ward off too much navel-gazing.

~~~
pg
Yes; I do this to discourage people from making too many such posts, and
making them too long. I don't want HN to turn into a blogging platform. Also,
I wanted to make it easy to tell these posts from comments. If I made the text
black I'd have to make it smaller, and then it would look just like a comment.

But I'm not wedded to the current way of doing things. I'd be open to
alternatives.

~~~
jrockway
It seems like this system punishes me, the reader, for something that the
poster did wrong. If the poster is supposed to write his long rants on his
blog and then link them here, the software should tell him. It shouldn't
subtly make his stuff harder for me to read, because if I'm interested, I'm
going to push through the low contrast text anyway.

Anyway, if you want to nurture the community, I don't think it's a bad idea to
make the feedback deliberate. "This is too long, don't post it," will be a lot
more effective than changing the color of the text.

~~~
alabut
Well, the lighter text does punish the original poster, indirectly. It lowers
the likelihood of engagement by an audience and I like that subtle approach
more than heavy-handed alert warnings. Sites that have that kind of approach
feel like I'm in the principal's office and being scolded for no good reason.
Subtle encouragement to do other types of behavior feels more like I'm in a
hippie montessori school instead - we're not going to come down with the stick
if you behave a certain way, but we're not going to give you the carrot unless
you do better.

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fizx
Bookmarklet:

javascript:var%20l=document.getElementsByTagName("TD");for(var%20i=0;i<l.length;i++)%20l[i].style.color='#000'

~~~
zvikara
I use the Zap Colors bookmarklet from [http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/the-
zap-colors-bookmarkle...](http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/the-zap-colors-
bookmarklet)

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jeroen
For firefox, put this in your user stylesheet

 _@-moz-document url-prefix(<http://news.ycombinator.com/)>{ td { color:
#000000 !important; } td.subtext { color: #828282 !important; } }_

see <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=467680> for more info.

~~~
light3
Or if you're like me and find all the white backgrounds hurt your eyes, its
simple to enforce black background / green text which makes reading much
easier on the eyes, it also makes grey text easier to read.

------
indiejade
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=156530>

P.S. Here are the screenshots of "before" and after:

<http://www.zentu.net/open-space/hackernewsbefore.png>

<http://www.zentu.net/open-space/hackernewsafter.png>

------
fred
Validating the colors contrast/luminosity/readability should be done using
this:

[http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/abouthp/accessibility/webaccessibil...](http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/abouthp/accessibility/webaccessibility/color_tool.html)

or

[http://www.paciellogroup.com/resources/contrast-
analyser.htm...](http://www.paciellogroup.com/resources/contrast-
analyser.html)

------
jorgem
If you use firefox, you might want to look into STYLISH or GREASEMONKEY.

Both provide ways to change the look of any website.

------
sfk
Use w3m:

<http://w3m.sourceforge.net/>

For reading, I find it much more pleasant than Firefox. Posting is perhaps a
bit awkward.

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anc2020
Use your mouse to quickly highlight the text. Now you can read it as light
grey on blue, which is much easier.

~~~
smokey_the_bear
I get a weird bright yellow on dark gray, which is even harder to read

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FredSource
I think reading the light gray is a problem. Obviously there are other design
considerations - personally I'd go a little darker!

.. or to be really geeky, add a button to darken the color in the menu bar
(simply change the .css with a little javascript!)

------
edw519
Ctrl-A

~~~
dfranke
Okay, my cursor is at the beginning of the line. Now what?

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silvajoao
Finally this gets to the front page. My very first post was exactly the same:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=439399>

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nazgulnarsil
The factory settings of most LCD's is WAY too bright. Try dimming your screen
a little. I have no trouble reading it at all.

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dmoo
If you browse with opera try view-style and select the option that suits your
needs.

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redorb
I like using a simple CTRL+A to highlight all text on page; (windows xp,
ff3.05)

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vaksel
why not let people pick their own color schemes? Like we do with the top bar.

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babo
So back to coding! :-)

