Hi, For years, I've had my browser setup to ignore colors and use a black background. I did it mostly to be easier on my eyes. But this recent Slashdot artice, Change Google's Background Color To Save Energy? made me think (ducking :-) ) : should perlmonks adopt a black background as default?

P.S. And yes, I'll get the joke in first..... once you go black, you'll never go back. :-)

I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. Cogito ergo sum a bum

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: go green by going black
by zer (Deacon) on Jul 27, 2007 at 14:12 UTC
    "They did some tests using Blackle, Google and the New York Times on a CTD and LCD monitor and found the difference 'so slight as to be within the margin of error for the power meter'." - nature.com blog
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Re: go green by going black
by TimToady (Parson) on Jul 27, 2007 at 20:14 UTC
    It's not going to make any difference right now with backlit displays, but eventually we might all have OLEDs or some such that produces the light right in the individual pixels, and then it might make some difference. I certainly look forward to my black backgrounds making my laptop run a little longer on battery some day.
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Re: go green by going black
by merlyn (Sage) on Jul 29, 2007 at 01:25 UTC
    I actually have a hard time reading a screen that is light characters on a dark background. I'm not sure why that is, but whenever I try to flip it from my preferred black-on-near-white, it just doesn't scan in my head as well.

    So, to quote the words of that immortal muppet philosopher... "It's not that easy, being green...".

    -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

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      White letters on black is hard on my eyes too. I have the text foreground, set to a shade of burnt-orange-yellow, which stands out nicely from the black, but the contrast is muted so it's easier to visually grab. The only white entities I see, are empty checkboxes, and they burn my eyes when I stare at them. My links are lightblue and purple.

      The white on black problem must come from the high frequency edges of the transition from high levels of photons(white) to no photons( pure black ).

      I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. Cogito ergo sum a bum
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        The only white entities I see, are empty checkboxes, and they burn my eyes when I stare at them

        Bloody annoying, isn't it. (They burn my eyes, irrespective of whether I stare at them.) Is there nothing that can be done to remedy this ?

        Cheers,
        Rob
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      Have you tried wheat on (midnight)blue? It seems to work well in that there isn't ulra-high contrast, but it is certainly paler than black on white. I wonder if the fact that one channel (B) is then being mostly used for the background (augmented by physiological quirks), and the others (R&G) are being used for the foreground has anything to do with legibility.

      --
      In Bob We Trust, All Others Bring Data.

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Re: go green by going black
by spatterson (Pilgrim) on Jul 27, 2007 at 13:54 UTC
    Ah, but your monitor is still emitting light, even if you set it all to black on a black background. Now if we can get everyone to dig out 8" monitors from the 70s then we'll see some savings :P
    just another cpan module author
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      ....err, I'm not sure my 5" monitor ever drew less than 2.2A, unless it was unplugged!

      That doesn't seem likely to be much help.

      Of course, the screen was black when it was turned off (well, dirty gray, anyway), so maybe that would fit into the solution: find a way to render the screens on a monitor that's unplugged.

      Black paper with white overprint, anyone?

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Re: go green by going black
by OverlordQ (Hermit) on Jul 28, 2007 at 06:23 UTC
    I must admit, I had to log out to remember what the default color was. Been so long that I thought the default *was* black. :-(
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