{"id":248,"date":"2009-02-11T17:28:35","date_gmt":"2009-02-11T22:28:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/11\/black-on-white-white-on-black\/"},"modified":"2009-02-11T17:45:25","modified_gmt":"2009-02-11T22:45:25","slug":"black-on-white-white-on-black","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/11\/black-on-white-white-on-black\/","title":{"rendered":"Black on White, White on Black"},"content":{"rendered":"

Command-Option-Control-8 will invert your screen<\/strong>. It’s a cool looking effect (and quite a prank if you do it to someone else’s machine), but most importantly it makes tiny-white-text-on-black webpages easier to read<\/strong>. Command Plus\/Minus makes text larger\/smaller, which helps too.<\/p>\n

I’ve known for some time that dark text on a white background is most readable<\/a>. But it until recently it was just “book learnin”. I’m young, my eyes are healthy, and I can read both color schemes just fine. I didn’t have proof I could see.<\/p>\n

But I have trouble sleeping sometimes. A few days ago I had an “accident” with a 2L bottle of Mountain Dew and a late-night dinner of salty pizza. Look, the details of blame aren’t important here, the point is I didn’t get to sleep that night. Now, when you are very tired, it’s harder to focus your eyes — and having to focus them on a computer screen doesn’t help. About 3 in the afternoon it got downright painful<\/em> to read trendy looking webpages with midnight backgrounds and petite white text. Remembering the color theory behind contrast, I gave Command-Option-Control-8 a shot, and holy shit, it worked!<\/strong> My screen looked like an adventure in black-lighting gone horribly wrong. But I could focus on those<\/em> webpage’s text more clearly. Degraded vision from eye-fatigue gave me proof that I could see.<\/p>\n

Now please don’t take this as anything but a biased anecdote<\/em>. Trust the science<\/a>, not me! But it was a neat (and painful) experience. I can see why Command-Option-Control-8 is there now. Give it a try sometime, and see if it helps for you. The most you have to lose is impressing any shoulder surfers with your computer wizardry. (Honestly though Command-Plus — make text bigger — will probably do more to enhance readability.)<\/p>\n

Just in case you want to inver the screen programatically, this Apple Script will do the job:
\ntell application \"System Events\" to tell application processes to key code 28 using {command down, option down, control down}<\/code><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Command-Option-Control-8 will invert your screen. It’s a cool looking effect (and quite a prank if you do it to someone else’s machine), but most importantly it makes tiny-white-text-on-black webpages easier to read. Command Plus\/Minus makes text larger\/smaller, which helps too. I’ve known for some time that dark text on a white background is most readable. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,3,13,10,8],"tags":[45,304,277,279,278],"class_list":["post-248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-announcement","category-macosx","category-sample-code","category-tips","category-usability","tag-apple-script","tag-color","tag-ergonomics","tag-mac-os-x","tag-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}