All stop again

[Bill]

Work’s at a total stop again today, waiting for parts in the post. Waffle time.

In 1980, when Sinclair brought out the first home computer (ZX 80) it was all black and white with black text appearing on a bright white background. After a few hours though, staring at such a bright screen your eyes looked like something from a horror movie. A friend of mine decided to build himself a little video inverter that flipped black to white and visa versa. It was such a good idea that we started a little kitchen table business to make these inverters, selling them mail order or at computer fairs. We never got rich from this, but we did manage to sell many thousands. It all came to an end though when Sinclair introduced its new full colour Spectrum computer which now had a nice black background.

Some fifteen years later, I’m running my own electronics business but relying heavily on several external software companies to provide the office PC side of things. All the programmers had their own ideas of what the customers wanted but weren’t interested in talking to them or making any changes. Cutting a long story short, I found myself having to start writing my own PC code. The ZX80’s white screen had hurt my eyes after just an hour so a telephonist working all day would probably end up blind by the end of the week, so I opted to go against all the trends and go for a black background.

Despite a few initial wtf’s and “looks a bit DOSy”, this turned out to be a good decision and in time it came to be regarded as one of the best GUI’s on the market. The basic format remained that way until I passed the reigns onto my son some five years ago. After two years of making things look a bit more modern, customers were soon requesting to return to the older software and the reason; you guessed it, too much white with reports of headaches and eyestrain. My son might not listen to me, but he does listen to the customers and so now they all have the option to take it back to black and from what I see, virtually everyone uses it that way.

So, what can you take away from all this waffle? Well, being cool and modern isn’t always the best, and might explain why us oldies have issues reading the instructions where the text is white and the background light grey. Grrrrr!  😫

 

Bill 😊

[Confused52]

Thanks for that Bill. One of my annoyances on GUIs was the IBM button marked Done, never knew what to make of it and why it wasn't OK. I often thought it really meant "I give up".

[Evil Sid]

as an avid reader of books black on a white or grey background is the norm, but when i read from my kindle i find it is better with white text on a black background.

the letters stand out more and there is less glare from the screen.

oddly enough i find the black text on white with a computer screen much better than the other way round. that may be just because of conditioning over the years.

on a slightly similar note i spent half an hour yesterday trying to read the instructions to microwave a ready meal. mid blue background with black text and very small, jeweller loop came in handy.

[Bill]

Sounds like we both have the same problems Sid.

Here’s a snippet from a website I was just using that illustrates just how wrong some of these so-called modern web designers can get it. On my relatively new laptop, the line under the banner is almost invisible, and I’d suspect anyone with an ageing screen wouldn’t be able to read it at all.

It’s even the case here on this forum albeit nowhere near as bad. Someone at some point in the past must have decided to reduce the blackness of the text, question is why did they do that? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I adjust all my posts to give a slightly bigger text with black ink in order to make them easier for others to read. Maybe there's some way to change the default settings of our posts to make it easier for those of us with failing eyesight or fading displays.

 

Bill 😊

[Evil Sid]

even on my screen it is hard to make out and it is almost brand new, especially if i sit back a bit beyond the focus of my glasses.

an older model laptop with the sun behind it and you wouldn't see it at all.

when i am sorting out the bowls fixtures i have to do a couple of test prints to see what colour is best to highlight away matches, so far mid blue is favourite. this is only to make it easier for those team members who have many years of bowling experience, eg knocking on a bit, sadly like me these days....😭