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I think Stack Exchange should allow users with a certain amount of reputation to use a custom css for customization of their viewing experience. Black-on-White strains the eyes immensely. Considering the fact that most programmers customize the colorscheme of the text editor they use for programming to a color less straining on their eyes and since most registered users with reputation points are programmers, I believe the Stack Exchange should have some customization features to reflect this practice.

Sure you can write a Greasemonkey script or whatnot to change the colorscheme but the modifications are exclusive to the user's computer; if they log onto the stack exchange using somebody else's computer the modifications are unavailable.

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    I'm not 100% sure why SE should implement this, and not a browser extension like <insert favorite styling tool here> - it seems like a lot of work for little gain.
    – Richard J. Ross III
    Commented Jun 18, 2013 at 3:56
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    This feels like something that should be solved on the user end rather than provided by SO (do you know any other major web site that offers this?) Is there no way to share GreaseMonkey scripts across computers? (There's this: lifehacker.com/241762/… but it's old and looks complicated)
    – Pekka
    Commented Jun 18, 2013 at 3:58
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    And personally, I like the current SE styles. It's clean, conisistent, and with a display managing tool like f.lux it's hardly strenuous on the eyes.
    – Richard J. Ross III
    Commented Jun 18, 2013 at 3:58
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    Mmm… does black on white strain eyes? “Immensely?” Do most programmers use a dark background? Keep it in user stylesheets.
    – Ry- Mod
    Commented Jun 18, 2013 at 4:01
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    @minitech It's a whole lot more strenuous than white on white.
    – Undo
    Commented Jun 18, 2013 at 4:04
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    @Undo that could make an awesome April fools joke. "Today, we are switching to a white-on-white theme, based on user feedback. Click here to temporarily opt-out."
    – Richard J. Ross III
    Commented Jun 18, 2013 at 4:10
  • @Richard 'If you dislike the new theme, send us an email with reference code in the subject line. The reference code is 26 characters, each one at a random point on your screen.'
    – Undo
    Commented Jun 18, 2013 at 4:32
  • If only there was a way to take your browser with you when you leave your computer...
    – John Dvorak
    Commented Jun 18, 2013 at 5:27
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    @HarshMadhani why? This is totally legit request. Not popular, but legit. Declining it is the way to "close" it, answers still can be posted to explain why.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Jun 18, 2013 at 7:31
  • The difference between this feature and a plugin for a browser that implements this feature is that if I access the Stack Exchange from a computer not my own, which I do quite often at school, once I log in, all my view settings are present. I mean, I just like customization of my viewing experience and prefer it to not be limited by the computer that I am using.
    – James Choi
    Commented Jul 30, 2013 at 23:26

1 Answer 1

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First off, I would like to debunk your claim that black text on white background is stressful on the eye.

Using white text on a black background is actually the most possible stress you can place on your eye

Forcing users to fixate on the white text for a long time can strain the user's eyes. This is because white stimulates all three types of color sensitive visual receptors in the human eye in nearly equal amounts. This makes reading white paragraph text on dark backgrounds stressful on the user's eyes.

White also reflects all wavelengths of light. Because the words and letters in paragraph text are compact and close together, when white text reflects light, the reflected light scatters and runs into neighboring words and letters. This makes the shape of the words and letters harder to perceive, which affects the user's readability. Compare that with black text, where the black absorbs the light around each word and letter, making them easy to distinguish.

More reading from UX.stackexchange (same conclusions): White text on black background, What is the best color combination for on screen reading?

Secondly, the issue of requesting Stack Exchange provide an implementation of user specific css styles. This request is pretty demanding, both of the team that spends many hours maintaining and improving the exchange, and on the servers which would have to serve all these new stylesheets. Stack Exchange is all about speed, almost to a fault (but not, because we all love the speed). In fact, recently the entire site's css was trimmed to get those extra few milliseconds for users.

There is nothing preventing you from running a user script to accomplish this or making a browser extension so if you really feel that strongly about the color scheme then I suggest you implement it locally.

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    For me, it not only about the color scheme. Wikipedia allows external javascript and css injection into their website if you are a registered user. Would loading an external resource for registered users be detrimental to the speed of the entire Exchange network? My viewing experience is tweaked just the way I like it; I can use google's prettify syntax highlighting, and be able to customize tremendous amounts of things I personally dislike about the site using javascript and jquery.
    – James Choi
    Commented Aug 10, 2013 at 1:55
  • "This makes reading white paragraph text on dark backgrounds stressful" - What is the source of this claim? Is the claim simply because some receptors are stimulated? Stimulated receptors do not necessarily result in stress. Otherwise, humans could not enjoy most activities, such as listening to music.
    – Amazon Dies In Darkness
    Commented Mar 1, 2020 at 6:22
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    "Using white text on a black background is actually the most possible stress you can place on your eye" - I beg to differ, I find reading yellow text on an orange background Extremely stressful
    – Nick is tired
    Commented Mar 31, 2020 at 9:25
  • So erm... If you're using a screen with white text, that actually means that the white text is emitting 'white' (i.e. more or less all visible colours) light. What this means is that the text is also absorbing white. Which means that what it's doing is not reflecting white light. Do tell me if my physics is wrong here, but emitting meaning absorbing meaning not reflecting is how everything else I can think of works... If anything (unless you have an anti-glare screen), what does reflect is black text
    – Mithrandir24601
    Commented Mar 31, 2020 at 9:38

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