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Ask Slashdot: Best Tools For Dealing With Glare Sensitivity?
First time accepted submitter der_pinchy writes "For many years I have used a high-contrast desktop color scheme (with green text on black background) and notice more and more software uses a forced color scheme that can make it difficult to use. For web browsing I have always used Opera and its white-on-black user style sheet, but have to constantly tweak it so that certain elements and transparent images are visible. Is there anything to be done with some of the major offenders, like Office or recent versions of Visual Studio? Even recent browsers that support user style sheets still use a forced color scheme on a lot of there dialog controls."
Black on white on LED screens gives me major migraines. When will they understand computer screens are not like ink on paper.
I'm used to interpreting "glare sensitivity" to meaning the screen is generally too bright for your eyes, but the subsequent comments about needing to use high contrast color palettes has me thinking maybe you mean something else.
Anyway: I stare at a monitor all day, and for quite a while I had some serious dry eye problems because of it. Then about a year ago I bought some Gunnar glasses ( http://www.gunnars.com/ ) and my eyes got happier within 24 hours. Wear them all the time now.
Full disclosure: I'm not even kind of affiliated with Gunnar. I just wear their glasses and I like them.
You didn't say what version of Windows you were running, so it's tough to tell what might be available to you from an accessibility standpoint. On the Mac you can invert colours, use greyscale, and alter the contrast of the screen as well as cursor size (in addition to the typical colour schemes, display brightness, etc). It sounds to me like you may be facing an uphill battle if you are trying to do this outside of what the OS supports directly.
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
I've got a similar problem. I've taken to filing bugs with every vendor when I encounter a forced color scheme that dishonors system settings. Fat client apps are very likely to get fixed.
Visual Studio fixes itself if you turn on high-contrast and then load your color scheme on top of it. In Windows 7, saving your color scheme with high contrast enabled saved high contrast enabled to the color scheme. In Windows 8, high contrast is always on when the color scheme is not the default.
Unfortunately, websites tend to not fix their bugs. I get too many "it's a browser bug", and one that was equivalent to "use a screen reader" even after I offered to fix their bug for them.
I suppose you could hack up a 1 bit display driver that only sends green to the monitor, or perhaps with a remote desktop client that does (incoming) -> (gresyscale) -> (green) -> (inverted green).
Invert the colors in X11 itself: xcalib -i -a
If black on white text is too bright then you probably need more light in the room. Your eyes adjust to the overall scene brightness, so if you have a bright screen in the middle of a dark field, because the lights are out in the room, then the screen will appear too bright and fatiguing. Try installing some LEDs on the back of your monitor to illuminate the wall behind the screen. That will increase the overall scene brightness and make the screen seem less harsh without creating reflections on the screen.
If it's MacOS X, go into the 'Universal Access' control panel, and there's a 'contrast' slider, and you can force greyscale, black on white, or white on black.
Most X windows managers have ways to do similar things, although in some you have to mess with configuration files.
No idea how to do it in Amiga or Haiku, though.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
No.
Polarized sunglasses cut glare because reflected light tends to be polarized in one direction. Therefore you can selectively block it out.
Alas, modern flat panel displays all use polarized filters to work. So they don't work too well with polarized glasses.
Invert the colors in X11 itself: xcalib -i -a
What would that do to a Wine session, or to a VM running Windows on a Linux host?
If it does what I think (Linux-only here, no VM or Wine), there could be confusing issues in figuring out palettes afterwards in the VM or in a Wine session. The OP mentioned using Office and Visual Studio, so it's likely to be a Windows user.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Actually, VS 2012 also ships with a very nice dark theme. :)
studiostyl.es deserves also a mention. Changing colors inside VS is rather painful as the list is extremely long.
No. I just tried with a pair on my screen. On this Dell LCD is seems to increase the distance between the text and the glass(plastic)? So whatever polarized coating they use in manufacture, gives all of the head ache and none of the 3D effect.
HOWEVER! Just one lens is fine. So using two rights of lefts will be fine and is the best way to watch a 3D film.
Turn your screen 90 degrees and the polarized glasses should take care of 100% of the glare. On most LCD screens, it will make the image go completely black.
Which is always amusing when places use a monitor turned 90% as an information display - one bright sunny day we walked into a fast food restaurant and my wife asked me what I was going to order, while she pointed to the blank screens. I couldn't figure out how she was reading the menu until I remembered to take off my sunglasses.
What I don't know is whether monitor makers purposely chose a polarization direction that works well with glare reducing polarized sunglasses, or if it's just coincidence that the best polarization direction for a monitor also happens to be compatible with sunglasses.
Poalized dont do anything for glare except on water from direct sunlight.
you need anti glare coatings. And yes It's called going to the eye doctor or turn off the overhead lights.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Ever since my apple ][ days, when I had a color monitor, I knew I liked dark backgrounds and light text. At the time, red on black. Now I am happy with a light gray on black
Setting this on terminals is cake. Even putty can be made reasonable quickly.
However... they are the exception. Nearly everything I use regularly really works. Few support changing color schemes at all, and the ones that do, are so limited as to be useless. Pidgin and eclipse both come to mind as having mechanisms (with pidgin I believe its via plugins) to change color schemes, but only in very limited ways. You can't, change the look of many of the utility window parts, like the resources view....so the darker you make the rest, the more jarring those stand outs become.... often making it less appealing than reverting to defaults.
Of course, I have a north facing window that overlooks an old barn that the neighbors put white siding on, so the glare from that can be prodigeous during the day. Room darkening shades, preferably with wooden slats take care of that nicely.
I also highly recomend a light behind the monitor. I stuck an old lamp back there, but have some LEDs that I used to put an RGB LED version in with.... I just need to mess with the controller a bit more.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
BUY A DIFFERENT MONITOR
No seriously. There are MANY monitor technologies, and some deal better with glare than others. Matte displays, IPS, high DPI, different backlighting technologies, etc
OR BUY A SHADE (or adjust your external lights):
Adjust your lighting sources or block them out with a shade. You can buy these box-like things that go around monitors to shade the display by blocking lights. That will cut down on glare entirely since there is no external light to cause it.
IF THESE DON"T WORK:
Then you're not talking about glare.
"3D glasses" are polarized sunglasses. Why do you think they are two separate things?
It's the orientation of the polarization that makes them different.
3D glasses have the polarization rotated 90 degrees between lenses.
Polarized sunglasses have the polarization oriented in the same direction.
You wouldn't want to wear 3D glasses while driving, because your vision would be different between your eyes - you'd see some reflected light with one eye and not the other.
" Greasemonkey scripts to darken commonly used web sites. "
I second that.
Also it's the easiest script to try as first.
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/94963
or
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/153122
should get you started.
If you are getting headaches from using a computer, you have more serious issues than the color of a webpage. You should really get that checked out.
The internet, and computer applications as a whole do not give people headaches because of the color schemes used. If this were the case, computers would be labeled with warning stickers - "May cause headaches". This is simply not the case. You are straining so hard to try to make an erroneous point. Just because you get headaches from a specific color scheme on a screen does not mean the rest of us do. I've been staring at computer screens 12+ hours a day for the last 30 years and I've never once had a headache that I thought was induced by the default colors of the applications open on my screen.
Developers aren't "forcing their own color schemes", they use color schemes that are widely accepted as being productive and useful and that work for the majority of people using their products. Catering to an edge case only makes the job that much more difficult if they have to satisfy the functional requirements as well as make it work with any color choice the user wants. It's absurd.
The best way?
By that you mean just as dim and no 3D? That is a very odd definition of best.
Actually, that probably *is* the best way to watch most 3D films. Few 3D movies use 3D as more than a gimmick.
I looked at the Gunnar Web site and saw no scientific backing of any of their claims. In my opinion, any improvement you'll get from these is 100% due to a placebo effect.
specifically tuned focusing power - It's your eyes that do the focussing. Air does not distort focussing unless it's extremely hot.
DIAMIX lens material is optically pure. - So is air. Actually, air is probably more optically pure than DIAMIX.
IONIK lens tints improve overall contrast and comfort by filtering out harsh artificial light, eliminating UV rays and reducing high-intensity visible light. - So does your eye. You have an iris, lens and your brain automatically corrects for white balance. If your work place behind a computer screen puts you in dangerous UV light, you really need to look at your TFT, since those don't emit UV at all.
iFi lens coatings include an anti-reflective layers to reduce glare - If there was no lens in the glasses, they wouldn't have to put anti-reflective layers on it. The only reflection those layers partially prevent is the reflection on the glasses themselves.
TL;DR Snake oil glasses, you've been conned.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Try installing some LEDs on the back of your monitor to illuminate the wall behind the screen.
Or, if you prefer more moderate or darker ambient lighting, you can simply turn down the brightness of your monitor. I normally keep mine between 10% and 25% of full brightness, and usually adjust the contrast a bit as well.
For what it's worth, I found this solution by mistake many years ago. I had set my laptop to always use its dimmest setting. It was a power saving feature, meant for use when powered by battery only. Having the screen always dim, I got very used to it that way. I wondered why other laptops started giving me headaches, until I eventually placed mine next to another, and realized it was the intensity of the default (full brightness) settings that was the problem.
Poalized dont do anything for glare except on water from direct sunlight.
Polarized glasses eliminate any light not in the proper orientation, regardless of its source. In the example of sunglasses, besides water it also reduces glare from the streets themselves, metal (manhole covers), etc.
If you are getting headaches from using a computer, you have more serious issues than the color of a webpage. You should really get that checked out.
And just what do you think the doctor will recommend?
Almost certainly they will just tell the patient to adjust the color scheme on their computer so that they don't get headaches. That should fix the problem, assuming the software developer wasn't some kind of self-centered asshole who made it impossible.