This one has had me upset ever since I made the switch to a dark theme. Designers rely on default font or background colors as they lay out their websites. This is entirely fine until you set just one and not the other. One might think that I am only talking about small sites here, but I just had to manually fix (on my browser) a field on this tiny little site called Facebook! I mean, really just over 300 million users, why bother with such a trivial thing like font color?
Here’s what I propose you do when you finish a layout. During testing set your browser’s default font color to white, default background to black, and see what you missed. I too am a developer and realize that time is money, but what are we talking here, 5 extra minutes? Like I said above, set both colors, or set neither and you will be fine. I almost feel a bit ridiculous taking the time to post something so trivial, but yet so important.
As today’s websites get more and more complicated, the need to pay attention to every detail becomes critical. I mean no disrespect to the Facebook designers and programmers, as I do realize the scope of the problems they tackle on a daily basis. I certainly just want to point out to any readers that no project is immune to this problem. I currently pay University of Phoenix thousands of dollars per year to use a system with this problem as well. I mean, they only have the largest student body in North America and ironically teach web design, so they should have caught this, right?
Thank goodness I can use Firebug and adjust my userContent.css to make these poorly designed sites even usable until this message gets out. I’m certainly not giving up my dark theme 
Elliot Lockman
February 22nd, 2010 at 13:56
One from today…I told some of the dev’s that some of the other dev’s furnish remarks on QA defect tickets and that those were helpful to me. When I enquired these other devs why they didn’t do the same thing they said “nobody ever reads those” and “I don’t have time for that” Uh, hi? Didn’t I just say I study them? It’s no coincidence that the devs who remark on their solutions have observably fewer defects in their computer code then the lot that imagine there is no time for remarks and no one reads them anyway.
phluffy
February 23rd, 2010 at 02:11
Isn’t that always the case… one fix overrides whatever was fixed last and we all end up in a perpetual cycle of repair. Job security, you bet! It’s high time that we all stand up and decide that we are not going to produce a substandard product simply because the time-line, the budget, or sheer laziness stand in the way. I can’t tell you how many projects I have “inherited” that the programmers neglected to properly comment and how many of my hours have been wasted trying to sift through the mess they left behind. Remind those devs that when they comment it will make them document what they were thinking at the time they wrote it, and that in itself will lead to fewer defects because they may not have solved all the problems that they set out to solve.
Mike at White Flood
March 1st, 2010 at 15:09
Hi, that’s a great tip – thanks! I’ve just never really caught on to CSS… and I know how to code old-school HTML, PHP, MySQL, C, etc. You do any work on the side? Anyway… cool site – I’m subscribed to your RSS feed now so thanks again!
admin
March 8th, 2010 at 02:17
Yes, Mike – I do work on the side. As a matter of fact that is a large portion of my current income. If you need help moving from “Old School” into the new, I can help you out. I would prefer to post your questions here on the blog, but let me know where you are having problems. Let me know what you need help with and I will get you my e-mail address.
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