PSA for all of us who are going blind reading blogs, fanfic, and metas on the internet

[shadowkat]

Dear blogger (fanfic writer) :

I am enjoying your story, but I am rapidly going blind reading it. For reasons I do not understand you have written it on a dark background, with light weirdly faded yellow text. Are you sadistic?? Or just oblivious?

I know you probably think it looks cool to put colored text on a dark background or white text on a dark background. But you are hurting your readers eyes!!! Granted there is no reason you should care about such a thing...Granted I could take the time to try and copy it all to my harddrive or print it off (don't have paper or time to do either) or just give up. But I happen to like your story.

So, please dear friend, if you care at all about your readers, no reason why you should except, uh wanting readers - kill the distracting background graphics behind your text. Put the text in dark letters - so it stands out, and the background in light. (ie - text black, background light yellow - NOT the opposite). You are hurting people's eyes, not to mention your own (did you wonder why you have eyestrain and may need those reading glasses faster than normal? At the rate you are going, you'll be getting a prescription at the ripe old age of 29) and possibly losing or turning off potential readers in the process. Text should always, ALWAYS, be dark against a light background. Preferably black text and a white or light as possible background. Think, do you want to spend hours reading faded yellow text against black background?

I mean honestly - you have worked hard on your story, why kill it with bad graphic design?

Sincerly,

One of your readers...

[Sigh. Would never post this to anyone's journal/blog of course, because I am of the firm belief that you should do whatever you damn well please in your own journal or blog. But I do wish...sigh. If wishes were horses, than beggers would ride.]

Comments

[rahirah]

I've occasionally posted "I really like this story, but the font/color/whatever is hard for me to read - do you have it archived elsewhere?" to writers who do this (the one that really broke my brain was alternating bright blue and bright red text to signify changing POVs) and usually the authors are fairly willing to change it or point me to a less colorful version.

[ann1962]

I don't even bother reading. Same with fancy fonts, although I haven't seen a lot of that lately.

[scrollgirl.livejournal.com]

This is why LJ's ?format=light is *so important*! Also ?style=mine.

With websites, I sometimes Ctrl-A to highlight and reverse the colour (light text on dark background becomes dark text against light highlight) or I copypasta to Word.

S'kat, my question is how old is this website? I'm willing to forgive old and no longer updated websites, but not new ones. Ugh, what an eye-sore!

[revdorothyl.livejournal.com]

Thank you for putting this into words! Like you, I'd never try to impose my preferences on someone else's website, but I find it so very frustrating not to be able to read a fascinating LONG, epic story, simply because I can't take the light type on black background thing, and I get tired of 'selecting' blocks of text as I go along in order to reverse the coloring for a paragraph or two at a time.

[vicki_rae.livejournal.com]

Yeah, me too. I know several places I want to put this.

[ann1962]

Yup, I've done all those things too. I love Cntl-A. Tiny font is my other peeve, although that is easily remedied.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Not that old - it is actually an lj blog. But I didn't know you could do the Ctrl-Alt trick (may try that - sounds easier than the shift block text trick that I was doing last night.) Also didn't know you could do LJ ?format=light or ?style=mine.
(How do you do that by the way? Do you click on the blog and input it somewhere??? )

In the past:

1. I just friended the person (which I won't do any more just to read fanfic) - that usually changed the text to my style automatically. But it doesn't always work for old journal entries.

2.I didn't read it (unless I was really intriqued - which I am at the moment, for reasons I'm not completely sure I understand)

3. I copy pasted into word - and either printed off or read. (but don't have time to do it and don't want to take up the space.)

This new option you suggested might work - however. How do you do it?

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Ditto on the tiny text. I played with my own until I could get it big enough.

Really wonder about people. There was this one fic I was trying to read - and I had to friend the person, play with format,
to get the text to be readable. Then of course they never finished the fic. LOL! I don't friend people based on fanfic any more.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Very welcome. Thanks for the response.

"selecting blocks of text" was what I was doing last night.
But there may be an easier way suggested above - that I will try tonight. It's either that or bite the bullet and copy and past the dang thing into word.

[scrollgirl.livejournal.com]

If a font sized is hard-coded into the HTML, increasing the font size on your browser doesn't always work, alas! I have a woman on my flist who used to do that (unknowingly) but I've thankfully broken her of the habit.

[scrollgirl.livejournal.com]

Not Ctrl-Alt, it's Ctrl-A (letter A as in All) which selects everything on the page and highlights it (usually in blue).

But if this is an LJ, you're much better off using ?format=light at the end of the url: http://shadowkat67.livejournal.com/465916.html?format=light.

1. I just friended the person (which I won't do any more just to read fanfic) - that usually changed the text to my style automatically. But it doesn't always work for old journal entries.

What you're describing is ?style=mine. How old a journal entry is shouldn't affect how you see it as long as you're using ?style=mine: http://scrollgirl.livejournal.com/631478.html?style=mine. (Style=mine is different for everyone, obviously, depending on their own personal LJ style, whereas format=light strips away everyone's style in favour of Times New Roman 12pt.)

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Thank you!!!

I tried the html?format=light and it worked like a charm.

My eyes thank you!!

The blue text thing - which I was doing by blocking off text and hitting shift key was driving me wacky last night - hence the post.

Ah fanfic, I love you, but...I really wish people would not play with impossible to read fonts and graphics. You are right that format=light is a godsend.

[revdorothyl.livejournal.com]

I was putting that "Control A" (to 'select all') suggestion to work myself, last night, and it DID save a bit of time while trying to read black background fanfics. Again, thank you -- that's not something I'd have thought about if you hadn't brought this matter up!

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

scrollgirl below came up with an even better suggestion - put at the end of the string

http//shadowkat67.livejournal.com/465916.html?format=light

And it works like a charm. Am doing that now with the lj fanfic that was killing my eyes last night.

[vicki_rae.livejournal.com]

Yay!!! It worked. Thank you.