Rant time: White letters on a webpage

Anybody else feel the same way? I can't stand white letters on any background color. It hurts my eyes, I get distracted, I stop reading the webpage and go to other adventures. Why the hell can't they just leave it with black on white/offwhite? Its like trying to improve the berkeleying doorknob' or door handle. /Rant

White on black is actually easier on the eyes.

And the door handles in my garage are levers, easier to open when you have your hands full. A big improvement over the normal doorknob

Keith wrote: White on black is actually easier on the eyes. And the door handles in my garage are levers, easier to open when you have your hands full. A big improvement over the normal doorknob

I edited the post to comply with the second part; I agree.

And I just cannot read white on black. Does not work.

reverse print is easier on eyes...assuming the background color is dark...(not yellow)

I completely disagree with the OP. I hate looking at white backgrounds. On paper it works fine, because paper isn't backlit, but when my 15" laptop screen is beaming bright white at me, I get eyestrain, I squint, and the text gets lost. Especially with anemic 1-pixel fonts like this one. Give me bright, bold text on a black/dark background any day.

Here are a couple examples:

White text on black background

This isn't even a very pretty page. The text is small and cramped, and the font isn't brilliant. It is, however, instantly readable and I can sit naturally without having to lean in all the way and read (usually my head is around 1~1.5m from my laptop screen, I use an external keyboard and mouse to type.)

Compare with:

Frigging light grey text on a white background

I literally cannot browse this site at standard resolution. I have to zoom to at least 150% in order to read it and that screws up the layout. 200% is more comfortable.

(Note: I have pretty much the same complaint about the GRM forum. Browsing at 150% right now in fact. At least the font is black.)

I don't think this complaint is unreasonable. I'm not old and the last time my eyes were tested (about five years ago) it was something like 20/16 in the right and 20/20 in the left. (20/16 is better than "perfect.") Maybe my LCD screen is just getting too old and the contrast is going, but it seems like there's a lot of room for design improvement to pick up the slack.

Jay wrote: White text on black background

I guess it's not an exact science...I find that page harder to read than black text on white background.

What gets me are magazine articles where they run the text over a background picture - that almost never works, no matter what color text is used. It's like looking for Waldo.

I am the same way as the OP. I HATE white letters on a black background. It eventually strains my eyes and then if I try and look at a "normal" websites, it get very weird

There is research indicating that white on black doesn't work well because of "halation" around the letter forms, which causes them to glow and blur. This is similar to the blurring encountered when reading retroreflective signs at night (and is why the Federal Hwy Admin. has re-designed the typeface used on interstate signage).

Geek out on highway sign typeface stuff here (pdf): http://www.clearviewhwy.com/ResearchAndDesign/_articles/RoadToClarity.pdf

...and here: http://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/res-ia_clearview_font.htm

It doesn't have to be white on a black/dark background, to be un-readable. I've seen red on a purple backgound, as well as yellow on purple.

Not quite the same thing, but on my (small) tv, I find red movie titles on a sky blue background to be unreadable. I all boils down to contrast between type and background and the actual print type being used.

A slightly more readable take on the highway "Clearview" typeface, as well as a brief overview on some of the things that make some typefaces much more readable than others.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/magazine/12fonts-t.html?_r=2&adxnnlx=1187039712-0pieeb%20F1TGkoVchosXhfA&pagewanted=all