forlesen wrote:jfgw wrote:
The backgrounds of posts alternate between two shades of light blue.
Examples:
Black: ##########
The lighter blue is ECF3F7: ########## (Invisible)
The darker blue is E1EBF2: ########## (Just visible)
Julian F. G. W.
So, trying to optimise this, a colour like E7EFF5 should split the difference between the two background colours used.
##########Yes, that is very hard to read.
Until it's quoted and so has a pale yellow background, when all of those are just visible - though I wouldn't say readable! So maybe one ideally needs the colour value for quote backgrounds as well, and to average between all three. Or rather, the two colour values for quote backgrounds and to average between all four, as nested quotes seem to be done with alternating background colours as well (see the 5th post of the thread for an example containing a triply-nested quote). Those colour values don't seem to be visible in the page source, unfortunately, at least to my rather inexpert eye (I did know HTML quite well at one point, to the point that I could write simple pages in HTML fairly efficiently by hand, and indeed I still can, but that was many years ago and the language has moved on a long way since then - so I'm anything but an expert now!).
It should also be said that I don't think complete invisibility is desirable - barely visible that something is there but unreadable is better, because uninitiated new users are less likely to be fooled into thinking that it's just a bit of white space left as a separator for some unknown reason, and thus to look for a method to read it.
Finally, I'll note that even if one goes to the trouble of making stuff completely invisible by matching the colour used to where the post will appear in the alternation, as jfgw did above, it can still go wrong in the topic review that appears at the bottom of the page when one is composing a reply, because posts appear in reverse time order there. While I've been composing this reply, his examples as seen there get the "Invisible" and "Just visible" labels entirely the wrong way around! (But they'll presumably be the right way around for whoever composes the next reply after this one...)
Gengulphus