DonationCoder.com Forum
Other Software => Developer's Corner => Topic started by: Gothi[c] on February 09, 2006, 06:08 PM
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Why is it that most IDE's have a default white background with black text?
Personally it really hurts my eyes. Especially on CRT monitors. The white of a computer monitor is not like say a white paper, it is light. So especially for those of us who are coding over 8 hours a day, which is better for our eyes?
Personally I use a soft green on a black background because green is one of the colors humans perceive best. Green on black provides high contrast. I use soft green so the contrast isn't too high. Seems to work best for me. I hear yellow on blue is best for bright-lit rooms / daylight. But black on white is overkill contrast and really bad on the eyes.
Here is an interesting page about this topic:
http://www.writer2001.com/colwebcontrast.htm
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I agree. I think the black on white was originally designed to mimic paper and make us all more comfortable with PC's. Plus Mainframes and Terminals used Green on Black, so we *must* look different from them.
Personally, anytime I'm using an editor, terminal or anything for very long, I look to change it to ....
Green on Black. Looks best, easiest to see and doggon.. I like it. :Thmbsup:
I used to work with a guy who always used Yellow on Blue... yuck! :'(
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I remember back in the days of Turbo Pascal, the default scheme was yellow on blue and I really got used to it. It was hard moving to the default black on white in Windows. I guess I have adapted to it, but maybe I will start experimenting again with darker backgrounds when I can.
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I remember back in the days of Turbo Pascal, the default scheme was yellow on blue and I really got used to it. -jroad
2 quick notes:
1. I changed the color scheme in TP to Green on black.
2. I LOVED Turbo Pascal :-* :-*(https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/esmileys/gen0/Large/192.gif)
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My color scheme in Turbo Pascal was usually green on blue due to excessive ASM usage :D
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the white on green on that page looks surprisingly readable, i wouldn't have guessed that. might have to give that a try, though i have long used black on white.
[ps. another turbo pascal/c fan here; borland's turbo language tools were amazing when they came out for the pc - they must have raised a generation of programmers. i can still see those manuals in my memoy clearly. i want to thank my dad for getting us those tools.]
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http://www.writer2001.com/colwebcontrast.htm
-Gothi[c]
Thanks for that page! The black on soft green at the end of the page is the one that fits me best, i don't know why, but it's the one the provies me with more readability.
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I like Turbo Pascal scheme. Yellow text on blue background. Though I change it a bit. To Free Pascal's scheme. :D
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I have found orange on black to be quite readable. It's not a bright orange, something that stands out without contrasting too much. My screenshots would look different from what I see, because the LCD of my laptop is very old. XChat and my terminals are orange on black. When programming, I use gvim for which there are many many color schemes available. There, I go with the darker ones that were designed for night use (my room never sees sunlight).
I change my gvim colors ever few months; whenever there is a new color scheme out I give it a try. I don't have much trouble adjusting to new schemes, but they have to be "good". I prefer color schemes that choose different variations of one tone, that are monochrome so to say.
Attached I have a screenshot of the inkpot color scheme and the new baycomb color scheme; both are gvim color schemes of course.
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that first screenshot is so damn dark, dont know how you could read that.
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I like dark ;D
But it's also "quiet"; that is, there aren't many different colored used. In German colors can be loud and quiet, even excited. Baycomb is still being fine-tuned by its author, but so far I found it usable.
There are too many color schemes (http://www.vim.org/scripts/script_search_results.php?script_type=color+scheme&order_by=script_name&direction=descending) available for vim. I believe other programmer's editors will have a wide variety of such schemes as well; I know emacs does.
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I agree with mouser. The first one is too dark for my eyes to read. The second one is much better, though its line number is still hard to read.
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I'm sometimes using black on a green background... I don't like black backgrounds and besides that I read something about those being bad for your eyes in the long run.
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There are a few schemes I switch among, depending on my mood, this is the most common one though--
[ You are not allowed to view attachments ]
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more, more, more!
Ok, ok! By popular request I created some more screenshots of the color schemes I have right now. Note that these are not alle the schemes that are available, these are just the ones I happened to have installed.
Attached here are:
* anotherdark
* baycombG, a variation of baycomb above
* blue
* darkblue
* default
* delek
* desertedocean
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even more, even more, even more!
And the saga continues. This time we have:
* desert
* elflord
* evening
* koehler
* morning
* murphy
* pablo
* peachpuff
* ron
Yes this time we have nine attachments because I couldn't make my browser delete the contents of the last input field...
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enough already, we get the point!
In the last of today's episode of "post an image" I proudly present:
* shine
* sift
* slate
* torte
* watermark
* zellner
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nice! it really is useful to have some sample color schemes to look at in order to make a decision about which one looks best.
that blue one sure gives me flashbacks to the days of turboc and turbopascal.
maybe we need a script that gradually changes your color scheme based on time of day, from light to dark - that would be cool :)
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slate looks nice, but i still find black on white the easiest to read.
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maybe we need a script that gradually changes your color scheme based on time of day, from light to dark - that would be cool :)
-mouser
In vim this is possible of course (of course!), since you can control a vim instance remotely. So one could write a little script that determines the color scheme based on time and then sends a remote command to a running vim instance, telling it to switch to the given color scheme.
And while we are talking about how great opensource software is: those screenshots I created with The Gimp (http://gimp.org/) ;-) However, I'd love to see samples of such color schemes in other editors too. I know I am the self-proclaimed opensource zealot but I'd like to widen my horizon...
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slate looks nice, but i still find black on white the easiest to read.
-mouser
Black on white is okay if you're used to it, but it's hard to go back after reversing the contrast for a while. After spending some time in my text editor, hitting the black on white of the Internet makes me feel a bit sun-blinded ;)
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Stop This Madness!
Well I couldn't resist and randomly downloaded a few more definitions of color schemes. This page is getting rather heavy, traffic-wise...
This time I bore you with:
* delphi
* yeller
* zenburn
* slateBW, note the change on the status line
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I remembered this old thread when I ran across this page:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~maverick/VimColorSchemeTest/index-html.html
source code coloring example'o'rama
:)
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Good old Turbo Pascal - I started my venturing into programming with TP6. Borland had the greatest IDEs back then, the integrated help was outstanding, and TP6's ability to "compile & link to RAM" was _perfect_ when working on a dead-slow 286 with an even slower harddrive :) (and yeah, I had a damn lot of green-on-blue as well, you sorta needed that to get acceptable speeds back then).
I'm still stuck with a black-on-white scheme (with additional syntax highlighting - I wouldn't live without that today!), it works well enough and I don't get eyestrain. Been meaning to try out something else, but it just takes too long to fiddle with (Notepad++ doesn't come with schemes to choose from). Green-on-black has always seemed very harsh to me.
In VIM I use the 'desert' scheme, which is pretty nice... but VIM is never going to be my main editor, I'm afraid. It's slightly (and I do mean slightly, but enough to notice) heavier than Notepad++, and I don't really do stuff faster in it. Great when I'm stuck on linux, though.
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I was wondering: Should I put this here or in urlwolf's thread (https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=11508.0)?. Anyway, Scott Hanselman briefly discuss a few more themes (http://www.hanselman.com/blog/VisualStudioProgrammerThemesGallery.aspx) for your IDE, specifically for Visual Studio. Just in case housetier flood of options is not enough ;D
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another turbo pascal/c fan here; borland's turbo language tools were amazing when they came out for the pc - they must have raised a generation of programmers.
-mouser
When I first bought Turbo Pascal it was about $69.
At the same time Microsoft Pascal was about $400.
The value was so good that I remember being wary lest TPas was some kind of scam.
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Slightly updated recently, little brighter in a few places . . . still generally prefer light on dark.
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Haven't had time to try these out, but here are some VS schemes:
http://www.winterdom.com/weblog/CategoryView,category,VS%2BColor%2BScheme.aspx
http://jheidt.com/archive/2007/12/13/visual-studio-color-scheme.aspx
http://www.stefandidak.com/ramble/2008/01/09/visual-studio-dark-color-schemes-and-themes/
I'll need to give these a spin real soon.
(Thanks for providing the motivation in this thread!)
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http://hubel.sfasu.edu/research/AHNCUR.html
"Readability Of Websites With Various Foreground/Background Color Combinations, Font Types And Word Styles"
The above link is from a readability study done in 1997 at Stephen F. Austin State University.