Unfinished Bl…

What color is your monitor when it is off? Is it white? No, dear reader, I think you will find it is black. It is only when light is generated by its electronic innards that the screen is populated with brighter colors—white, for example.

White is actually the brightest color a computer monitor (either CRT or LCD) is capable of displaying. Why then do so many websites think it proper to flood the screen with as much light as possible, and then situate the most important element of the page—the text—in front, in a vain attempt to block the torrent of luminance behind it? Convention, probably; This is what we are used to seeing in printed media. The problem is that a computer monitor is not a piece of paper. It is a different medium with different properties.

In the world of photography, it is extremely difficult—if not impossible—for a camera to capture both a man and the blinding sunset behind him with a single exposure. The human eye has a wider dynamic range, but it too has its limits; pushing these limits can be physically strenuous. The contrast between text and background should be high enough that the text is readable, but not so high as to induce eye-strain. This is why the most readable printed media (e.g. newspapers) are not actually white, but a light gray or off-white.

Furthermore, light has a funny habit of bleeding out of its confines and wrapping around the edges of dark objects in the vicinity. If then one must choose between a bright text which obscures its background and a bright background which obsc…