Project "ATS Dark Matter" -- The Evolution Continues..., page 8

Originally posted by TrueAmerican
The eye is trained to read black text since we were all in first grade, and it is very difficult to change that life long habit. In fact, I believe that was proven in surveys long ago, and it used to be discussed in professional sales management classes I have taken in relation to advertising. I just don't understand- you had it soooo right. If it ain't broke...Why fix it?

Much of it was already discussed here:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

However, there is a general misconception about text colors online and offline.

For some time, light text on a dark background was the optimum combination for on-screen information. The primary reason being is that a computer is an "emitted light" medium. On a "reflective light" medium like paper, dark text on a light background works best (a significant number of studies have backed this up).

The biggest reason for this has been the refresh-rate of monitors... less light means your brain reacts less to the refresh-rate, thus the reason for light on dark being optimum.

However...

Modern CRT monitors have much higher refresh rates, and LCD monitors have none... so the issue is not as important as it once was. (Back "in the day" of early CD-ROM multimedia, dark on light was a significant no-no.)

Which brings us to our current issue... the new ATS Dark Matter redesign effort. As my initial response indicates, this is our new design look-and-feel direction. The downfall of applying global design changes to ATS is that it's difficult to apply meaningful changes in a partitioned sandbox to insulate members from design experiments. Right now, many pages are in need of serious attention, and still more need some additional thought.

I tried to find some of the oldest threads that responded to our initial change from white-on-dark-gray to black-on-lighter-gray text but can't find them. While membership was smaller, almost no one initially liked the change Since then, we kept getting lighter and lighter.

Read this and tell me how long it is before your eyes start to bleed, the same is true of this forum. Every forum I use is dark text on a light background and theres a reason for that, it works.

We're experimenting with 4 content color combinations options that will primarily effect the threads and some other pages. You can compare them with this page of this thread by trying these links:

current dark matter

lighter threads in dark matter

light threads in the dark matter wrapper

very light threads in the dark matter wrapper


Eventually we'll have a system to specify your preference.