Microsoft Defeats Readability on their Websites

[Chad Harris]

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

 

[Kerry Brown]

They show up fine on my monitor. Have you tired the pages in question on a
different computer and/or monitor. I did have problems with a couple of the
pages not displaying properly in Firefox. I guess Microsoft doesn't like to
admit that a lot of people use an alternative to IE.

 

[Peter M]

Looks fine on my monitor in both IE and Firefox.

 

[dotcom]

Looks fine here too and I would normally be one of the first to *itch about
things like that.
Maybe it's your monitor and/or settings Chad?
dotcom

 

[Chad Harris]

The monitor is a good point. I hope to replace this one soon, and I'll try
them on several monitors.

I've sure tried them though with every permutation and combination of
Displaces Property tab theme and color tweak avaialable in Vista and XP and
many types of themes from Style XP and Stardocks and that doesn't make any
difference.

***Tell me what you see on that Help page under the icons, Kerry and for
some reason it seems to be a trend on many of the msn sites, including the
spaces done by a lot of MSFT teams.

Do you see pale blue font here under "Find Out More"?

http://www.windowsonecare.com/


Here's a great example of font stupidity? MSFT has started a trend to make
urls more out of the way, and harder to find by doing things like this site:

http://on10.net/

The "like valley girl like refugees from what Comcast did to Tech TV" G4
that is the lowest ranked cable show on the planet literally now, have a
pale blue font that is impossible to read in their links section on the
right.

Whazzup with MSFT which is already a non-transparent, disingenuous,
non-intuitive in the real world company to the max making their site urls
out of the way and harder to find?

Is that part of their elite exclusivity doctrine?

CH

 

[Chupacabra]

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

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...

Are you running in 16-color mode?

 

[Chupacabra]

I don't know if I'm getting across what bothers me, so I'll try a
screenshot. It's the paleness of the fonts. Here's the point:

I dunno, those fonts in your screenshot are perfectly readable to me...

 

[Chad Harris]

Nope--I always run for maximal color given what Windows offers. I never
have done that. If I said yellow instead of greay than when you mouseover
it becomes pale yellow. A great example is a link on the so called Windows
Vista Team Blog run by Nick White (there are hundreds of Vista teams) but
anyway...

I see what you mean. I should have been clearer. It's ridiculously pale
gray on white. I'm not trying to split hairs here or be overly critical by
any means, I've just noticed for months, particularly on MSFT blogs on
Technet and MSDN, many of the MSN team blogs, and now many of the Vista
sites like this Help portal, that they seem to want to use the palest font
possible on white.

Look at http://blogs.technet.com/windowsvista/archive/2006/7/28.aspx

Look at

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

It's gray to the point of almost perfect camouflage. The Israelis only wish
they could dress like that as they try to unearth the tunnels where
Hezbullah darts out of the ground and launches missles straight at civilian
targets into cities as they have been since their existence.

Go over to Comments for this statement on Nick White's site (which by the
way is totally false and disingenuous because he won't respond to the fact
that Connect is a blind alley for public access to their feedback and
mouseover and the pale gray turns to yellow. I have a screenshot up of what
I mean on this thread Chupacabra.

CH

 

[Chupacabra]

Try rolling your mouse pointer over the greyed out text.

Tried that, but even the yellow font it changes to on a mouseover is fairly
legible on my monitor at least...

 

[Bioboffin]

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...

Are you running in 16-color mode?

Try rolling your mouse pointer over the greyed out text.

 

[Chupacabra]

There is a screen shot that is at the bottom of the thread above this one,
or I'll put it on this one too at the bottom if for any reason you are
unable to open the .jpeg on your box. Just scroll down to the bottom of
the thread's posts on the post above this one and you can see it.

I've looked at your screen shot a few times now, and the text that you've
highlighted with the red lines are very bold and easily readable. Granted,
they're larger than normal probably, but there is plenty of contrast and
they are not difficult to read in the least.

Of course, that's how I'm seeing it on my monitor - I understand that what
I'm seeing may be totally different than what you're seeing.

 

[Kerry Brown]

I dunno, those fonts in your screenshot are perfectly readable to me...

Same with me. I hate to ask but have you been tested for colour blindness?
They are pale but easily readable to me. After some investigation I don't
think it is a monitor issue as I initially posted. I tried half a dozen
different computers and it was readable on all of them for me. If it is a
colour blindness issue it should be changed. Many people have trouble
distinguishing some colours. I am sure Microsoft can afford to hire a
consultant who could advise them on the issue. Lodge a formal complaint
mentioning possible colour blindness problems.

 

[dotcom]

Ok I see what you are saying. What you are calling yellow is a lime green
on mine and is a little hard to see and could be better, but all the rest
looks fine on my monitor.
dotcom

 

[Chupacabra]

The grayed out text is incredibly ridiculous. And when you roll the
pointer over you get pale yellow on white. I want to list the sites I
have in the screenshot that is below the posts here (scroll to bottom of
this message):

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

#3 http://blogs.technet.com/windowsvista/archive/2006/7/28.aspx

And here's an example of readable but a ridiculous color choice:
http://gallery.live.com/

Look at the screenshot below unless it doesn't make it onto this post.

Chad,

I tried the gallery.live.com site, and I get dark grey URL's on a light grey
background. Mousing over them turns them blue, but in no case has the
background ever turned white.

On the windowshelp.microsoft.com site, the URL's are again dark grey on a
light grey background, and they turn yellow when moused over. I can easily
read them either way. Again, the background never turns white (at least for
me they don't).

I can see if the background did turn white that the URL's would be hard to
read, but at least for me that's not happening. I've tried it in IE7 and
Firefox 1.5.06 and get the same results in both browsers.

 

[Chad Harris]

I did--it's just as bad--pale yellow.

CH

Try rolling your mouse pointer over the greyed out text.

 

[Chad Harris]

Good enough question, but I'm not "color blind" at all. Or more accurately
since there is no such thing as color "blindness" I don't have any of the
congenital or acquired retinal cone diseases. Color blind is a misnomer--the
term really means a gamut of conditions due to lack of certain pigment
receptors in the cones congenital or acquired. It's rare in women but
impacts 1/10 men.

http://www.toledo-bend.com/colorblind/aboutCB.html

Also the question keeps coming up as to 16 bit color--I always run in max
color mode. My two current OS choices are XP and Vista. I have tweaked all
the NVidia color choices as well on Display properties>Settings>Advanced
Button>Color and Nvidia tabs (contrast and color on the Nvidia tab).

There are three basic variants of color blindness. Red/green color blindness
(deuteranopia) is the most common deficiency, affecting 8% of Caucasian
males and 0.5% of Caucasian females. The prevalence varies with culture.
Blue color blindness (protanopia) is an inability to distinguish both blue
and yellow, which are seen as white or gray. Protanopia is quite rare and
has equal prevalence in males and females. It is common for young children
to have blue/green confusion that becomes less pronounced in adulthood. Blue
color deficiency often appears in people who have physical disorders such as
liver disease or diabetes mellitus.

A total inability to distinguish colors (achromatopsia) is exceedingly rare.
These affected individuals view the world in shades of gray. They frequently
have poor visual acuity and are extremely sensitive to light (photophobia),
which causes them to squint in ordinary light.

Researchers studying red/green color blindness in the United Kingdom
reported an average prevalence of only 4.7% in one group. Only 1% of Eskimo
males are color blind. Approximately 2.9% of boys from Saudi Arabia and 3.7%
from India were found to have deficient color vision. Red/green color
blindness may slightly increase an affected person's chances of contracting
leprosy. Pre-term infants exhibit an increased prevalence of blue color
blindness. Achromatopsia has a prevalence of about 1 in 33,000 in the United
States and affects males and females equally



Causes and symptoms

Red/green and blue color blindness appear to be located on at least two
different gene locations. The majority of affected individuals are males.
Females are carriers, but are not normally affected. This indicates that the
X chromosome is one of the locations for color blindness. Male offspring of
females who carry the altered gene have a 50-50 chance of being color-blind.
The rare female that has red/green color blindness, or rarer still, blue
color blindness, indicates there is an involvement of another gene. As of
2001, the location of this gene has not been identified.

Achromatopsia, the complete inability to distinguish color, is an autosomal
recessive disease of the retina. This means that both parents have one copy
of the altered gene but do not have the disease. Each of their children has
a 25% chance of not having the gene, a 50% chance of having one altered gene
(and, like the parents, being unaffected), and a 25% risk of having both the
altered gene and the condition. In 1997, the achromatopsia gene was located
on chromosome 2.

The inability to correctly identify colors is the only sign of color
blindness. It is important to note that people with red/green or blue
varieties of color blindness use other cues such as color saturation and
object shape or location to distinguish colors. They can often distinguish
red or green if they can visually compare the colors. However, most have
difficulty accurately identifying colors without any other references. Most
people with any impairment in color vision learn colors, as do other young
children. These individuals often reach adolescence before their visual
deficiency is identified.

Treatment

There is no treatment or cure for color blindness. Most color vision
deficient persons compensate well for their abnormality and usually rely on
color cues and details that are not consciously evident to persons with
typical color vision.

"Color Blindness" Check

http://www.geocities.com/heartland/8833/coloreye.html

And btw none of the designers of these sites, all MSFT employees, have
followed suggestions here from you guessed it, MSFT:

Choose the right colors for your PowerPoint presentation
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA010120721033.aspx

CH

 

[Steve Urbach]

I don't know if I'm getting across what bothers me, so I'll try a
screenshot. It's the paleness of the fonts. Here's the point:

I don't have trouble reading most other sites on the planet. I'm sure a new
monitor is going to have more brilliant color by every criteria that
measures parameters that monitors advertise, but I doubt that will change
the colors here. Take a look at the screenshots.

CH

No problem on my cheapish 15" LCD
The olive green Comments lacks the contrast of the other colors, but
is readable.

 

[Kerry Brown]

Good enough question, but I'm not "color blind" at all. Or more
accurately since there is no such thing as color "blindness" I don't
have any of the congenital or acquired retinal cone diseases. Color
blind is a misnomer--the term really means a gamut of conditions due
to lack of certain pigment receptors in the cones congenital or
acquired. It's rare in women but impacts 1/10 men.

I was aware of the statistics and the different types of "colour blindness".
I guess that's not the issue. I have looked at your screen shots and the web
sites on several computers with XP and Vista, LCD and CRT monitors. I have
no problems reading the text on any of them. I agree that the colours
choices are poor but for me on all the systems I tested on the text was
clear and readable.

 

[Chupacabra]

Also the question keeps coming up as to 16 bit color--I always run in max

I didn't ask if you were running 16-bit color, I asked if you were running
16-color mode

Just having a goof with you on this one...

 

[Chad Harris]

Kerry I can read them--I appreciate your points as always, but I find them
unnecessarily difficult to read and I sort of draw the analogy I do when my
ISP does such a crappy job of communicating outages to their support lines
so I can know I have to wait for them to fix the lines outside--it's
MSFT--and MSFT has some terribly talented color experts at MSFT research and
throughout that campus and some very talented web designers. So I don't
understand how so many softies make it difficult to read.

CH