@Frank: The blinding white light obscures light areas to a much greater degree than it does dark areas
I believe that's just reinforcing the idea of high contrast, right? The idea is not just how visible the text is (though that is part of the equation), but also how comfortable it is to look at. I'd prefer to stare at a lightbulb with a grey film over it than one which is simply white. Another example of this is taking a sheet of white paper out under the early afternoon sun. It's often too bright to look at for long, at least in my experience.
However, you have pointed to me out that this is actually two separate issues. One is the background itself, the other is the "noise" of the text on that background. If you're glancing at a page, trying to get a concept across, I find it's helpful if the text has varying strength. In other words, I want to use the contrast to guide the reader through the text. Code blocks are in black, as are certain key terms.
Another example of this is the iTunes source list versus the Xcode file list. I find the light blue much background in iTunes much easier to look at than the file list in Xcode.
by Scott Stevenson — Apr 27
I believe that's just reinforcing the idea of high contrast, right? The idea is not just how visible the text is (though that is part of the equation), but also how comfortable it is to look at. I'd prefer to stare at a lightbulb with a grey film over it than one which is simply white. Another example of this is taking a sheet of white paper out under the early afternoon sun. It's often too bright to look at for long, at least in my experience.
However, you have pointed to me out that this is actually two separate issues. One is the background itself, the other is the "noise" of the text on that background. If you're glancing at a page, trying to get a concept across, I find it's helpful if the text has varying strength. In other words, I want to use the contrast to guide the reader through the text. Code blocks are in black, as are certain key terms.
Another example of this is the iTunes source list versus the Xcode file list. I find the light blue much background in iTunes much easier to look at than the file list in Xcode.