Note: this question has been seperately asked again for the Stack Overflow redesign. Post below is updated with these "NEW" values.
My question: could the background colors for questions marked as "favorite" on variuos SE sites be reviewed and where needed be updated to provide more contrast?
The reason I'm asking is because I like this feature a lot, but some SE sites have quite low contrast between favorite and non-favorite questions.
Originally I wanted to ask my question in the dba.SE meta site. However, there I found someone else asked my question a while ago. So instead I was about to try and give an answer to the question. For this I did a small experiment, determining contrast on several SE sites I like to visit.
SE Site Regular Highlight Contrast Ratio Color Difference ↓
--------------- ------- --------- -------------- ------------------
Stack Overflow OLD FFFFFF FFEFC6 1.14 73
Gaming FFFFFF DDF5FF 1.13 44
Cooking FFFDF1 F6F8DE 1.06 33
Stack Overflow NEW FFFFFF FFEFC6 1.06 30
Programmers F4F4F4 E9F2FD 1.03 22
Beta sites FDFDFD F2F7FE 1.06 18
Electronics FEFDF7 FEF8EA 1.04 18 *
Cycling FCFCFC FCF8EF 1.03 17 *
User Experience FFFFFF FFFBF2 1.03 17 (UX? d'oh!)
DBA FFFFFF FFFBF2 1.03 17 (!)
* Pattern background, colors are averaged.
The number in the last column matches with my own (subjective) experience: the difference between fav and normal question is hardest to see in those SE sites.
These results made me turn to the main Stack Overflow Meta, because perhaps the SE network would benefit from a broader review of these colors? Within my own particular subset of SE sites it's mainly UX and DBA where favorite questions don't pop out much.
Note on Cycling
The numbers for Cycling were a wee bit tricky, I noticed the background isn't a solid color. To get the colors for comparison I just a quick'n'dirty method: resize a sample to 1x1 px and use that color code (assuming/hoping my editor actually averages the color). For a screenshot comparison see the related meta question on cycling.
Note on the numbers
For the values above I used this online tool. I did not research available tools very deeply so if there are any objections to this particular one let me know, and I'll grab some results with a different tool.
Some screenshots
Here are some screens from the biggest contrast (SO) and the two low ones (UX and DBA):
Stack Overflow OLD
Stack Overflow NEW
User Experience
DBA