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Readability Test – Dark Text on White Background

Online marketing information can change quickly This article is 7 years and 243 days old, and the facts and opinions contained in it may be out of date.

I like to read about usability and accessiblity when I get the opportunity, but I pretty much suck at most of it.

After receiving a few inquiries from folks about changing the light on dark text, I decided to give it a shot. There are some areas that still need polishing up, and the links are still light, but I’m pretty much a hack when it comes to CSS.

Please let me know if you think the overall readability is better. If so, I’ll continue to cobble my way through the CSS to fix the rest of the things that look goofy now (including the very light and difficult to read links).

Thanks in advance for your feedback, to those that voiced their concerned (I probably wouldn’t have known otherwise), and to those that offered some help on my question at SEW. Stop by there and vote if you get a chance too.

More information about Todd Malicoat aka stuntdubl.

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  • Josh

    Ahh, too white.

  • darren

    yea, it kind of makes it lose it’s style with the starkness now.

    you could probably keep the background how it was before but just change the color: attribute so that the text of div.storycontent isn’t totally white. I tried in ff webdev to mess around and even a #bbb seems to make it more legible than all white. less of that “expanding effect” will hapen. dunno. to be honest the original didn’t really bother me though.

  • Sophie

    So much easier to read. You could even go to a pale brown BG and a dark brown font to fit into your scheme.

  • http://www.actoguitar.com kid mercury

    i really liked the old look more. to me that was more readable. i think ultimately the only important element is that there is light/dark contrast; which you prefer is simply a matter of personal taste/style, the mood you’re looking to convey, and the settings and specs of your users’ monitors.

    my 2 cents.

  • KC

    I can understand why some people were having some trouble with the old scheme, but I liked it from an aesthetic standpoint. If you want to keep the light text on dark background, you could try bolding the text to make it stand out a little more – those skinny unbolded characters can be a little hard to read on some monitors – the bold would thicken them up….

  • http://www.searchmarketing.co.il Gilad

    I find it only slight better + very *shiny*.
    Is the brown bgcolor debatable?
    If not – is softening an option?
    Thanks!