Eye strain?

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fourthwind

Master of the Pit
Original poster
OTBS Member
SMF Premier Member
Mar 12, 2009
1,203
12
Thornton, CO
I like the fact that a lot of the bugs are being worked out, but is there anything that can be done to reduce the over all white of the page?  Maybe turn the light blue seperation lines to something darker.  I used to surf this site for hours, now my eye's start bugging out after 15 minutes.  Really bugs me.  I love the site, but cant surf for long. 
 
We discussed changing the background to a very light gray. It is quite a large ordeal since most of the picture/image backgrounds are white and it would cause some things to not look as crisp but it is certainly possible.

I will look further into this.
 
I have trouble reading the new forum also, but I think its the contrast or lack of it. I think the pale green boarders and print is my problem.

I compared the background of SMF with my Google home page which I have no trouble with and SMF is a tad grayer. but Google  uses a black font and dark blue borders

 here's what I see on mine,

0c55b4f9_smf%20page.jpg
 
I have noticed that it may not totally be the white background as well. Maybe black outlines will help and not be as much of an issue to change.

What really gets to my eyes is looking at the little green arrow on the left of the message. I tried using the recent activity page since from that page if you read a post and then go back, that post is not in bold any more. And if there is a new post it will go back to bold and have a number in red. This is a good deal if you check the page often. I can't sometimes, so I have to use the more tab at the bottom, but when you back out you have to scroll back to the bottom and re click the more tab how ever many times as you had clicked it before.

There has been times that I sit down and have 100+ post to look at.

Because of this I go to forums and use the all new post tab.

This way I have page numbers if I happen to get messed up and have to start over, at least I know what page I was on.

The down side to this is the only way the post changes from bold is if I reply to it.

So unless I look really close and watch for the very light colored very hard to see highlight, I have to remember the title line and scroll again to find where I was.

Sorry for the rant!  I just hope for the day that the post will gray out if they have been read and go back bold when they have a new reply.

I do like alot of the features of this site, I figured if I nobody says anything then nothing can change.

Thanks Jeff, Sorry to give you one more thing to think about.
 
I have noticed that too a little bit, as I'm getting older (just turned 40 a few months ago) and I work on computers every day, I find that will surfing when it comes to the contrast issue I bump up the page size on the browser and it's much better. I'm using IE8 and in the bottom right corner is the page size adjuster. having at 125% helps me out a bunch. I know there is a similar setting in Firefox, and probably all modern browsers. Maybe this will help??

7d472893_ie-size.jpg
 
In case you want two cents from another farsighted 61 year old:

The blacker the type, the better. As far as the background goes, as long as it stays relatively light, I'm fine.

I can read street signs a couple blocks ahead, but I get an instant headache trying to read gray type. My reading glasses take care of most of that problem though.

Bearcarver
 
, I find that will surfing when it comes to the contrast issue I bump up the page size on the browser and it's much better. I'm using IE8 and in the bottom right corner is the page size adjuster. having at 125% helps me out a bunch.
Thanks for the tip Skillet, It definitely helps
 
Any chance you guys are still working on this, or did it get put on the back burner?  I hate not being able to surf on here for long.
 
I wouldn't say it's on the back burner but we do have a lot of requests turned in and I am sure it will take a bit for all of them to be brought up in the queue and looked into.
 
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