Mar 5, 2006

Blog Format

Thanks for all the input I've received on the format of the new blog.
A number of people have pointed out the white-on-black style of this blog is hard on the eyes. Although my first impression was how cool it looked, I do have to concur. At some point hopefully soon, I'm going to sit down over a cup of coffee and re-jig the CSS for the page (which BlogSpot lets you do) and come up with something better. Any more suggestions would be useful at this point.

PS - a few people have suggested I turn on the word verification option to stop spam. I will do so if spam starts to become a problem. Until then, why burden the user with it?

PPS - one person asks for a bigger font-size. I sympathize, but you can always increase or decrease the displayed font-size yourself, unless you are browsing with Explorer. And why on earth would you want to do that?
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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Actually, for extended reading, lighter text on a dark background has long been considered better ergonomics with a backlit source. The reason is that the pupil tends to contract in response to a direct light source, but when reading, tends to dilate somewhat -- a function of concentration. These competing biological functions contribute to the general fatigue most of us feel after long periods of reading on line. Consider that in earlier days amber or green text on black were the most common kinds of monitors.

The ubiquity of black (or at least dark) text on a white background was established around 1999-2000 by designers and by commercial considerations: it's much easier to get a variety of good-looking pages with that basic scheme, and it looks more like a magazine -- the medium that the web ultimately settled on modelling itself upon -- and hence more familiar.

People may well not like the light-on-dark scheme for any number of reasons, but I rather doubt that it has to do physical annoyance.

Web usability people, by the way, generally say that we should reverse the generations-old wisdom of the print world when dealing with a pixelating medium: body text should be sans-serif until we get more accurate monitors.

7.3.06
Unknown said...

I am happy with anything you do, designwise. But, I would appreciate it if you would turn your Atom Feed back on. Right now, it is off and I am not getting notices of your updates, which I value.

9.3.06
Anonymous said...

On-screen text mey be better viewed in sans serif--I can't speak to that, but reading printouts benefits from the serif.

The regularly changed photographs of real-world conditions at ARFH was of great interest to me.

10.3.06
Anonymous said...

On-screen text mey be better viewed in sans serif--I can't speak to that, but reading printouts benefits from the serif.

The regularly changed photographs of real-world conditions at ARFH was of great interest to me.

10.3.06
Anonymous said...

More...I think the reason for the general shift from the earlier lighter text on darker background was to eliminate eye strain in moving one's gaze between paper copy and the computer screen. This rationale is still a factor for many users. Phil

10.3.06

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