Longer lines of text are harder to read. There's a reason newspapers, books, articles, etc are all vertical and often have a similar amount of words per line. It's easier to follow, scan, and find your place.
There's pretty much nothing in the natural world that has the contrast ratio a modern screen can produce. It is easier on the eyes to not have blindingly high contrast.
No printed page in any book or magazine you've seen has ever had contrast ratio a screen can show. It's just not possible to do.
Legibility can be an issue, and is good to discuss. I agree that when something like "@media (prefers-contrast: more)" is set, text should be at a higher contrast level for those with lower vision. But don't blind everyone else in the process.
>... the amount of times per day I ask myself if I’m literally going blind, only to find out the “designer” decided for me how I should best read their website.
Yes? That's what the designers of literally everything do, decide how it will be presented to you. The magic part of HTML/CSS is you can change that to suit your needs.
> There's pretty much nothing in the natural world that has the contrast ratio a modern screen can produce.
The natural world has much better contrast than the majority of screens. Not everyone has or affords a Mac Retina display.
The main issue is, that, since some 10 years, UX experts appeared who pushed away configurability in favor of gray on gray ( remember when you were able to select the background and foreground color ?).
The majority of screens have crappy contrasts (100:1).
Paper and ink have at best, a ~15:1 contrast ratio (bleached white paper and black ink).
> The majority of screens have crappy contrasts (100:1).
No idea where you're pulling this from. A MacBook Air display from 2010, a very average non-retina screen, has about 300:1. A modern MBA is over 1000:1 real-world contrast performance. A very average quality budget TN display from 2010s is 500:1.
I could not find a phone or desktop display at my local retailer with stated a contrast ratio lower than 1200:1 (stated vs real world will of course be different, but not hugely).
I agree apps/websites should take into account user preferences (with things like 'prefers-contrast' in CSS). I saw a great example recently where a website had a light/dark/hi-contrast toggle... but on first visit it defaulted to the one based on current system light/dark mode and 'prefers-contrast' indicators.
We can have both text that's easier for most people eyes and higher contrast and/or larger text for those who need it.
The idea that "nothing in the natural world has the contrast of a modern display" is backwards and keeps being repeated. The real world has far more contrast than any screen that can be manufactured.
Think about standing outside on a sunny day. The sunlit pavement might be tens of thousands of times brighter than the shadow under a tree. Look up at a bright cloud and then glance into a shaded doorway. Your eyes can still make out detail in both. The dynamic range of the real world the ratio between the darkest and brightest things present at the same time is enormous.
Cameras struggle with this. When you take a photo, the camera can't always capture both the bright sky and the dark ground correctly at the same time. Either the sky blows out to white or the shadows become black. That limitation is why HDR photography and exposure bracketing exists.
Even modern digital cameras still capture a far wider range of brightness than most displays can show. That's why we use tone mappers in photography and video. Tone mapping compresses the huge brightness range captured by the camera so it can fit onto a display that only has a tiny slice of that range.
So screens are not "more contrasty" than reality. They're the opposite. Displays are a bottleneck that force a very wide real world brightness range into something much smaller.
Your eyes are also incredibly good at adapting. If you look at a white page of paper in sunlight and then look at black ink on it, the contrast between the two is extremely strong. Snow in sunlight next to a dark rock is another example. Nature is full of intense light and dark differences.
When web developers avoid strong contrast because it feels "unnatural", they're misunderstanding the physics and the biology. High contrast between text and background isn't artificial at all. It's actually closer to how humans evolved to see clearly: dark shapes against bright surfaces or bright shapes against dark ones.
The real ergonomic problem with screens usually isn't contrast between text and background. It's screen brightness relative to the environment. Many people run their monitors far brighter than the room around them. If a screen is glowing like a light source in a dim room, the whole display becomes visually harsh and fatiguing. In ergonomics, the usual advice is to match the screen's brightness to the surrounding lighting so the display feels like part of the environment rather than a flashlight in your face.
When display brightness is set appropriately, strong text contrast simply improves legibility. The discomfort people blame on "too much contrast" is often just a monitor that's set far brighter than it should be. Reality itself contains vastly wider brightness differences than any display, so high contrast text isn't unnatural at all. It's a practical way to make information clear within the limited dynamic range that screens can actually show.
Sorry. I really meant that there's nothing people are reading or viewing that has higher contrast in the natural world. I should've been clearer (and less forthright).
Your points about day/shade contrast and eyes adjusting are correct, as are screen brightness levels people use.
> Look up at a bright cloud and then glance into a shaded doorway.
Yes, and that causes strain on the eyes. Our eyes very are good at adapting (as you said), but it is not pleasant to do rapidly or while trying to concentrate and interpret text.
Bleached white paper and black ink is (pretty generously) ~15:1 contrast ratio in a well lit room, which any half decent screen in the past 20 years surpass.
Pure black/white text is harder to read on screens since they are producing and pushing light at you (as opposed bouncing back ambient light like on paper). We have never seen text printed on paper at the contrast ratios a modern screen can produce, since there is no paper white enough or ink dark enough.
There are many things with typography that are finicky and sometimes counter-intuitive. Making text bigger and all-caps won't always make something more readable (see here: https://www.mentalfloss.com/transportation/roads/why-road-si...), likewise more contrast doesn't always make it more readable for everyone.
Of course there are people who require more contrast and larger type sizes and the great part about reading stuff on screens is we can often accommodate that better. Some websites/apps/etc handle accessibility options well and some really don't.
So I kind of went on a much longer thing than I wanted to... oh well. Sorry if I was too forthright in my initial comment, I guess clarity in intent/meaning can be just as important as readability.
They have huge gutters and margins, and not-quite-black text on creme/off-white/never-actually-white backgrounds... why? Because it's easier of the eyes for long blocks of text.
The app has always followed the masOS design language, because the app is built using the native macOS tools. It makes sense for it to match the OS it's on, apps built with stand UI components migrated to 'Liquid glass' much easier.
It doesn't make sense because the previous version also matches the OS it's on, liquid glass degradation isn't mandatory and "much easier" is still harder than doing the better nothing.
Your suggestion is just as senseless: among the many things wrong with such a "write the app yourself" approach, you forgot about iOS, even though it's mentioned in the original comment, where you can't freely backport anything due to distribution being locked down
It makes sense. Like you said, previous versions used the macOS design language at the time, and the current version does the same. The developer has chosen to no longer support older versions of macOS, they aren't required to. The old app still works, and anyone else can work on it if they want.
> you forgot about iOS, even though it's mentioned in the original comment, where you can't freely backport anything due to distribution being locked down
Yes you can. You can create an app today that is compatible with iOS 15.
You create a backport just for yourself for your own device without needing the store, no distribution/App Store is needed.
You don't like some of the Liquid Glass stuff... fine, make something else. The old versions still work, I don't really know what you are complaining about. This level of support and polish in a free app is amazing.
> You create a backport just for yourself for your own device without needing the store, no distribution/App Store is needed.
It is needed, you can't install a custom app permanently on iOS. By the way, what if you only have iOS and not a Mac? How would you compile your backport?
> The old versions still work
I've already addressed it, come back with something meaningful rather than repeat
> I don't really know what you are complaining about.
I've explained it to you several times, maybe you can get that knowledge by reading the conversation carefully?
Apple makes huge claims about their involvement in advancing things like inclusion and diversity, workers rights, privacy rights, equity and justice. They literally sell pride merch which they make a profit from.
Apple market themselves as being an ethical choice of companies regarding human rights, when they throw that out the window with shit like this, people get pissed.
Being arrested is fine if due process is followed. ICE isn't following due process because they are pieces of shit.
Multiple times now they've been found to have removed innocent people with little chance of recourse. Only after huge public outcry have ICE been shamed into returning a select few.
So 100% people should be avoiding potential removal without due process.
There's individual cases of unconstitutional behaviour, but ICE itself isn't unconstitutional. It was unconstitutional to effectively lock people in their homes during covid, but it was done anyway.
It’s unconstitutional to raid an entire apartment building and force everyone out as they search for potential “illegals” to take away without due process.
We are far beyond a couple an individual cases, it’s become the norm.
Stay at home orders for health reasons are constitutional. Also, in countries that had stricter rules far fewer people died.
When bringing comparisons to a discussion… check if you’re right, and maybe check if it’s even a good comparison.
Just to be clear, you are cool with and believe it’s constitutional for an entire building of residents to be forced to leave and have their homes searched?
They need a warrant for each place of residence (each apartment), they did not have that.
Let's say there are "illegals" in Utah .. that seems a certainty.
It appears you are stating as fact that it's A-OK and constitutional to force every resident of Utah from their home in a search for rumored "illegals".
Some more on this below:
Optimal Line Length in Reading — A Literature Review (https://journals.uc.edu/index.php/vl/article/view/5765)
Practical Typography — Line Length (https://practicaltypography.com/line-length.html)