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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 doubt that the colors will make half as much difference as the quality of your monitor, unless you've been using chartreuse on magenta or something. Not that I know a great deal about the technical details, but I have observed that many cheaper CRTs or LCDs seem to make my eyes hurt sooner than a more expensive one. Apple's monitors are excellent for this, BTW, but they do price them terribly high. These days I'd expect you can get something equivalent for less, though it won't be a $129 model. Also, in 2004 the same question was discussed at length here, probably at least some of that is still relevant.
Caveat Utilitor
I've looked into this topic a few times in the past...
Last time, I found a page that shows samples of hundreds of VIM color schemes:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~maverick/VimColorSchemeTest/index-pl.html
I don't use VIM (I use JOE), but the color schemes are easy to convert manually
Whats nice is that you can scan through a _lot_ of schemes very quickly, and easily pick out the ones that work very well.
Zenburn is a low-contrast colour scheme for low-light conditions. It is popular color scheme among programmers because it is very easy on the eyes.
Legend says it was used by the ancients when they developed teh internets and our realm.
* http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000682.html
* http://slinky.imukuppi.org/zenburn/
* http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=415
* http://slinky.imukuppi.org/2006/10/31/just-some-alien-fruit-salad-to-keep-you-i n-the-zone/
* http://termos.vemod.net/zenburn-for-konsole
It is I, 1100101, and this was asked three months ago with a good discussion. I guess slashdot operates in quarterly cycles. :)
Here is the previous discussion: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/08/2213222
As to not karma-whore, here was my response as a doc...
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=515908&cid=23008272
I use green text on a black background, and it seems to help. A lot of it has to do with the quality and type of your monitor.
Anybody want my mod points?
This was discussed just a couple of months ago... http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/08/2213222
A black foreground on a black background has always given me the least eye pain.
Pink text on green background.
This combination is so vibrant that it burns the code into your brain, allowing you to better visualize your program.
That, or give you a seizure.
This comes up all the time.
Personally I find the above best. I can cope with green or yellow text, but find white best, followed by cyan. This whole idea of the modern WYSIWYG desktop trying to emulate paper and thus having a white background is just stupid. Paper is a reflective medium. Screens emit and therefore looking at a white screen is going to give you the office worker's equivalent of snow blindness. Print preview should have a white background, and it should be an easy thing to switch it on for typing up a text document (for true WYSIWYG) but we really shouldn't be using it all day.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
We seem to get this article every few months, and there's never any scientific data to look at.
So, uh, enjoy your 400 posts of anecdotal evidence and personal opinion. Personally I reccomend pastel text on an ash grey background.
The default vi colors on a fresh Gentoo install are absolutely beautiful, easy to read, and in my experience helps with eye strain too.
I'm with the parent. Black background. I use Lime Green, with Lime Green for the cursor, and Yellow for selection. It's high contrast, easy on the eyes, and it makes it look like you're programming The Matrix. =)
UTF-8: There and Back Again
I've always liked black text with a medium shade of gray for the background. Not too light, not too dark. White hurts me. :(
I'm an admin rather than a programmer, but when I write code, I'm usually pretty easy going with my color schemes, as long as the background is black and I can read the comments.
vim by default leaves the comments in shell scripts as a dark, dark blue, which makes it almost impossible to see. A little lighter is fine.
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Green text on black background.
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when I used to do a predominant part of my day coding, I used to set the editor to full screen, and use not a full bright white background, but a gray background and then use the color syntax highlighting on that. When your in a room with typical 6500 degree-kelvin florescent lighting, combined with the peak white background (paper page simulated) on the monitor, they do tend to make your eyes really have to focus much too hard.
What also helps the eye strain is if you are still using a CRT monitor, get the refresh rate on it higher than 72 hz. vertical rate. That alone is a major cause of eye strain and headaches. This is due to your eyes and brain being able to see the screens inter-scanning and blanking. I ran mine at 75hz until I got bigger screen then I could go to 90hz. Now I have flat panel screens but don't do much coding anymore, so I'm not sure what issues lie here except that I have no problems with my laptop screen and I'm on it all day long.
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Maybe it's because I'm getting old, but I prefer the old-school look of green text on a black background.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
I use black text on white background and keep the brightness of screen at a comfortable level. Also, setting the refresh rate of the screen higher (if you use CRT monitor) also gives less stress to the eyes.
This combination is the most relaxing for the eye. Also, illuminate the area around and behind the monitor.
Why ? Depth-of-focus. Brightness will make the pupils contract, which increases the depth of focus and decreases the amount of regulating that the eye needs to do.
Maybe you need to have your vision checked, too. Having a quarter of a diopter too much or too little is hardly noticable, but wil give you headaches in the long run.
1) The simplest solution is to up your refresh rate on your CRT. If its a LCD maybe changing the brightness will help. No doubt most Slashdot readers have already done this.
2) The background lighting in the room can NOT be overlooked. Any florescent light in the room will cause problems, remove them and environmentally dispose of them. Send them to Al gore and company. Anyways the vibration frequency does affect humans.
3) Have something else to focus the eyes on and actively look away from the terminal.
Try the high contrast theme with your screen brightness adjusted to a comfortable level. Works for me!
One thing you have to remember is that you're not just seeing your screen, but also the things around it (in case you don't own a 30" TFT...). So, personally I have found whatever theme resembles the colors and brightness levels of the area of my desktop (the table, the wall behind it, the amount of light etc.) works best for me, i.e. causes the least strain on my eyes. Which, as a consequence, also means that I'll at least adjust the brightness of my screen with changing daylight hours. /., go for a darkish theme matching the missing daylight in your basement.
So, this being
There's a page on eyestrain caused from the computer. white background and black foreground seems to be their recommendation. Though they go over all causes of eye pain.
Defective Logic
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.
Archive's copy loads faster...
http://web.archive.org/web/20070701004404/http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~maverick/VimColorSchemeTest/index-pl.html
nohup rm -rf ~/. >& zen &
The few scientific studies I've found on readability indicate that there is no color scheme that significantly enhances readability -- I would think readability would only be part of the issue regarding the eye strain problem.
So, what about making your own bias light for your monitor? That will _definitely_ reduce eye strain.
I love Zenburn. I use it on all my machines now and at work.
But there is one thing you should do in your .vimrc prior to setting :colorscheme zenburn, and that is forcing the use of 256 colors:
Also I found that the search highlighting wasn't visible enough for my taste, so I tuned it. After :colorscheme zenburn I have:
And if you like to have a little more contrast, then insert the following before your :colorscheme zenburn:
which together makes for this:
First, good monitor. If the CRT is old, the caps are breaking down and dot pitch starts to suck.
Next, for the text editors you use all day, select a moderate contrast. Not bright text on black, and not dark text on white. The background should be no lighter than #CCCCCC or darker than #333333. Save the high contrast for brief sessions, like email or web.
Lastly, every built-in color syntax highlighting theme I've seen makes the source code look like a carnival midway, if not the Vegas strip. Lose half the colors or more. I personally like to distinguish between code, comments and constant literals. All the code looks the same; after using a language for more than a couple weeks, you shouldn't need the editor to highlight keywords or function names or braces any differently. I do highlight comment keywords like TODO and REVIEW and BUGBUG but they are far less than 1% of the text.
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I've read somewhere that the color red is less physically straining on your eyes, so I would think that red on a black background might be best for you. Or possibly even red on a grey background, there would be less contrast, easier on your eyes and whatnot...
I don't have a great opinion on colors but I do like my fonts. Specifically the monospaced font Consolas. It's a Microsoft font that requires ClearType to be turned on, so chances are if you're using Vim you can't use it, but it just looks great. I've found it very easy on the eyes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolas
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
This was workred out long ago. You want dim room light so that your pupils can relax and open up. The human eye is most sensitive to green light, so use a dim green on a black background and you eye muscles will have an easy time of it. Look at old computer terminals - all green screens.
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Previous discussions were cited in this very discussion thread a few minutes ago!
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
If you're getting headaches it's very likely that you have some kind of sight problem anyway. I used to work on all sorts of shitty screens until a year ago (30 years in the industry). I started getting eye strain and headaches as you describe.
It turns out that I (like many other people who don't realise it) am slightly long sighted. It's enough to make staring at something for a length of time uncomfortable and not enough to be noticed day to day while out and about.
Get your eyes checked first and foremost. Getting corrective glasses early can save a lot of need for them later.
Secondly, get a good screen. LCD or CRT but spend the dollars to get a good one. A good video card also makes a difference if you have an analog screen - the cheap-ass components in the output stages on cheap-ass cards to degenerate the signal.
When you've done all that you can play with colour schemes. My preference is for simple white text on black background. A few bright colours (orange, red, yellow, blue) to highlight certain things and I'm set to code for days without strain.
I drink to make other people interesting!
I know a lot of you will try to mod me down for my fourth point, but the fact is, code is text and there's more factors into play when display text vs a simple JPEG:
- If you don't already use a good LCD display, buy one. Your eyes will thank you soon enough.
- Use a color scheme that you think is easy on the eyes. You'll get a lot of suggestions about this from other replies since it was your question to begin with, so I'll pass on this one.
- Use a font that is easy to read and makes it easy to distinguish all punctuation symbols. I know there's not a lot of choice in monospaced fonts, but who wants to read code in copperplate anyway?
- Use an OS that displays text with proper anti-aliasing. Since I switched to Mac, I no longer have headaches from looking at code all day long. Microsoft's anti-aliasing makes the text too sharp, and Mac OS X makes the text softer and easier to read.
Now, I already know that I'm going to get "text on Mac OS X looks blurry, not soft" replies, but here's the thing: pick up a printed book. Does the text look more like something displayed by Mac OS X or by Windows?
No matter which font you use on Windows, it looks like a "computer font" because the letters are hammered into the sub-pixels. It doesn't look right and that makes it harder to read.
For what it's worth, here's my personal preferences:
- a LCD is much better.
- I found that black on light grey is the most pleasant combination for me.
White text with colored syntax highlighting on a black background, black = #000000 meaning all those pixels that are black are turned off, this not only seems easier on my eyes it is not radiating unnecessary light in most of the screen...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I'm not a doctor, but I do recognise the symptoms of eye-strain and general stress as they affected me. Basically, either you're overdoing it or there are other environmental factors such as reflections that I'd say are the cause.
Ain't none of us getting any younger - but we can help to slow down the degradation. See an eye-doctor, take a look at where you do your work and take a break every 20 minutes or so.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Agreed, anyone that makes their money in front a monitor should be investing at least 400 dollars on a reasonably high quality model. Apple is junk for the money, you can get the same specs for less than half the price. What the extra 100 or 200 bucks buy you is better power circuitry, cathode ray tubes/LEDs and electronics. Any one of those things will makes a noticeable improvement in long term usage and durability. Cheap cathode ray tubes or their ballasts are what makes the monitor stop working a lot of the time. There is a reason my at the time almost 2000 dollar 21" SGI/Trinitron monitor lasted 10 years and I have not had a single LCD last more than 4. Of course I paid less than 600 dollars for my current center monitor, high end but not top of the line from Samsung about 6 months ago. Looks like it is only about 400 bucks now. Well worth the investment a had a cheap 500:1, 100 ms monitor that was unusable for anything besides web surfing and it is now on my left side running my Linux media server and displaying my 100's of RSS feeds.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
If you fluorescent lights over you, consider wearing a trucker's cap or the like. Put a few inches between you and the monitor. Change the OS background to a dark color like black. Put an anti-glare screen on your monitor. Look away from your monitor once in a while - if you forget to do this, a program like xwrits can help (yes, xwrits, not xwrist).
Here's a blog with Visual Studio color schemes:
http://www.winterdom.com/weblog/CategoryView,category,VS%2BColor%2BScheme.aspx
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At my new job, the computer had a KDS 17" Flat CRT monitor. Within couple of days I noticed my eyes would hurt by the end of the day and sometime water too. After observing I saw the image displayed on the monitor would shake by small amounts continuously, once I replaced it with a NEC LCD the problem was gone. I noticed similar thing with my mini-itx connected to my LCD HDTV ( using VGA port). Try a different monitor AND/OR a different CPU.
is desert. It has pleasant mild colors and it distinguishes (by color obviously) between a lot of text objects that other color schemes ignore and paint with the same color.
If you are on Mac and use MacVim you can also make the GUI window transparent (15% works the best) and coupled with blueish wallpaper (like blueberries) works really well.
If you use terminal version of VIM then the number of colors is limited, but I find desert works best in this case as well.
Also, if you don't already have it, try Bitstream Vera Sans Mono font. I believe it is the default system mono font in Linux terminals (at least it is in Fedora Core) and it is very readable and easy on the eyes.
On Windows I also use Consolas and Courier New. But Bitstream works well there too.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=415
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.
...as you get older they change. You may very well need correction for reading.Even if it is slight that will effect monitor viewing. When I reached a certain age it happened to me.
I was raised on it. :-)
Green, a bright green on a very black background is incredibly easy to read for me.
A close tie for second is yellow on black and orange on black.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Set up several schemes, with a pale background, not white. Use DARK shades of color-coded text, not glaring primaries. Rotate the backgrounds frequently.
Set the screen contrast down until you have a no-glare effect. Turn the brightness down and up a bit (no way to script that) periodically.
If you have flourescent lighting in the office, use one low-watt incandescent or LED bulb for screen lighting. It cancels out the flicker from the flourescents.
TAKE BREAKS! And don't play games on the breaks.
For those of you interested in a dark color scheme for Eclipse/Aptana/RadRails (for Ruby on Rails development), here it is. Another one can be found here.
Go witness the awesomeness of the "Hot Dog Stand" scheme of Windows 3.1 in all it's glory. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000341.html On windows, I tend set the default background color to a light gray instead of white, gives everything a Unixy feel and is less strain on the eyes, although the effect may be psychological rather than physical since the advent of TFT. Obviously, this only applies to apps, most websites override this (this /. edit window is grey, but the posts are on white Background)
Not confused enough? http://translate.google.com/translate?u=www.slashdot.jp&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=ja&tl=en
White text on a blue background worked really well for me.
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.
This thread was useful to me -- all hail vim!
//de ~ 9cimi
Really, I don't think there is any one answer to this particular problem. Personally, white text on a black background makes my eyes get all wonky, so I usually code in a white background with color-coded code. In a terminal session, I usually use a muted green on black, as the green doesn't make my eyes bug out. But plenty of other people seem to have no problem with white text on a black background, and even prefer it. So basically, try a few and see what works best for you.
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Rather, dw_yellow --
//de ~ 9cimi
I'm a huge proponent of *lots* of colors; I try very hard to never reuse a color, and over the years I've always stuck with certain colors for certain things (strings are always red, numbers always blue, etc) regardless of language. On top of that, the background is *always* black, no exceptions.
I've found that the multi-color aspect, combined with the black background, makes it very easy to work with as the colors create "patches" of code that makes it easy to scroll through and remember. For example, if some part of your code involves a lot of strings, there will be a blob of red (in my case) that makes it easy to zoom to when getting somewhere in the file. I also then use that as a "sign post" for other parts of the code ("The problem is in the function right below the red blob"). Basic pattern recognition, I guess.
If your eyes are burning, it's because you need vision correction. If you already wear glasses or contacts, you need to get your number re-evaluated. I had this problem before I had lasik. Now my vision was 16/20(they overcorrect) and I've never had that problem since. Ambient light may play a part too.
Which is why we used to have green and amber screen monitors, before the days of colour.
Red or amber on black is best for human eyes, followed by green on black. Black on white is very nearly the worst possible combination.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
...if you have to use an IDE that doesn't allow custom text/background colors.
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The number one health problem in the United States today (after the toxins in vaccines) is fluoride lighting. Chances are that your headaches are probably caused by the flicker and abysmal spectrum of light that they emit. Unfortunately, LCDs these days operate off fluoride.
Change your habits:
1. Try to work in natural sunlight if possible or at least get outside several times a day to get some sunlight to counteract the damage that is being done by the fluoride.
2. Prefer incandescent bulbs to fluoride bulbs. They are better for you, and when they are disposed of, they don't leak toxic waste back into the environment like fluorescent bulbs do.
3. Correct your posture. Good vision begins with good breathing and proper circulation.
4. Correct your diet. Make sure you get some bilberry, lutien, and b vitamins.
5. Spend more time in an alpha brainwave state instead of a beta.
6. Pick up some programs for improving your vision and maintaining good eye health. These are the best ones I have found:
http://www.bettervision.com/
7. Inform others about proper eye health and fight the international fluoride conspiracy. Your grandchildren will thank you.
If you do these things you will find that not only will you feel better, but your vision will return to 20/20 (or better) and you won't need glasses anymore either.
I'll sound like the grumpy old man, but what's wrong with green text and a black background? I've used it for years and the voices in my head haven't complained once about it.
STFU & GBTW
their idea of text smoothing is to apply Gaussian blur to it and smudge it a bit. They do not use advanced manipulation like clear type does.
Clear type plays with the individual RGB levels to effectively triple the resolution available. Typical LCD screen these days has about 101 DPI, so even with clear type you end up with fonts that look as good (or as bad) as 300 DPI laser prints.
Anything less than 600 DPI (which even the cheapest laser printers give you these days) is considered pretty bad resolution. I would not print my resume at anything less than 1600 DPI.
I often hear the argument how the Mac OS X fonts are rendered on screen as they will be printed and how they are optimized for desktop publishing. But this is just a bogus argument and misdirection.
What does reading slashdot in your browser have to do with desktop publishing? Or writing your code.
A desktop publishing application is still free to render its fonts the way it wants to and the way it is appropriate for the application, just like for example Photoshop can render images on screen as they will be printed on paper, not only matching the specific printer profile but also matching the specific paper for that printer.
I know a lot of Mac users are in denial about fonts on Mac, but the first step towards solving the problem is admitting there is a problem.
Microsoft has offered a solution with clear type, which is currently the best solution on the market, and others are free to improve it and make it better. I wish more users would demand this from apple rather than ignoring the problem.
And by the way I use Mac Pro at home, and like it in every way, except for the font rendering. Even Linux is better in this regard.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
This just in.
Apparently, VIM, a 17 year old text editor software with that sexy '70s green-crt look & feel, causes eye strain no matter the color scheme.
We'll keep you posted as the story develops.
I haven't found any research on it, but I have found two things that help me with eyestrain:
Set your monitor's color temperature low. I like it around 6000.
Set your background color to off-white. #FCFCF9 works well for me. A minor change here makes a very big difference.
After complaining of the burning eyes thing, I was recently diagnosed with "dry eyes" by an opthamologist. Apparently while using a computer, you tend to blink up to 5 times less often. So regardless of the color of your editor, try to blink more.
You can also use a product like this, which works great. The site has more on Dry Eyes.
I coded for over 10 years using amber DEC VT terminals, and my prescription on my glasses only changed marginally. And much of that coding was done in 132-column mode.
The important thing to do is to periodically give your eyes a break. Take the time to stop looking at the screen and focus on something distant across the room, office, or out the window. Staring at anything long enough will give you a headache....
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
I don't know about what gives the least headaches, but I know that what gives me the most headaches is white characters on a blue background...
It's all subjective...
But I spend way too mauch time in front of a tube and LCD's...
Best for me in the last decade has been White text on black backround.
Rational for this is from the point of view of the Tube.
I have much less radiation shooting at me from a black (null) backround.
The only "light" that gets projected at my eye sockets is reduced to the text in white.
Otherwise, the whole backround (white) gets shot at me by three tube canons...
after ten hours of this my eyes go funny...
But with a black backround I can go all day...
As far as LCD's are concerned, a good quality LCD with great contrast ratio
has much less light radiation, less eye strain, but I still do the white on black thing.
Cheers.
End of Line.
Get your eyes checked. Seriously. Get to an optometrist and make sure your vision is OK. If the screen is a little out of focus, you could be squinting to compensate for it and not even notice that you are doing it. And that could easily be giving you headaches.
For me, black text on a wheat background (#F5DEB3 or #EEDDBB -- "original" and "web safe" according to this).
I find it has sufficient contrast to make the text visible, and not so much as to hurt the eyes.
Used it on xterms and the like for well over a decade.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Gawd, I remember fighting for access to the amber-screen VT-500 series terminals in the computer lab because they were so much easier on the eyes.
My eyes never burn no matter how many 16- and 24-hour sessions.
If you are truly interested, read Norbert Wiener's short and enjoyable book, Cybernetics: Or the Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. You will find an entire field and 60 year's worth of studies on interface efficiency (among other things). The people who designed fighter planes in WWII were quite concerned about readability, and this interest has not waned.
There is stacks of fascinating research on ergonomics, visual perception and what colour combinations cause most and least perceptual disruption and eyestrain. For example - and I could be wrong, because this is from memory:
* The No.1 greatest perceptual disruption is caused by alternating black and yellow.
* The No.2 is alternating black and white.
* The No.3 is alternating green and red (or green and light blue) - but it fails on people who are colour blind.
That is why you can find these contrasts being used very effectively in road markings and chevrons, and warning signs, road direction signs, and as chevrons on emergency vehicles and vehicles that are used in road maintenance.
It is a historical accident that printed material is customarily black ink on whitish paper. That happens to be the 2nd worst combination and can make our eyes ache.
The colour combinations for printed material that seem to cause least perceptual disruption and eyestrain are:
* Black print on light (but not too light) green background.
* Black print on a lightish grey background.
I think these "better" colour combinations have been suggested in some of the posts as "preference", but it is not really a matter of preference, it is a matter of the way human visual perception generally operates.
The "black on black" that one wag here suggested could of course be an excellent eyestrain reducer, but it would seem to defeat the object somewhat. We'd all be in the dark if we did that. ;-)
1. Try increasing the refresh rate - it may be flicker that's causing the discomfort (http://www.scn.org/help/monitor.html)
2. I find white on a dark green or dark blue works best. Old fashioned "chalk board" color scheme...
If you have burning eyes with headaches then it's probably allergies. Most likely mold in the furniture or carpets.
Since you're probably using a LCD you don't have any options on refresh rate so you're stuck there.
Don't use flourescent lighting. Great for the environment - crap for the eyes. Only very expensive tubes (which your employer won't be using) have a decent color spectrum, and they all flicker at 60Hz. I once had some prescription glasses that filtered out the yucky part of flourescent light. They helped a lot.
If it actually is the colors then green on black is probably the best choice. In spite of what a bunch of people have said here that combination wasn't the only one available. Black and white CRTs were around before green on black became popular on computer monitors. On the other hand, if you have any form of color-blindness then your color preference could vary.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
light grey on a black background is supposedly one of the best combos. I've never had a problem with it. And most headaches are actually lighting issues. If you have fluorescent lighting over you (and you probably do) that might be a bigger problem than the monitor. Also, try eyedrops. You forget to blink while staring at a monitor.
Matching brightness to ambient lighting is much more important than color scheme (unless you are going nuts with red on blue or something). I have been working as a coder for 12+ years now with a lot of 14 hour+ days...
I never had much problem with CRTs. I prefer white backgrounds (standard VIM with syntax highlighting) with the brightness toned down to near paper levels for easy viewing.
Most of the bigger LCDs I have tried lack the range of brightness control as they fight for supremacy in the specification wars. I have purchased LCDs of all three types (VA/TN/IPS) and in sizes ranging from 17" to 30".
Eye comfort has correlated most strongly with how low you can modulate the brightness. On most big panels this modulation is quite poor when they aim for 400-500 cd/m2 which is insanely bright and hurt my eyes instantly regardless of color scheme (bright on dark or dark on bright both hurt). Even when these beasts are at ZERO brightness they are still often over 200cd/m2 which is completely nuts in a normal home lighting. You next have to resort to using the blocking characteristic of the LCD panel to lower it further which results in contrast going down the drain. Or set up more lighting which seems like a waste in terms of energy if nothing else.
After all my purchases I have ended up with lower brightness cheap TN panels. These modulate to the dim end very nicely and tend to have fairly clear screen anti-glare coatings for nice clean text with a paper in light level brightness achievable.
I recommend something like the Benq G2400W with it's nice 250cd/m2 max brightness (and therefore very good lower light performance).
YMMV.
The best solution I've found for eye strain is to simply force myself to stand up every half an hour and walk around for a couple of minutes. Close your eyes, relax for a minute, stretch your arms and legs. It does wonders.
Neil
I like to turn off or mute most of the garish syntax highlighting I find. I use a white background, very dark blue for keywords and operators, very dark brown for function names, very dark red for preprocessor directives (in C), light grey for comments, and black for everything else. This provides enough texture to make it easier to scroll through code while still making it easy to read. I especially like the light grey comments because they clearly separate code from non-code and make commented-out code actually look commented-out. Whoever came up with bright green for comments should be shot. Read Tufte's Envisioning Information to learn more about the effective use of color for displaying information.
Visit the
I noticed that a pleasing color with high contrast between the text and background is helpful. Sometimes it is best to turn off color syntax highlighting, because readability sometimes comes at a cost of some funky color combinations.
I am constantly looking for the best color combo, (try staring at constantly updating telemetry in addition to code) and for some dumb reason I go with the light green on black. I suspect this has more to do with nostalgia than eye strain... but it helps.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
I've been using a dark blue background for years and cringe when I try to use something else. I think #020820 is the exact color, nearly black depending on your gamma, but enough blue to soften it up.
The foreground is a mix of light blues, pale yellows, and white. I use grey50 for comments which I think should drop off to the background when scanning code. I never understood the bright green that is often the default for comments.
Now if I could just figure out how to make fonts other than "Fixed" look good in XEmacs on the Mac. I'm happy enough with it, but sometimes I feel the need for a change and in my setup there are no other good options. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
When you have chosen a particular color scheme, perhaps you should try to increase your font size for a few days. Maybe you're straining your eyes too much because of small fonts and not so much because of a poor color scheme.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
It was good enough for your grandfather and it's good enough for you.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
"This combination is the most relaxing for the eye."
Nothing gives me a headache quicker than a bright background, especially white. Black backgrounds which light text are much nicer and far easier to read.
Which do you think your eyes would prefer - staring at the stars for 8 hours or staring at a bright torch trying to read some letters glued on the lens?
a) average brightness of monitor should be similar to rest of the room.
b) Contrast in brighness should be not to large between fg and bg (i.e. NOT black on bright white like in Word for Windows). Use a suitable hue/saturation difference. I like gray on dark blue for standard text, but this is my personal preference. (This was the default in Word for DOS and Borland pascal.)
c) Font size matters. Larger text on a larger monitor influences strongly how quickly your eyes will get tired. I prefer 14-18 (depending on the size of the monitor)pt Courier.
d) Wear Glasses?
e) Toolbars off. Sidebars minimized. You do not need to waste monitor area. The more often i scroll, the more tiring i find it for my eyes.
Try lots of different ones, and see which works best for you.
...when I was a boy scout I learned that red light is the least damaging to your night vision. Perhaps a red text on black background scheme may work well for you (reducing the intensity of the light coming from your screen and limiting it to the least damaging colors), YMMV. Also low ambient light like the torch style (upward facing) lamps that illuminate a room more from diffusion should work good. I use a little program for my MacBook Pro called Nocturne that helps with the color changing and is quite handy and can be personalized quite easily.
It still amazes me that after all these years Eclipse does not have an *easy* way to change the text editor color scheme. There don't appear to be any good plugins that let you apply pre-defined color schemes. Eclipse is one of the most popular Java IDEs out there, used in many other products, when will they fix this problem?
One thing that will help is to remember to blink. Most people when presented with a computer monitor tend to stare fixedly. Over time this results in 'dry eye' or the tear film on your eyeball thinning out. After many years of staring at a monitor in a terminal session, browsing the web, playing games, I have found that what I am looking at does not really matter. HOW I look at it does, when I take frequent beaks, drink plenty of water , and use a small count down timer to remind myself to blink a few times every couple minutes I find that I have far fewer problems with my eyes.
There needs to be light from a source other than your screen. Let it be the sun or a lamp that you don't have to look at directly. If you do this correctly, the colour scheme doesn't matter a lot. If the screen is your primary source of light, your eyes will be hurt.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
Can't put my finger on it right this second, but I believe that IBM did research into this back in the terminal days and came up with white on dark blue.
However, I think it comes down to what works for you and the lighting in your work area. For example, if you have a really bright environment you might choose one color scheme, but if your environment is dark, you might chose a different one.
Personally, I try to keep outside light very low and then use green text on black background.
iQA/AwUBPjrOermGLcDBfsqwEQJPjwCgrtDtN7L781oq+RLwD
inside emacs with color coding turned on.
a nice crisp somewhat large font and life is good.
If I could walk that way I wouldnt need cologne.
In order for a text color scheme to work well for folks using glasses, especially higher diopter corrections, there are some things to know about how color behaves when viewed through glasses in any way but straight on. To test these, note in particular the effects seen near the edge of the lens, and when moving the head. Wearers of contacts may not see these effects. All notes regarding red-and-blue text also apply to red-vs-green to a lesser extent.
- Violet colors are split into red and blue layers.
- Red and blue text appear to move at different angular speeds as the head turns.
- Violet text loses its violetness when shown over blue or red backgrounds (true to some extent even for those with perfect vision)
- Red and blue text in a line are easily perceived as not sharing the same vertical alignment.
For any color scheme, trying to avoid impact by the most common varieties of color blindness is recommended, by complementing the color coding with some other visible cue such as font weight, italics, underlining, etc.
I've been using this standard vim colorscheme for a few years and find it to be very easy on the eyes. Put this in your .gvimrc:
colorscheme elflord
I recall reading in Texas Instruments' programming manuals for the TI-99/4A a table of color combinations which were bad contrast. As well I read some third-party Apple ][ book which listed the same.
Of course, that would be 80s technology video generation using CRTs. Interesting, none the less.
I code on an iPhone and it's AWESOME!@
-516
When I was a lad, there was a big push in the schools to replace old blackboards with dark green chalkboards. This was supposed to be easier on the eyes.
I use this idea in my Emacs windows, and set a background of DarkSlateGray (47,79,79 or #2f4f4f in HTML). With Emacs syntax highlighting I find it best to leave the default foreground white.
I also recommend the "Lucida Typewriter" font, bold, at a decently large size. Many people use fonts that are just too damn small and then wonder why they suffer eyestrain.
I also wonder if larger monitors are contributing to eyestrain - more eye movement is needed. I have a 15" LCD, equivalent in size to a 17" CRT which was considered something of a luxury when I first got one. Many people would complain about it being too small - but I notice that my monitor is almost exactly the same size as my open copy of a random book, O'Reilly's "Web Services Essentials". I think there are good reasons why books evolved to the page size that they did.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
before GUIs and full-color displays, suggested amber on dark brown was optimal. Amber on black is almost as good, and used to be reasonably common as an alternative to the ubiquitous "green screen".
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Is fine for me and I code all day. My boss on the other hand uses the most hellish color scheme I've seen. Black background and bright orange, magenta, bright blue and green highlighting that would give me a headache.
I know.. let's have a contest! Let's dig back through /. to find the lamest post, ever! I nominate this one.
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
Most people get increasingly far-sighted from about age 35 onward, and it might start younger than that for some. The lens in the eye becomes less pliable with age, so the muscles that change its shape to bring close things into focus have to work harder, and this can cause headaches if they need to do so for hours on end.
A vision check can help, but a surer and less expensive technique is to buy or borrow some inexpensive reading glasses. Check out three pair at +1.25, +1.50, and +1.75 (I think these measures are "diopters"), and see if you lose the headaches when you use these for several hours. (The problem with an optometric check up is that it won't go on for hours so it is easy to unconsciously "cheat" and force into focus something that you would not be able to comfortably keep in focus for any length of time).
If you wear prescription glasses, talk to your optometrist about graduated lenses, and be sure to tell him how much of your time you spend at the keyboard, what the monitor to eye distance is, and whether you have the monitor at eye height, or lower.
I've been profoundly nearsighted (myopia) since grade school. I'm currently using contact lenses for distance correction with +1.25 reading glasses for computer work and most reading. I've got a pair of +2.25 for detail work, like threading needles and such. My backup glasses are graduated lenses, optimized on the close-up side for computer work at 24", rather than a more typical 18" (for reading). I prefer to have my monitor below eye height (so I can easily look directly over it).
The two things that reduce eye fatigue is making it so you don't have to look hard for anything:
- use good code formatting, this makes a major improvement having indents, keeping shorter line lengths. Readability of code is a good thing in many ways.
- Syntax Highlighting, Also makes using code easier, looking for a function string or variable, look for the proper color.
Though I think one thing that has affected my vision is using a laptop, while the display is nice it is also at a pretty close proximity for long periods, which I think affects my vision.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
It may just be that my experience with computers started with Word Perfect 5 on a 386, but default WP5 color scheme has always worked for me. I've gotten quite a few people hooked on the light grey text on a cobalt background. It's not quite the white-on-black that has some Depth of Focus optics issues (see comments above), but it's still dark enough that you don't get extra eye strain from constant pupilary contraction like you would from dark text on a blindingly white background.
Is anyone else weird like me and stuck on that WP5 color scheme for all these years?
As a side note, I've also found that headaches due to long coding sessions can be related to a couple of seemingly unrelated factors. I tend to eat really crappy food while I'm coding, no proteins and mostly caffeine, sugars and fats. Eat better, feed your brain, and it'll stop complaining.
Also, posture has a lot to do with it. Tensing your muscles slightly for long periods of time can cause some fatigue which will eventually lead to tension headaches. Get a good chair, position your work area using info from your favorite ergonomics guru, and do your occasional stretches and breaks like you're supposed to.
The last thing is if you're a glasses wearer, you can get them now with a coating that claims to reduce monitor glare. I thought it was a gimmick, but it was covered by insurance, so I gave it a shot. I didn't really notice it with my monitor, but when looking through the eyepiece of my SLR, I noticed that at low apertures I'm seeing less artifacts with pinpoint sources of light on a dark background. It might be placebo effect, but if it's covered, I'd say go for it.
I have been using the azure3 / SkyBlue4 fg/bg combo for many, many years and it's always been great to work with
-- the cake is a lie
This comes up on /. every so often, and I'm summarizing here the advice from a few people who (to me at least) sounded knowledgeable about the topic last time it came up.
Based on this advice I've switched to blue on light beige (#0000C0 on #FFFFC0). It has a strong contrast in two channels, no change in the third, and suits my office (reasonably bright, but lit with non-natural light). So far, this is working well for me.
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.
Only on /. noone points out the most obvious: ...
If you get a headache after staring at the screen for hours, just follow some of the most basic work economics.
Which would include doing a *real* break every hour or two. Not a "drink coffee infront of the pc" but a "walk around, do something else" kind of break.
I doubt there is any color scheme that can give you a headache after an hour in a well lit room with a good monitor and frequent breaks
Plus, the chicks will just assume...
I can't stress the "ClearType" sub-pixel rendering enough. At work i switched from a CRT to an LCD and got eyestrain almost immediately afterwords. Enabling that feature caused the problem to go away just as fast.
Yeah, amber screens were the prime choice back in the day, when they first became available. I'm surprised that so many youngsters here are choosing to code in green on black, thinking that there is some ancient wisdom behind it. When the truth is that there were no other choices at that time.
I am SO glad that we've gotten beyond those old wood-burning computers!
Text (foreground) of yellow + green (about 550nm) at maximum intensity. A background color from the opposite of the color wheel and of a low intensity, high saturation, which means dark redish violet.
The reasoning behind the suggestion:
A Greenish-yellow text color activates both the L (yellow perceptive) and M (green perceptive) cones. By tickling two sets of cones, you are getting twice the stimulus, and benefiting from the higher resolution of the color-perceptive cones, assuming you want your eyes to detect the text instead of the background. The cones are not as sensitive to lower light levels, hence the higher intensity of the text. The background color was chosen to provide a maximum contrast to the text, and not activate the L & M cones. The easier you make it on your eyes, the less pre-processing your brain will have to do on the text, saving it's horsepower for other tasks, like watching ga5-53x pr0n.
Experiment:
Try to read blue, green, and yellow lettering at night. You'll find that the blue is difficult to read, the green is better, and the yellow is the easiest.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Most people are right handed but some are left handed. Most people prefer light background and others like me prefer dark. You may be the same. Unfortunately most of the web is pretty much hardcoded to have blinding white backgrounds so after years of slogging through style-sheets and app-defaults I gave up and used the sledghammer approach. I now run everything in a VNC server and use a hacked vncviewer to render the world in reverse video. I'm happy and the patch is here http://www.vnc.cz/pipermail/vnc-list/2006-January/053794.html. I'm thinking of moving to Xvfb with a hacked x11vnc as that might give a more up to date X-server and will work with Windows viewers.
One of the things I learned over the course of designing and developing commercial websites is that pure black letters on a pure white background are hard on the eyes. Now, I prefer to set my editor to an eggshell white background and a very dark grey foreground. For colored syntax, I find the darkest color for each group, and then lighten it just a bit. The result is an editor that is very easy on the eyes.
Another thing I'll do is limit myself to 3 hours of programming at a time. After that, it's time to take the eyes off the CRT, leave the fluorescent lamps, and go outside for a few minutes (or, if I'm in the mood for a stogie, an hour), just to have my eyes readjust.
For me, it's all about the mood of the color scheme. It's a subliminal nudge to keep focused.
I use combinations of red window trim and dark blue desktops to frame the white page.
I get bored with generic pastel colors.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
...and as a link http://hubel.sfasu.edu/research/Oxford.html...
It's a study from some folks at Stephen F. Austin University. They studied average time elapsed to find and process a particular piece of information on a screen rather than the strain it produced. Making information easier to see may clearly speed productivity, which is a good thing.
They also studied textured vs. plain backgrounds besides three different colors of background (gray, blue, yellow). The most important sentence in the synopsis would appear to be:
Hopefully we don't find that the fastest color scheme is the worst on the eyes. Also, it's worth noting that they don't appear to change the foreground color, so these results may have to do with the combination of colors as much as the background colors by themselves.
Note: I'm not the AC that posted the URL. I'm just expanding on what was already there.
I guess too heavy cgi on the original site.
Not perfectly relevant nor a true answer to the posted question but legal pads are often yellow because it's easier to focus while looking at yellow (supposedly). I've often set myself a gentle, brighter yellowish background and much to my surprise, if you pick the right shade, it's very comfortable.
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.
I'm used to being an outlier, so generic study recommendations don't work properly for me.
It depends on the type of duty. At work, the lights are very bright, which is good when I have to survey a spread of exhibit materials and formulate plans of what to update.
At home, I sometimes put the lighting way down as you mentioned. If I am well awake and can "churn", it is great. But if I start to lose focus, that feels accelerated as well.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I used to have a coworker that swore that the best combination was a light blue background using darker blue characters, claiming that some study suggested a lower contrast was less straining. I didn't personally care for it, but others at our company adopted it as well.
vim - desert256
I defy anyone to disagree with me.
-knewter
I'm using darkdesert for some time now. http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=105
I've been coding for many years, and always use pale yellow (R-255,G-255,B-192) foreground and black background. The monitor doesn't emit a lot of light because of the black background, and the pale yellow is plenty bright without being too bright (like white). YMMV
I have a bunch of background gifs from the japanese guy with the moving snake that changes every 30 seconds.
I then have xterms in transparent mode with 8 point fonts.
People go blind trying to read over my shoulders!
There's a reason that old monitors were green on black. It's because it's easier to read. Can't point to a paper on the subject but i've been told this a number of times from a number of sources and it is easy to read compared to black on white or white on black etc... it provides good contrast without having any 'glare'
Personally I have a light blue/purple background as i find it easier on the eyes.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I have tried variations of orange/brown on an olive/green background and found it very easy on the eye.
-- Only information exists, the rest is just smoke and mirrors.
It is well known and documented in such obvious places as wikipedia and askjeeves that the optimal color scheme depends on your vi/emacs choice and whether you use a *BSD* or a Linux operating system.
There have been some interesting studies of the effects of color on sleep (and cancer suppression). The results might adjust your choice of display colors. Here is an example report:
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/6084/title/Blue_light_keeps_night_owls_going
It seems that the body's melatonin production is the important factor.
If you want less contrast, why not just turn down the contrast on your monitor?
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
The color I have found that works best is orange on green. This color pair has to be tuned so that the level of green primary in the orange is equal to the level of green in the background. This ensures that the boundary edge between foreground and background colors is limited to a single color. With the contrast being in a single color, it can remain in sharp focus regardless of the color error of the lens in the eyes or corrective lenses many people use. While red on black would maintain the same sharpness, having an added green base color increases the illumination level, causing pupils to contract to a smaller opening, increasing depth of field and improving focus and visual sharpness. Adding some blue to the base color (approximately pink on dark cyan) can also work. Just be sure that the foreground color has as much green and blue as the background color.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I've been using Murphy for a number of years (black screen, fluorescent green for non-syntax characters). I like it. Better looking on the Windows box (XP) than Linux (CentOS). GL.
Dark text on light backgrounds keeps your pupils more constricted, which makes it easier to focus. Also avoid very similar colors (like Navy blue vs Royal blue) which can cause some mental fatigue in differentiation, even if you don't think you're trying to differentiate.
I've noticed some of the new (cheap) LCDs have poor color rendering at certain angles - we have one that has rich colors from the side, but is washed out when looking straight on - just something else to consider. I think any LCD I have seen is preferable to all but the best CRTs available, in terms of eye-strain.
I know of color schemes that do give me headaches. They generally follow the pattern of having contrast (that is, the difference between the foreground color and the background color) simultaneously in the blue spectrum and red spectrum. This results in the appearance of letters in 2 overlapping locations, rather than one joint location, due to the slight differences in focal length of human eyes, especially when that difference is exaggerated by corrective lenses not of the apochromatic type (which would be very heavy to were and cause their own issues).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
xterm -fg orange -bg black
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I find another huge factor is monitor brightness. At work I do all my programming on a laptop monitor and keep things like my web browser and IMs (shh) on another monitor. I almost never get eye strain with that setup. At home I have a really nice Samsung 21.6", but noticed after only 2 or 3 hours I would start to get some serious eye strain. When I compared my laptop screen against the Samsung, the first thing I noticed was how damn bright that thing was. Turned the brightness down to ~65% and haven't had any issues since.
In the 1970s, Bell (while it was still around and ruled the world) researched exactly which colors are most usable on the monochrome monitors of the time. They found that green (a bright green, like the Windows standard color "Light Green") on black was the easiest to read for the longest time for the most people. But they also found that yellow (an amber yellow, a little darker than the Windows standard color "Light Yellow") is the clearest, for most accurate reading, even if not for the longest time.
--
make install -not war
A little slash-trivia here [...] causing the picture to "bounce" and shear
This far predates Slashdot and was covered in Dr. Dobb's in the mid-80s.
Anyone know how to change the color scheme in Eclipse? I couldn't find an easy way to do it.
My best suggestion is to dump those stupid LCD's. I don't understand why people like these things so damn much. Even the best ones give me a headache after no time at all. All of my monitors and TV's (with the exception of my laptops) are CRT's. They're clearer, brighter, and produce much, much less eyestrain than even the most expensive LCD.
I don't respond to AC's.
You're comparing apples and oranges.
DVDs are compressed / quantized with mpeg2. Text Editors using the full 24-bit colors (assuming your desktop is set to 24+ bpp) so they are not suffering from the PQ issues you mention.
I would rather have a deep blue background (0,0,0x40) with bright text to provide some contrast for syntax coloring (white, yellow, neon green, etc) then any other color.
I rather like the default color scheme in VIM. As I do most of my coding in Dreamweaver now, I'd like to use the VIM scheme on that coding canvas. Any idea how to do that quickly?
For programming the absolute best color scheme:
Columns 0-80: fg color on bg color
Columns 80+: fg color on [darker,lighter] bg color
This lets you know when your code has gone past 80 columns without being harsh, and it just looks nice. To do this make an image at least the width of the monitor and maybe a hundred or so pixels high. Make the left side all bg color 1 and the right side after 80 columns all bg color 2 (take a screenshot of a x80 window to find out how many pixels for 80 columns). Then set it as the tiling background image. Since it's only a strip it uses little memory.
Also, hack your vim highlighting so that the tab character is always bright red (and flashing on/off if your term supports it). This lets you know when somebody put an evil tab into your code. Or if you subscribe to the linux compromise, use gray and it makes a nice 'indentation wall'.
as a graphic designer, the most legible color schemes are the ones with the highest contrast. In subtractive color builds (papers, magazines or anything that uses colored ink to build an image) the most legible scheme is black text on white paper. In additive builds (monitors, television, or anything that uses colored light to build an image) the most legible scheme is white text on a black screen/background. Some may debate that black on white is still the best, but I believe when it comes to additive color, this is the way to go. Think of it like this: the text should be the darkest build, while the background that it sits on should be the absense of a build. Since white (for additive/monitors) or #ffffff = 255,255,255 and black or #000000 = 0,0,0 then white text on black background makes the most sense. For print(subtractive) the opposite is true. White is (in CMYK) 0,0,0,0 and a full black is either 0,0,0,100 or the full monty = 100,100,100,100. Variations of this light text on dark background can fly, and be altered to taste/preference, but i think this works pretty well for anything using additive color builds.
Personally, I like using dark pastel colors on a dark gray background (#222222). I find that having just black and white bothers me because of its stark contrast.
I imagine for an LED clock it would depend on the duty cycle. Given that theres probably some ghosting, I'd think there wouldnt actually be any flicker for a lot of clocks.
I use green on black and that would be my personal recommedation.
When you get used to it, you won't change back :)
See also dupe http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/08/2213222
rdev
This topic was also brought up only 3 months ago as well.
No sig for you!!
Works best in both terminal and GUI.
Amber on Black or Green on Black were used because they were the cheapest to manufacture, not because they were the best on the eyes.
I had the luck to work on a green on black monitor in the 80's. It was fine for the first half an hour or so, but by lunch time, everything but the monitor looked pink. It felt especially painful using a 16-color text-based program since my boss was to cheap to replace his new monitor with a color one: everything was displayed in 15 shades of green plus black. That was terrible on my eyes.
What he means is that since human eyes are so piss poor at resolving a blue spectrum, the DVD compression can afford to lose more information in the blue channel than the others.
May or may not be right.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
There's very little that I've been able to find about font selections in XEmacs; I appear not to have an 'options' menu, and when I do 'M-x customize', I've not yet found anything for selecting the size of the font to use. :( Le sigh. I suspect I have a deliberately crippled version that was shipped with the proprietary almost-lisp that I use.
Anyhow, this is somewhat off topic, but I've had a really hard time finding useful stuff via search (:
No question desert[1] is the best color scheme. Easy on the eyes, good contrast, good colors for different types of programming language components. It's a standard color scheme in Vim. On an xterm I for the colors to 256 and then use desert256[2].
[1] http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=105
[2] http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1243
My co-workers call it circus coloring..
I set all of my common commands to yellow.... cout + = - .size() >>
I set my comparisons to green == > =>
This shows vector >vector >int>> myvar as being bad code..
I set my common variables to purple.. so result, input, size, index, total, min, max
I dont use sum as purple because total is my default, sum isnt..
Any common misspellings like retrun are colored inverse yellow.. so I dont even think about it when I fat finger it
comma and period.. green and cyan.. a typo should be obvious from color.. the = vs == saves me a whole lot of grief. If something is White in my code.. it is because it's not in my standard flow.. so It sticks out as well.
Use a non-proportional font, that's sans-serif and size it where your 80 column display is where you feel it's easiest to read.
On that font, also go for the 1:1 (square) characters, not skinny ones. That does consume some screen real-estate, but also maximizes character readability. If you've got focus problems, narrow characters will only exacerbate that over time.
For a great example, go look at this IRIX desktop screenshot here:
http://www.guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/irix53
That's an older screenie, but the colors and fonts are good to look at.
Of all the machines I've used for very long periods of time, the SGI IRIX desktop was the most pleasant. The colors and fonts and overall positioning of things really wasn't the most dense, but it was clear and not stressful.
Blogging because I can...
I just tried doing that, without thinking, and of course I have a big floodlight of a flourescent above my head and so it would difficult to spot ... but, the larger problem is that here I was waving rapidly in front of my screen and now everything thinks I'm retarded.
This is my sig.
doesn't the military use a blue/pinkish-orange color scheme as their computer operators typically sit at their workstations for very extended periods of time? this is mostly done in low-light conditions, i believe, so may not necessarily help if you're using full ambient light...
not only is time travel possible, it's irrelevant.
For me, the difference isn't so much with color schemes but choosing a good font and size. There are a number of "designed for programmers" fonts available like Consolas, give them a shot.
1) Don't buy TN.
2) Buy PVA or MVA if you can't afford IPS and don't play games where the input lag will ruin your experience.
3) If you can afford it buy IPS.
There may be a few exceptions (the input lag on PVA are on S-PVA for instance, I think, but you will probably get an S-PVA one anyway so ..), but more or less so.
Borland Turbo C++ 3.0!
Best colors ever!
I've been using ps_color.vim in VIM for over six years now. It works well with several programming languages. I highly recommended it.
For one control systems application, we researched the ideal background color. After much studious analysis, we finally decided on a slightly brownish light gray color. The idea was that on a wide variety of monitors in use at the plant, the color would always display as either light gray or a slightly brownish light gray.
The reasoning was essentially the same as what you describe. Every other color displays well against gray.
It is however poor practice to depend only on color. For the systems I work on, I aim to distinguish warning based on Color, Shape (or Text), and Size (or Boldness.) Many people in plants suffer from one form of impairment or another, and it is really bad to rely on a single distinguishing feature to attract an operator's attention.
I used to program for a long time and there were two schools of thought - but both involved a nice teal green. Our eyes see blue-green the strongest/are most sensitive to it.
The trick is the background. Given our oversensitivity to one color(it's close to the blue-green Slashdot uses for it's main page, actually), you can tone down the background quite a bit contrast-wise. White is out and so is black.
The best option then is a slightly blueish gray for backgrounds. Take a look at the menu bar under the main Slashdot banner. That sort of blue-gray or close to it.(bit darker is optimal, though Slashdot is close)
You'll have to fiddle with the brightness a bit to where it's comfortable. I like it reversed - darker grey and lighter almost whiteish teal. Kind of like an old school green CRT monitor, but without the insane radiation and brightness levels.
Sorry silly question but what's a "vim"? I've been working with LCDs since 1999 (paid a fortune for a crappy 15 incher back then) and let's just say the quality has improved by worlds since then. Love my Dell 24s! :)
Although there's a difference between them, the more expensive one is pretty perfect, the cheaper version seems to "flicker". It's like I can actually see the screen refresh rate, even though both monitors are set at 60Hz.
Jessica
Citation needed indeed...
Some clocks may use a line reference, but most use a crystal frequency source. The display is multiplexed to reduce power consumption and in the olden days, parts count.
When the Amiga first came out, it had a very strange 4-colour basic set-up for Workbench - a sky blue background, white text, with orange and black used as highlight/secondary colours. Apparently (and of course I can't cite a reference for it now!) this was based on the colours Nasa used for their GUI systems, which gave high clarity. I trust they did their research.
The oft-quoted green on black or amber on black were never chosen for their suitability, they were simply the most affordable solution at the time in the land of monochrome CRTs.
So your eye can magically tell the difference between "reflected" and "emitted" photons ?
In a word yes... Can't you tell the difference 'twix looking at a monitor and looking at a picture of a monitor?
When you use a white background on a monitor, your effectively staring into a light bulb. 'Member when your Mom told you not to stare at the sun?
Studies have been done on this. In terms of pure legibility a slightly yellowish page color--"cornsilk" is a great place to start--offers ideal contrast (with black characters).
I spend a (far too) significant amount of my time staring at either a dumb terminal or a telnet connection. As a result, I've found a few schemes that seem to reduce eyestrain. First off, use a dark background color. I like Black, Navy, or Dark Green, depending on the interface being used (OpenVMS, Bash, Matlab Editor and Command Line...). With this, use a light text color. If you don't have keyword-dependent colors, a medium orange works if you're into the old display feel, as does a brighter green. For Navy or dark green, a medium-gray color works very well, but these background colors don't leave a lot of options for keyword-dependent text coloring. Also, reducing the ambient light levels and the light in your field of view while working can have a dramatic impact on eyestrain and headaches. Unfortunately, the cube farm I most frequently work in has solid rows of fluorescent lighting, making it difficult to obey those last suggestions.
I've read through many of the responses so far, and I see a lot of comments like,
"Dark text on a bright background is WELL KNOWN to be FAR better on the eyes."
and
"Light text on a dark background is OBVIOUSLY better because of the tachyion emissions..."
blahblah...
But I think a major aspect to this has to do with the ambient lighting conditions in the place where you are working. Me, I work in cave-like conditions. Very little ambient lighting, monitor brightness low, color backgrounds dark and text not-as-dark. If someone turns on the overhead light in my office I can't hardly see anything on the screen. Likewise, if I had the typical bright background, dark text scheme applied, my retinas would probably be burned out staring at that in a dark work room.
I guess I'm saying I subscribe to the "match background to ambient light conditions" school of thought. Do you work in a bright place? Try dark on light.
Work in a dark place? Try light on dark. Something in between? I guess gray on gray maybe.
You might not be blinking enough. That's usually why my eyes burn when staring at the screen. Blinking seems to remedy the burning.
AMBER ON BLACK
And it better be a damned CRT that only DOES amber.
Green on black is a close second, but the damned Matrix movie ruined it.
keep coming back to it as easiest on the eyes -- white on deep night blue (RGB = 0, 20, 50) or white on violet (RGB = 30, 0, 55).
for all of your burning eye needs ..
I can't believe that such a stupid thread makes it to the front page. This is total pollution.
The root of the problem is the difficulty of changing the DPI. This wasn't an issue before with CRTs, because CRTs could perfectly display any resolution lower than its maximum, so changing the DPI wasn't ever necessary. LCDs, on the other hand, lose data if you display a resolution less than its maximum, because the pixels are a fixed grid; now being able to change DPI is highly desirable. Windows XP lets you change the default DPI in the Display control panel (Advanced button, General tab). However, changing the DPI even to 120, much less a custom setting, is poorly supported. I tried it for a day or two before going back to the default 96 DPI - you'll quickly see what I mean if you try it. I've heard it's a little better in Vista but still not good enough, though not having run Vista I can't speak for that. Apple calls the concept of being able to change DPI "resolution independence", and they were making a big push to having it in Mac OS X 10.4 but it got pushed back; then it was going to be in 10.5, but at this point they've admitted the problem is way more difficult and complicated than even they thought, and it's going to be a long haul for them to fix it. They appear to be genuinely working on solving it the right way no matter how long it takes; Steve Jobs' obsession with displaying fonts correctly is a good thing.
Hi, try dark gray background and black text - Not a bright background (like white) - that's a big glowing thing that hurts your eyes, but you need enough contrast between the text and background.
However - as annoying as this may be, your eyes will probably be happier if you increase the size a few notches.
I use black letters on a medium gray background. On an interlaced dispay ("way back when") I used a turquoise on beige. It seemed to flicker less than anything else, I guess cause of the lack of contrast.
Many many hours have been spent over decades tryig to work this question out and these colors are what I came up with.
Need Mercedes parts ?
I use :
xterm -bg black -fg green
Sig out of date
Lighthouse has some excellent information on color and font choices.
http://www.lighthouse.org/accessibility/legible/
Someone in the Slashdot community must remember a specially spread and dithered truetype font that was intended for vision impaired folk. I recall having it and trying it in the 90's but at that time didn't need it and lost track of it. It seemed to work for me when I deliberately blurred my vision with a lens. Now that I'm older I've used the above site to help with my vision degradation but if someone has a pointer to that font I'd appreciate it since color choices and glasses only go so far.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Sometime in the 1970s I participated in a study made at the Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm, Sweden). Then it was found that a yellow(ish) text on a brown background was easiest on the eyes. The reason for this was/is that the human eyes are most sensitive in the yellow/neon wave-lenghts. Therefore the contrast between background and text, and the brightness of the screen could be set lower - and this made it possible to use the terminal for a longer time with no ill effects.
This was done before colour terminals were available. A similar experiment today may well bring up an even better colour combination.
Here are a bunch of choices. (See links to Lisp, Java, Latex, and Perl samples here.)
The one I use is Jedit Gray, altered to use a slightly darker background. I bet you can achieve the same effect in Vim. (If not, neener neener neener!)
Personally, for me, ambient light is a much bigger deal than the colors on the screen. I get eyestrain when my screen is significantly brighter than the room around me. Even when I'm staring directly at the screen for hours, my eyes seem to adjust themselves to the brightness of my surroundings instead of to the brightness of the screen.
I first noticed this playing Doom fifteen years ago. When I got really tired near the end of a long session, I sometimes had to turn the lights on for bright maps.
Wait your clocks are driven by a crystal? I thought thats what crystals were for, generating clocks! </drunk engineering on a thursday>
I was just thinking the same thing, I used to read music on my computer when I practiced tuba. Happens for TVs as well.
mcedit default syntax coloring is very eye friendly. it is based on some old editors like borland turbo pascal IDE. As far as i known there is colorscheme "far" which is very similar. Its good for working in day and in night, good contrast, and not distracting by too many colors.
I asked myself that question a few years back... and I find dark grey (basically black, but not 'solid' black) on beige background works pretty well for me. I also tend to turn the brightness of my screen down. It feels like reading pages on an old book.
Based on the fact the sky is light blue and some vauge memories of that color being used in buildings as a calming background, I gave it a try for my VIM windows and it was more agreeable.
However I think DPI could be more important as it certainly is harder to read smaller print and scalling fonts is not practical when switching from the old typical 72dpi to the 92dpi like I saw on a recent Dell Ultrasharp 25". I found a 25.5" Samsung LCD that has the same resolution is closer to the 72dpi and is alot less strain on my eyes.
For vim, I use the koehler color scheme. I find it to be easy on the eyes for long periods of time.
I like white background, black text.
Need an automatic screenshot taker? Try here.
Then you're an idiot, if you still think it's equivalent to a gaussian blur. You may not prefer the way fonts are rendered on the Mac, but that's just your opinion. The technical details of what you claimed are how fonts are rendered on the Mac are laughably off the mark.
On my Mac, when I get tired of reading black-on-white, I just hit Ctrl+Option+Command+8 Also helps for reading gaming web sites at work :)
Go with grey on gray. Some weirdos use gray on grey, but they are headed for early blindness. Just stick with the tried and true grey on gray.
You definitely want to experiment with the brightness and contrast on your monitor. That may be all you need.
As to color manipulation, that work was done a long time ago, but I can't remember by who. The "easy eye" color combination was navy blue on powder green, text=0,0,64, screen=255,208,255.
I have the same problem and find that mix much more soothing on the eyes.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
The human eye not only needs to adjust focus based on distance, but also on colour as different wavelengths refract at different angles (a phenomena exploited in certain opticians' tests) It follows that having blue text next to red will strain the eye, because the eye will need to change the focal distance when switching between the two. I just viewed a single blue line of text, amongst other red lines. I did indeed notice that the blue appeared slightly blurry. Perhaps a single colour (green?) on a black background would provide the least focal problems. To compensate for other strains, the background could be lightened slightly?
I remember seeing this Python tutorial site saying they changed it the background was to 'glaring' (assuming it was a white-ish color). They switched to a light purpleish-pink color. Try that. The site: http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld/
I've always liked light colors on dark blue, such as the Cobalt theme for InType. screenshot
I might be stupid, but that's a risk we're going to have to take.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
so, i love zenburn. its the best dark background scheme i've seen. but, it's not good for a brightly lit office, or next to a window. so, what's a color scheme with a light background that someone as put zenburn levels of thought and polish into? a zenburn light?
I've heard that its better to use lower wave lengths and lower intensity for your background color and higher wave lengths or mixtures for the forground color. The greater the contrast between the two colors the better.
Don't know if this really works, but using colors like blue and purple seem to strain my eye whereas using yellow for the background and black for the foreground is easier on the eyes.
Finally, some eye strain comes from the fact that we tend to blink less when staring at the screen. It helps to consciously blink to keep the eyes watered.
Disclaimer: I'm not an eye doctor though I play one on TV.
Blue and Peachpuff are also easy on the eyes. A popular color scheme pack for VIM (see VIM website) included a scheme called Buttercream, which also was quite nice. I change color scheme as soon as my eyes feel uncomfortable. But in a sense, it's always a sign of being tired. I hope you were talking about GVIM not VIM, because in an ANSI terminal, VIM cannot set the colors that it wants. If a GUI is available, use GVIM instead of VIM (GVIM is the GUI version of VIM).
I notice that if the wall behind my screen is too dark my eyes become strained more easily. During daylight I don't have much trouble, but after dark or on cloudy days the normal light fixture (above and behind me) isn't enough or causes glare. Pointing my desk lamp at the wall behind my screen helps. An additional benefit is that, at this very moment, the moth that would be fluttering at my screen is now meeting a crispy demise...
A dark/navy blue background with light yellow font colors is rather easy on the eyes. Consolas is a good true-type font; that helps as well.
Try something similar to this:
http://www.slimcode.com/cs/blogs/martin/archive/2006/11/26/My-Coding-Font-and-Colors.aspx
It is a Visual Studio theme but you can always get the colors that you need out or get an idea of what you can experiment with.
Always proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
I've been using the same ViM color scheme since my first programming job 10 years ago, 8 xterm colors (+bold), light on dark. I can't imagine that the 8 xterm colors are the most ideal, but I've tried evaluating new ones many times since, and nothing ever looks right to me, or really seems to make my eyes feel any better. (That's not strictly true. About 3 years ago, I developed a high color version of my original color scheme that "squished" the previous theme into about half of the HSV spectrum, so the new colors are all greens, blues, and purples, with the color relationships still the same-ish. But I still prefer the old low color version for some languages.)
I've found that there are a lot of other factors that have a much higher impact than my color scheme.
1) Monitor quality. For years I used a beast of a 21" monitor from NEC, now replaced by a Dell 24". Both are excellent monitors, and the NEC might even be worth the back problems I'm sure it gave me.
2) Font. I've spent far more time searching for the perfect font than for the perfect color scheme. In fact I eventually went so far as to make my own. I've noticed that my font size has gone up a bit over time as well - No more nexus for me. In general, I've moved from primarily pixel fonts - great for fitting a lot on the screen while still being readable - to ClearType fonts, which I find much easier to look at for long periods of time. (One of my primary motivations for creating my own font was because I had a hard time finding a monospace font that still looked good at lower point sizes.) Some of my other favorites (since I'm not willing to subject mine to public scrutiny just yet) are Consolas and "Envy Code R". Andale Mono and Bitstream Vera Sans Mono get an honorable mention.
3) Lighting. There is a lot to be said here, and much of it has already been said. But IMO, above all else, indirect lighting is king.
4) and finally, Blink!
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
I find black text on a black background very soothing.
Good monitors definitely help. I personally find that ambient lighting and glare plays a huge role. Any kind of glare or reflection on my screen drives me crazy...
but on the other hand Apple's font rendering looks worse than on Linux or even Java's on Mac OS X, and sadly Microsoft is out of their league.
And Mac users that fervently deny there is a problem at all and will gladly bend over and take what ever Apple is giving them, and this will ensure Apple's font rendering stays like this.
Sad, because the platform is nice otherwise.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
You want a relatively low contrast (but not so low it's hard to distinguish), with the darker color in the background and the lighter one in the foreground. I like to keep the background to #294D4A, and the main foreground color to #FFE6BC. Make sure your refresh rate is at least 80Hz, and make sure there are no fluorescent lights in the room to create flicker.
Oh, and set your font size large enough, and the font face to a suitable setting, so that you can comfortably see the difference between any two characters easily at a glance, then increase the font size by two more points. If your monitor's smaller than 18-inch viewable, replace it. Avoid widescreen, because for code the amount of vertical space is more critical; you need enough lines that you can fit a whole function on the screen at once, preferably two.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
I go with light text on a black background, every time. I often use a bright green, but there are a lot of options that work: pale purple, white, light gray, light blue...
The current era of white-on-black appears to be a cute imitation of the dead trees world (in spite of the fact that dead trees don't glow, not even around Cherynobl). I once managed to find information about one study that supported using light backgrounds, but it sounded ancient: in an industrial setting you could lower the error rate by reducing the effects of reflections on the screen by giving the user the third degree.
Anyway, my current .emacs includes:
;Highlighting the region
; Provides a (base?) color scheme for additional frames:
(add-to-list 'default-frame-alist
'(foreground-color . "Thistle"))
(add-to-list 'default-frame-alist
'(background-color . "Black"))
(add-to-list 'default-frame-alist
'(cursor-color . "Orchid"))
(add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(mouse-color
. "GreenYellow"))
(add-to-list 'default-frame-alist
'(border-color . "DarkOliveGreen"))
(add-to-list 'default-frame-alist
'(border-color . "Thistle"))
(transient-mark-mode t)
(set-face-foreground 'region "Black")
(set-face-background 'region "DarkOliveGreen")
; (Redundant now, but I'm leaving them
; enabled because they
; set the background color to black faster
; before the above default-frame-alist
; colors kick in.)
(set-foreground-color "Thistle")
(set-background-color "Black")
(set-cursor-color "Orchid")
(set-mouse-color "GreenYellow")
(set-face-foreground 'modeline "Black")
(set-face-background 'modeline "DarkSlateBlue")
; This sets the text color for highlighted text
;(e.g. when running ispell)
(set-face-foreground 'highlight "PaleGreen")
(set-face-background 'highlight "BlueViolet")
(show-paren-mode)
(set-face-foreground 'show-paren-match-face "PaleGreen")
(set-face-background 'show-paren-match-face "BlueViolet")
(set-face-foreground 'show-paren-mismatch-face "yellow")
(set-face-background 'show-paren-mismatch-face "firebrick")
The burning in your eyes is caused by the surface of your eyes drying. The drying is caused by persistent attention to the screen during which time you blink less frequently thus spreading less tears across the surface of the eye.
To cure this you need to do more than trying to blink more often.
When you feel the burning (or as often as you can think of it) - close your eyes and hold them closed. If you have caught the process early enough, you will feel the burning fade as tears soak back into the conjunctiva of your eye. The feeling of relief is immense.
As a physician using computers for long periods of time, the feeling of relief is immense. The technique has worked for years. It has only failed if the eyes dry out too much originally. At that point, inflammation has set in and it takes much longer to resolve.
Changing monitor colors will work only if it encourages you to "blink and hold" more often.
http://www.visualexpert.com/FAQ/Part6/cfaqPart6.html There is a new gizmo for web users called Google Search. http://www.visualexpert.com/sbfaqimages/fonts.gif
I like Aloha for Netbeans http://blog.huikau.com/2008/04/28/aloha-color-theme-for-netbeans-61/
No matter what monitor I use, I always configure my colours to remove a white background, and replace it with light grey instead.
Reading on a white monitor is like looking at a light bulb. It stresses the eyes as they try to compensate for the brightness, while still trying to be able to read the black.
When you change to a light grey, you can feel your eyes relax.
My standard is black on light-grey, or light-grey on black (on an xterm type window).
Even now, I'm typing into a box with is light grey, but the /. background is white, and I can feel it on my eyes.
Another thing is to ensure you have adequate light in the room. Coding in a dark room with a bright monitor also places additional strain on the eyes. Having a light turned on will also reduce the strain.
Oh, and use an LCD monitor instead of a CRT. Less radiation and magnetic fields to interfere with the eyes.
Ensure the refresh rate is also optimal (60Hz on an LCD, as high as possible on a CRT)
T.
Also I think its much nicer to look at a display that is set to between 75-85% brightness versus 100% brightness!
Having just told my OS to set my HP Business Notebook with the matte screen to 75%, I feel much better looking at it, since I just realized my cow-irkers have their f/&Â%ing fluorescent bulbs on (I'm pushing to get them changed to halogen). Mine are off, but I can still see theirs. Maybe I should turn my desk around to face away.
My Math teacher in High-School would never let us work with the lights on because it degraded our performance, and to this day, I like that kind of environment. (Like most of you, I was in the advanced math class... we had to bring up the averages ;))
Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com)
mgcarley, good luck with the glare-hunting, it's tricky to get rid of entirely.
A rule of thumb is to try and orient yourself so any bright lights shine at you from the side.
If you're facing them, they'll be in your peripheral vision, if you face away, they'll reflect back at you in your monitor. If you're surrounded by bright lights, well, good luck!
Wah!