Microsoft Defeats Readability on their Websites

  • Thread starter Thread starter Chad Harris
  • Start date Start date
It's a subjective thing I guess. I just realised I actually use almost the
same colours for the text links at the bottom of my VistaHelp.ca site :-) I
didn't pick the colours though. They were the default in the Expression Web
Designer template I used. I guess somebody at Microsoft likes those colours
:-)
 
Yeah, Kerry but you can apply a hex color chart. I wouldn't dream of making
color lack of contrast like those examples. I wish I knew what they looked
like to the rest of you, because I have brilliant colors on every other site
and I see the same thing that other people I've sent screenshots to see on
all of those.

CH
 
Chad Harris said:
There is a disturbing trend on many MSFT web site pages and MSN Live pages
to put a pale yellow font on a white background. I couldn't devise a more
difficult combination to read and I suspect if I searched physics literature
on color and vision, or the medical literature either the opthalmology
literature, the neurology literature or the opthalmology neurology
literature on color vision, I would come up with some appropriate
descriptive terms.

Often the most pale off-white, light grey or light yellow imaginable is
deployed on a white background.

Does anyone find this font easy to read on a site that can develop into a
very useful one, particularly for less advanced and mid level users of
Vista?

Underneath the icons, on a white background is pale yellow font. Who in the
world would believe this is not the most difficult way possible to confer
readability?

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/default.mspx

This hair brained color scheme is becoming pandemic on www.microsoft.com and
on MSN Live sites, and on the new breed of off url MSFT sites.

http://hive.net uses orange on white which is not much better.

Notice how making the font a little bit darker improves this very difficult
reading situation.

Doesn't anyone know how to use hex color codes that does web pages for the
Softies?

http://ideas.live.com/

CH
Click to expand...
Hi Chad
You might try lowering the brightness and increasing the contrast on your
monitor to improve your ability to read these not-so-wonderful
font/background combos.
What really p!sses me off is that M$ seems to never have heard of "wrap to
frame"
Thanks for your many helpful a/o interesting posts!
Art
 
Thanks much Art.

As someone who doesn't know how to use Front Page but has it, and hope to
learn to use Dream Weaver some day, and who doesn't know much about making a
web page thanks for giving me the term to look up Art. Any other insights
are much appreciated. I'll try turning down brightness and experimenting
with contrast to the extent I can with my Nvidia, and my monitor settings.

I hope to get a new monitor soon, and a new card. I am anxious to read up
on "wrap to frame." Geeze are the backgrounds terrible. I can even do
better on my MSN space page with hex charts customizing the MSN space than
most softies do who use it for team blogs. I can do much much better than
the Windows Live team who has the benefit of MSFT researcher personnel
borrowed for their team for things like the map app.

Boy the contrast on this sucks!

http://local.live.com/


CH
 
Wow, sure did generate a lot of... hmmm... traffic... on this thread.

Looks fine to me. Mouse over looks more orange to me than light yellow.
Sounds like a video card and/or monitor issue...

Lang
 
It will be interesting to see if video card changes it, Lnag,, but I have
to tell you I can find a gamut of sites with brilliant colors that have been
around for a long time and they still look great. Many of the MSN spaces by
teams from MSFT, MSN suck as to the color choices of pale anything on white.
I don't see it in the rest of the sites in the world, or in the space I made
because I chose very contrasting colors with a dark background and easily
read fonts.

CH
 
around for a long time and they still look great. Many of the MSN spaces
by teams from MSFT, MSN suck as to the color choices of pale anything on
white.
Click to expand...

This is what confuses me. You keep mentioning pale colors on white, but I
don't see anything in your example URLs that shows up as a pale color on
white. It's all on a grey background. Is it possible that for whatever
reason the grey background isn't rendering on your system?
 
I did--it's just as bad--pale yellow.

CH
Click to expand...

Quite. I was just pointing out to Chupacabra that his assertion in reply to
you:

"The text under the icons is grey on my system, and fairly readable. It
could be a few shades darker, but it's not yellow by any stretch..."

was not actually correct.
 
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