Readability - CD/web site

[Nuckols, Kenneth M]

Edgar D'Souza said...

> 
> If this is a mutually exclusive choice, please count my vote for the
> white background with black text.
> There will, however, probably be around 10 or 15% of your readership
> who, out of pure orneriness, will complain that they preferred the
> black background scheme. (Or maybe they really do like it that way!).
> 

I remember way back in the early 1990s (maybe 91 or 92) when I was first
asked to start using Microsoft Word instead of WordPerfect that I had
been using since 1988 or so, I was really annoyed with the different
look to the screen. When I quickly discovered you could change Word's
color scheme to be white text on a blue background like WordPerfect, I
did it. I think part of the issue was that it "looked" familiar; the
other part was that I just found the white screen too dang bright and it
would hurt my eyes to look at it for too long.

Back in those days I was writing text only documents--once I got to the
point where I was actually incorporating graphics, I came to realize the
sense and necessity of having a white screen to match the white paper
and black writing to match the black text and grayscale or color images
to match whatever the printer would produce. I've become used to that
now and I would hate to try to visualize some color scheme on my screen
that didn't match the color scheme of the final deliverable, regardless
of the format (since we're now starting to develop online
documentation).

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