Web Design: Grey Text on White Background. Solarize Color Disease
By Xah Lee. Date: . Last updated: .
Starting around 2010, more and more websites use grey text on white background, making it hard to read.
Exhibition
macOS software update 2017-12-12
racket scheme lisp web design, grey on white 2016-12-22
grey on white. 2012-08-16
Orange on Gray!
Can you read those orange texts?
(arstechnica screenshot, )
Greyer and Greyer!
grey on white. 2013-06-11
Gray on white. 2015-08-15
From Google. https://developer.chrome.com/devtools
web design gray on white. 2015-08-15.
From http://www.openstudio.fr/lab/jQuery-virtual-tour,67.html?lang=en
web design gray on white,
http://projectured.org/, as of 2014-03-15
Joe Arms's blog, inventor Erlang language, as of 2015-10-16.
[ source http://joearms.github.io/2013/05/31/a-week-with-elixir.html]
The Solarize Disease
There's a website called Solarize, that focuses on desigining the most readable color theme.
This is the disease that began the gray on white.
Witness:
Solarize website screenshot
Do you find the text easy to read?
Things get worse:
The Solarized color themes are low contrast, and supposedly works better when your computer display is under sunlight. Maybe so, but it looks terrible indoors.
