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Best Color Scheme For Coding, Easiest On the Eyes?
Marzubus writes "I tend to do a lot of code editing in vim and sometimes get the 'burning eyes' or headaches. I have been trying to find a background / foreground combination for my terminal sessions which is easiest on the eyes but cannot seem to find any real data on this subject. Does anyone know of a study / data on this topic?"
I read a study once that said that yellow text on a blue background was easiest on the eyes, and I've been using this for text-only frames in PowerPoints ever since. I used to get the occasional complaint that slides were unreadable, but I haven't since. I've noticed also that when looking at these slides for a while I don't get quite as much of the after-image effect as I do with white-on-black. Give it a try.
A fir bit of informal research has been done by chessplayers on this subject. After decades of experimenting, the choice of chessboard color seems to have settled on dark green on yellow or beige.
This makes sense when one considers that the eye sees colors best in the middle of the spectrum where yellow and green are; and sees worst at the ends where they fade into infrared and ultraviolet.
Agreed. When working for any real length of time, I always go Green on Black (since long before "The Matrix" came out).
Old-school and much easier on the eyes.
If it works for you, great. But keep in mind, that color combination arose out of economic concerns, not usability ones. Using a green phosphor layer was the cheapest way to build a functional CRT display in the first few generations of computing, and probably still would be if economies of scale hadn't made RGB tricolor just as affordable.
Ages ago when I was using Borland IDEs I got used to the blue background with white text and I still prefer that over anything else.
To be precise Borland default color scheme was yellow on blue, which I couldn't stand, but with white text it's actually pretty good.
-- Reality checks don't bounce.
The old color schemes were well researched. When people were paying $100,000's on their mainframes, they wanted monitors that worked well for their operators. The productivity of the mainframe depended on it. This resulted in many of the old monitors being amber on black or green on black rather than the easier to build white on black monitors.
For color monitors, the white on blue and yellow on blue schemes are the best. Black on white isn't bad; it has the virtue of being high contrast. White on black is still one of the worst color schemes. I never got a good explanation of why black on white is good (think original Apple Mac), vs. white on black is bad (original IBM CGA).
Resolution and refresh rate are also important. Generally, rendering the same number of characters at a higher resolution is easier on the eyes. Thus, the original IBM PC Hercules monochrome card is a much nicer screen to program on than the original IBM PC CGA video card. It wasn't until VGA that the color resolution on the IBM PC was as good as the monochrome resolution, and people started switching in a broad way to color only displays.
Finally, look at purchasing a pair of glasses. Even if you have "borderline" vision, like I do, they may ease eye fatigue. At first, they will probably bother you, until you get used to using them.
Back when I played FPS's, I would be able to see flickr on TV. People thought I was crazy, too.
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I don't even think quality of the monitor has anything to do with it either.
Just turn up the contrast and turn down the brightness.
If you have a funny color balance going on, turn down the blues in a custom color profile. This brings out the reds (relative to the blues) which will further enhance contrast (blue is a contrast destroying color; it is also right next to the hardest color men have detecting, violet).
You can see this for yourself next time you're near some sunglasses. Try on some with yellow, orange, or pink lenses; and look far off into the distance. Particularly if you can look out of the store into a hazy area. Then try on some with blue or purple lenses. The contrast difference is night and day; the extra contrast from the yellow lenses helps your eyes distinguish objects from the grey haze. This is why shooters, skiers, and sometimes wind surfers will go for yellow or pink shades; and almost never blue.
A little slash-trivia here:
You can also notice the refresh of a CRT if you chew on something hard, like peanuts, while staring at the screen. The crushing action of your teeth vibrates your head just enough to interface with the screen's refresh rate, causing the picture to "bounce" and shear in your field of view.
Also works with low and pedal tones on a brass (low brass pref) instrument. Makes the digits on a LED digital clock waver and bounce slowly in addition to seeing screen refresh.
An optometrist once recommended to me the "20-20-20" rule: Every 20 minutes at the computer, look at something at least 20 feet away for at least 20 seconds.
Apple Windows and Linux all have pretty awful sub pixel rendering. Ideally you want a solution that lets you tweak the size of a font infinitely: you should be able to make any word or any letter any size what-so-ever. To my knowledge none of the common sub-pixel rendering systems provide this level of fine grained control.
The only good sub pixel rendering I've ever seen is well explained on Anti-Grain's Text Rendering page. This page explains how bad most sub-pixel rendering is, and how much better their open source method is.
Yes. Here in the US, it's even common for people to sell presents they've been given.
I gave someone an old computer because she needed one, and then she turned around and sold it. And then had the audacity to tell me with a smile how much she got.
Back in the old world, this would be considered beyond rude, bordering on fraud, but "rude" is defined very differently over here. Greed isn't considered a bad word here where money always comes first, and if you give someone something instead of making a buck on it, you're considered a fool. So selling things to your parents would be par for course.
Alright, we have a lot people vouching for the superiority of "pricey" LCD screens - I doubt it's the price alone that eases the strain on the eyes. The real questions is - what is it about "pricier" models that makes them easier on the eyes - perhaps if we are able to isolate the one or two or five features that improve the user's experience (as far as eye-strain) we'd be better off when comparison shopping for LCD's. Any suggestions? I'd be interested since I am also in the market for a new monitor.