White bkgrd/black text or black bkgrd/white text

I'm updating my website and thinking about using white text on a black background, but thought that might be hard on the eyes. Comments welcome!

Unless your site has something really important on it that I couldn't find anywhere else, I'd leave if you had white on black. It's not too bad as long as the user isn't staying for very long or reading a long, text-heavy article, but black on white is always better IMO.

So if my site contains primarily facts, lists, and short descriptions...white text on a black background is okay? Thanks.

It depends on how it's incorporated into the site as a whole. Generally speaking though, black on white good, white on black bad. If it's a link in the nav menu, I'd say that's okay, but if it's something you have to read, I'm probably leaving.

I used to use black backgrounds a lot, mainly b/c most used white backgrounds. Then I realized that most use white backgrounds for a reason. Main text should be black (or dark) on white.

On a side note ... if you use CSS, you can easily switch b/w the two after the site is built to see the difference.

I agree with jharnois, easier on the eyes when reading.

Some Cool black bg sites however:
http://www.thedarknessrock.com/
http://www.harley-davidson.com/en/h...&bmLocale=en_US

It doesn't work on everything of course, imagine if the Google result page has a black BG ... hmm, then again Seti at home http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/ has a black BG, I guess since they are dealing with outer space, black BG is like a space metaphor I suppose - deep, mysterious, the unknown... that kind of thing ...

Testing b 4 production might save some time, maybe photoshop mockups

Here's some test pages...
http://www.twcclassics.com/newsite
http://www.twcclassics.com/newsite/white

Feel free to comment. Thanks!

On the all black one, everything looks fine until I hit that full paragraph, then I have a hard time reading it b/c my eyes keep refocusing (maybe that's my eyes). The second one is better in the sense of the paragraph, but I don't like how you incorporated the white background into the black background. I don't really have many suggestions about how you could improve that one. One thing that might help with the white on black would be to increase the line height.

hi marron79, looks like you were grumbling and very grumpy when you had to do the whiteBG version

You could keep the top bar black only and the bottom all white, but ... if you really want it black, its your site ...

Yeah the line height could be adjusted maybe via p or td { line-height: XXX% } not sure your setup ...

again going back to what jharnois said, doing a full CSS site (with wswitchable styles) could yeild many possibilities, it'll take a lot more effort to start off but amazing results (and satisfaction could await you) heres some amazing examples:
http://csszengarden.com/ (if you've never been there, 'select design' on the right to check it out)

cheers

I really appreciate all of your feedback thusfar! I updated the white background version of my page using BamBam's suggestion. Let me know if it's any better.

http://www.twcclassics.com/newsite/white

I want the new layout of my site to be interesting, yet simple (ie. not cluttered or confusing). Kind of like Google, but not as bare-bones or too simple. While I naturally prefer to use my ideas, I don't want to turn people off.

Hi marron79, only text version is served, NO images or CSS available on your page ... Just black and white, no other colors, which is actually quite cool

Just a suggestion, you could use less saturated colors instead of the strong red and blue used previously on the navigation. This is so that the navigation doesn't grab too much attention, I think where you placed the navigation elements make them pretty hard to miss. So don't really need the strong colors there. Choose colors that will make the page look harmonious instead.

Doh! I forgot to change the base URL from localhost to twcclassics.com! That's one of the drawbacks of editing your website on your intranet server, then uploading it to an internet server. You don't realize that you forgot to change the base URL until you view the site on another computer!

Anyway, it works now. I also changed the colors a bit, per your suggestion. Also, look at the layout of my old site. It's very clean and non-cluttered, but I also think it's kind of boring. Which one do you like best?

http://www.twcclassics.com/newsite/white
http://www.twcclassics.com/2003/?updates

Thanks again!

Ah yes, that's much better (new newsite compared to old newsite). I really like the old site too. Plain, simple, easy. But the newest of your new site is similar (or at least it looks like when it's polished it will look similar), just with different colors. Looks like it made the short drive to the dark side of the internet.

FYI: There is a margin in the right side of your black/red header bars in Mozilla.

Also, if that admin section is going to be anything other than what it is right now, I suggest you put some password protection on it somehow

I updated my old site's layout a bit. Nothing drastic, just got rid of some needless stuff. So, of the two below, which do you like the best?

http://www.twcclassics.com/newsite/old
http://www.twcclassics.com/newsite/white

I suppose I could just let the user decide, but that might take a lot more work compared to using style sheets to change colors and fonts.

Thanks for the Mozilla tip! I can't really picture what you mean about the margins, but the admin link is in a comment tag on both pages (white and black background), so I'm quite surprised you were able to see it!!