contrast in styles

[hendrikboom]

Title:
contrast in styles

Area:
styles

Summary:
Styles that specify a foreground or background colour should be required to specify *both* a foreground *and* a background colour.

Description:
People sometimes specify, say, that the foreground colour for text should be black. Put that on a browser configured with default inverse video (white foreground on black background), abd you end up with black text on a black page -- completely unreadable.

That said, a single style could even provide two versions of itself, for readers that prefer bright text on dark background and dark text on a bright background. Bright screens are hard on migraine sufferers.

Poll #743

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 14

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
9 (64.3%)

Should be implemented with changes.
0 (0.0%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
1 (7.1%)

(Other: please comment)
4 (28.6%)

Comments

[cesy]

When you say "required", do you mean that it should be required of ordinary users in the customize areas, or required of style designers when creating official styles?

I'd be tempted to say yes to the latter but no to the former, as the option of viewing a page in your own style is always available, and in general, forcing users to do things is bad - this is an issue where it's better to educate rather than force.

[kyrielle]

This. With some good doc/reminder for those creating personal styles.

[susanreads]

This sounds like a useful requirement for official styles. None of the ones I can see at present have light text on a dark background, and that's bound to be a problem for some people, esp. with site styles where you can't design your own.

If people are designing a new style based on one of those on "Select Journal Style", don't they already have background colours defined?

[triadruid]

This should be a necessity for 'official' styles, I agree. For custom work, it gets a lot more fiddly because sometimes the 'default' background color doesn't have great contrast because you're going to overlay it with a background image that has a weirdly contrasting third color where the overlaid text will go... but education/a popup couldn't hurt.