Still reading black text off a glaring white background in Windows? Scrap the inverse video and restore the common sense that Microsoft and Apple forgot.
Right-click the image above and choose "Save target as" to download a Windows XP theme that eliminates the glaring white background and juvenile Windows XP motif. This file is text only and cannot carry a virus. Double-click the file to bring up the display properties and apply the theme. You can easily revert to your previous theme by right-clicking on your desktop and choosing it. You can also modify the theme by pressing Advanced and making color selections for each screen element.
Unfortunately, a long-standing bug in Windows causes "window text" and "message text" to be the same color, regardless of attempts to change them independently in this dialog.
Black text on a white background is a failed computer-display idea dating back to at least the '80s. That idea was to make the computer screen analogous to a sheet of paper (there were a few monitors made in a portrait format to carry this analogy further). This idea is a failure for one simple reason: Paper does not emit light, but a CRT with all three electron guns going full blast does.
The black-on-white display scheme is a good analogy for one thing: reading text on the surface of a lit light bulb all day, because that's exactly what you're doing. It's a crummy idea that nonetheless is rammed down users' throats by the default settings in Windows (which thankfully you can change) and the Mac (whose highly touted GUI doesn't even allow user color choices). Even Linux users can change their color schemes.
White text on a dark-blue background was the default color scheme on many early computers and word processors because it is the most legible. Word still has a specific checkbox for it under Tools / Options, labeled "Blue background, white text." It's too bad that users have been conditioned to accept inverse video as the "normal" arrangement; most of them don't realize that they can change their displays, and that leads to problems for those who do...
| Non-inverse color schemes like this one reveal defective HTML on many Web sites. You'll find that much of the text on these sites is invisible. Some prime offenders are, sadly enough, some of the biggest names on the Web: eBay, Yahoo, and Macromedia. Usually, their pages set the background color to white, but they fail to set the text color at all. The result is that they override your dark background color without overriding your white text. The result is, obviously, white text on a white background. The reverse situation sometimes occurs, and it's usually on forms and other pages with on-screen controls: they set the text color to black, but they don't set the background color to white. So you wind up with black text on a dark-blue or black background. Either way, it's an embarrassing problem for companies that purport to be Web experts. |
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There are a couple of solutions. First, I always look for a Webmaster or "contact us" link on defective Web sites and send them an E-mail about the problem. It's such an obvious defect and so easy to fix that there really isn't any excuse for not doing so. At the bottom of this page, you'll find my boilerplate E-mail that explains the problem and how the Webmaster can fix it. Just change the references to whatever site you're dealing with and send it to them. Competent organizations will thank you and actually do something about it. A couple of companies (DuPont and Chapura) were so pleased that I took the time to point out the problem that they sent me free gifts. DuPont sent me two miniature NASCAR cars and a hat, and Chapura (which makes the PocketMirror software for Palm) sent me a T-shirt. Be prepared for monumentally ignorant responses that claim it's your fault or your system, though. It isn't. It's incredible how many people will try to defend leaving the text color undefined but won't explain why they didn't leave the background color undefined too.
Second, you can force Internet Explorer to fill in unspecified colors with ones that are different from your Windows color scheme. Under Tools / Internet Options, press the Colors button and uncheck "Use Windows colors." Pick black for the text color and light grey or whatever you want for the background.
There are some programs (like Macromedia Dreamweaver, a Web-design tool) that suffer from the same defect as the above-mentioned Web pages, meaning that they set the background of their interface to white but fail to set the text to black. There's no workaround for these buggy applications except to change your color scheme back to inverse temporarily. And, of course, send the vendor an E-mail about it. Technically, these applications are not eligible to use the Windows logo in their marketing materials, because they violate Microsoft's accessibility requirements for handicapped people. One of Windows's accessibility features is high-contrast color schemes for the visually impaired. At least one of them ("high contrast black") presents white text on a black background, which makes these applications unusable. Again, this defect is so easy to fix that there's no excuse for its persistence.
Hi. Much of the text on the XXXXX site is invisible on some systems, because
the Web pages force a white background on the browser but do not set the text
color to black. When the text color is left undefined, the user's operating
system will draw the text in the system-default text color. That color might be
white, which creates white text against your white background.
To demonstrate the problem, go into the Windows Control Panel's Display /
Appearance settings and select the "high contrast black" color scheme. It's not
the most attractive, but it'll illustrate the error. Then go to http://XXXXX
If your pages are going to override users' color preferences, they need to
override them completely (foreground AND background). There's no other way to
ensure that the color you picked for the background isn't the same as the color
the user picked for text (or vice versa).
The best policy is not to override the users' preferences at all, and that means
not forcing a glaring white background on them. Users who want a white
background will have their systems configured to display one. It doesn't need to
be encoded in the HTML.
Regards,
