Has anyone solved this intractable problem?

The tabs on dialogue boxes are too faint, as are most street lines on
Google Maps. In fact they're all too faint and I'm getting eye
strain. In File Explorer the borders of the search box can be hardly
discerned and all else is too faint too.
Where is the adjustment for this? It has always been OK in the past.
Please help....desperate!

"Peter Jason" wrote

| The tabs on dialogue boxes are too faint, as are most street lines on
| Google Maps. In fact they're all too faint and I'm getting eye
| strain. In File Explorer the borders of the search box can be hardly
| discerned and all else is too faint too.
| Where is the adjustment for this? It has always been OK in the past.
| Please help....desperate!

Is that your sight or a monitor problem? One idea would
be to reduce the brightness and lower the "gamma" in your
monitor settings. In my experience, most monitors are
set too bright by default.

On 11/14/19 8:37 PM, Mayayana wrote:
"Peter Jason" wrote

| The tabs on dialogue boxes are too faint, as are most street lines on
| Google Maps. In fact they're all too faint and I'm getting eye
| strain. In File Explorer the borders of the search box can be hardly
| discerned and all else is too faint too.
| Where is the adjustment for this? It has always been OK in the past.
| Please help....desperate!

Is that your sight or a monitor problem? One idea would
be to reduce the brightness and lower the "gamma" in your
monitor settings. In my experience, most monitors are
set too bright by default.


That and try the contrast too.
There are web pages/sites that will give you several screens of
colors/patterns and instructions on setting the proper
brightness/contrast and color hues.

I have however read that others are complaining about the lack of
contrast and readability in software and more specific web pages. Old
standards of web design (specifically) with white on black but changing
to a lighter black (grays) on white or off whites. I think it's
carrying over into OS/software design too. I hate and literally leave
sites immediately if the print is yellow on pale green or gray on light
blue etc. Odd that this poor presentation is so prevalent in a time
when there is a larger older generation. I guess things are aimed more
and the millenniums. I hope it's just your monitor settings.

I got away from windows to Linux (and I'm not trying to profuse the OS)
so I could change color themes for the desktop to get readable colors as
well as fonts. I've designed my own theme now over 5 years that is 100%
readable both font sizes and colors.

Okay, I'm off my soap box.

On 15/11/2019 01:26, Peter Jason wrote:
The tabs on dialogue boxes are too faint, as are most street lines on
Google Maps. In fact they're all too faint and I'm getting eye
strain. In File Explorer the borders of the search box can be hardly
discerned and all else is too faint too.
Where is the adjustment for this? It has always been OK in the past.
Please help....desperate!
Settings Ease of Access Color & High Contrast.

The Australian fire must have mushroomed your machine!!!





--
With over 1,000,000 million devices now running Windows 10, customer
satisfaction is higher than any previous version of windows.

On 11/14/19 6:26 PM, Peter Jason wrote:
The tabs on dialogue boxes are too faint, as are most street lines on
Google Maps. In fact they're all too faint and I'm getting eye
strain. In File Explorer the borders of the search box can be hardly
discerned and all else is too faint too.
Where is the adjustment for this? It has always been OK in the past.
Please help....desperate!

Hi, Peter.

I truly hope it's just an adjustment at your end, but as an FYI for
everyone...

I've learned over the last few years that some monitors appear to be
incapable of displaying colors accurately. Notably light greys, light
blues, and seemingly light yellows.

For about a year and a half, I worked at a repair shop where we used an
online maintenance program. The programmers used a light grey
background for the screen, while data fields were white with no borders.
You could not tell where the fields ended and the background started.

But, tilt the top of the monitor away from you at about 45Ëš, and the
grey was plain as day.

I also created a super simple website for computer illiterate seniors.
The color inside a bounded area is a light sandy tan on the iMac I used
to create the site, a Dell U2412M, and an Asus ProArt PA248 monitors.
At the same time, I've seen other monitors and laptops display that area
as white, or some other horrible color, that I know is wrong.


--
Ken
MacOS 10.14.6
Firefox 69.0.2
Thunderbird 60.9
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

Thanks to all. My monitor is about 10 years old (a Benq) and I'm
trying the hi-contrast settings. This looks good.

Ken Springer wrote:
On 11/14/19 6:26 PM, Peter Jason wrote:
The tabs on dialogue boxes are too faint, as are most street lines on
Google Maps. In fact they're all too faint and I'm getting eye
strain. In File Explorer the borders of the search box can be hardly
discerned and all else is too faint too.
Where is the adjustment for this? It has always been OK in the past.
Please help....desperate!

Hi, Peter.

I truly hope it's just an adjustment at your end, but as an FYI for
everyone...

I've learned over the last few years that some monitors appear to be
incapable of displaying colors accurately. Notably light greys, light
blues, and seemingly light yellows.

For about a year and a half, I worked at a repair shop where we used an
online maintenance program. The programmers used a light grey
background for the screen, while data fields were white with no borders.
You could not tell where the fields ended and the background started.

But, tilt the top of the monitor away from you at about 45Ëš, and the
grey was plain as day.

I also created a super simple website for computer illiterate seniors.
The color inside a bounded area is a light sandy tan on the iMac I used
to create the site, a Dell U2412M, and an Asus ProArt PA248 monitors. At
the same time, I've seen other monitors and laptops display that area as
white, or some other horrible color, that I know is wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LCD_matrices

TN+Film Matrices === tip yer screen at 45 degrees (my laptop!)

IPS Matrices === large viewing angle, user may move head around
MVA Matrices
PVA Matrices

The latter three are probably better to look at.

The first one wins on response time. So if you want 1ms GTG, then
a TN panel (and lighting tricks) can give it to you. There would be
"less pixel trails" behind fast-moving objects with TN.

But if you actually care to be able to read the screen, you don't want TN.

Once you have your IPS panel, response time isn't as bad as
it used to be. And that's also partly because the "specsmanship"
has changed. The previous response spec was hard to meet, and
you'd get specs like "25 milliseconds". The newer GTG spec is
easier to meet, so the TN panel gets a 1 millisecond spec
on a gaming monitor.

If you want to do Photoshop, you at least want to avoid
the TN panel. You'll also want a panel where the
"dynamic contrast" feature can be turned off, changing
the contrast spec from 1000000:1 to 1000:1 (closer to
the physical limits of contrast, of the panel). The
million to one spec is "fake", in the sense that it
isn't all that useful. It looks good on full screen
movie playback, but may not be ideal for a lot of other
uses. And you don't want to leave it on "Auto" and
allow the panel to analyze the content and "make
its own mind up". As you work on your Photoshop image,
the color could be "flapping about".

Panels also come in a variety of bit depths. A cheap TN panel
is 6 bit, and achieves 8 bit color by "dithering". There are
honest-to-goodness 8 bit panels, and a few 10 bit panels.
(The 10 bit panels need a bit more cable bandwidth
to do what they do.) I've seen specs for at least one
4K screen that has 10 bit color. It's not exactly cheap.

But this doesn't answer Peters question, and there
are too many items in the software that could be
screwing up the color choices.

I have that problem here on my own gear - I'm unable
to get "black blacks" when I print to the inkjet. I was
able to get a decent black at one time, but not any more.
And I can't figure out what setting I might have changed.
And it was doing that, right after a cart change-out too.
When you change carts, that gives you new heads (and new
2 picoliter ink pumps).

You can calibrate a screen with a Spyder. Or, if your
monitor has a monitor driver, the .icm file gives the
general calibration for the monitor family (i.e. the
"better than nothing" choice). The monitor has color
temperature, with usually three choices. Photoshop
has a gamma plugin for your OS. Just about any
of those could be interfering with a good result.
Some of those affect lookup tables in the video card.

Paul

On 11/14/19 10:58 PM, Paul wrote:
Ken Springer wrote:
On 11/14/19 6:26 PM, Peter Jason wrote:
The tabs on dialogue boxes are too faint, as are most street lines on
Google Maps. In fact they're all too faint and I'm getting eye
strain. In File Explorer the borders of the search box can be hardly
discerned and all else is too faint too.
Where is the adjustment for this? It has always been OK in the past.
Please help....desperate!

Hi, Peter.

I truly hope it's just an adjustment at your end, but as an FYI for
everyone...

I've learned over the last few years that some monitors appear to be
incapable of displaying colors accurately. Notably light greys, light
blues, and seemingly light yellows.

For about a year and a half, I worked at a repair shop where we used an
online maintenance program. The programmers used a light grey
background for the screen, while data fields were white with no borders.
You could not tell where the fields ended and the background started.

But, tilt the top of the monitor away from you at about 45Ëš, and the
grey was plain as day.

I also created a super simple website for computer illiterate seniors.
The color inside a bounded area is a light sandy tan on the iMac I used
to create the site, a Dell U2412M, and an Asus ProArt PA248 monitors. At
the same time, I've seen other monitors and laptops display that area as
white, or some other horrible color, that I know is wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LCD_matrices

TN+Film Matrices === tip yer screen at 45 degrees (my laptop!)

IPS Matrices === large viewing angle, user may move head around
MVA Matrices
PVA Matrices

The latter three are probably better to look at.

The first one wins on response time. So if you want 1ms GTG, then
a TN panel (and lighting tricks) can give it to you. There would be
"less pixel trails" behind fast-moving objects with TN.

But if you actually care to be able to read the screen, you don't want TN.

Once you have your IPS panel, response time isn't as bad as
it used to be. And that's also partly because the "specsmanship"
has changed. The previous response spec was hard to meet, and
you'd get specs like "25 milliseconds". The newer GTG spec is
easier to meet, so the TN panel gets a 1 millisecond spec
on a gaming monitor.

If you want to do Photoshop, you at least want to avoid
the TN panel. You'll also want a panel where the
"dynamic contrast" feature can be turned off, changing
the contrast spec from 1000000:1 to 1000:1 (closer to
the physical limits of contrast, of the panel). The
million to one spec is "fake", in the sense that it
isn't all that useful. It looks good on full screen
movie playback, but may not be ideal for a lot of other
uses. And you don't want to leave it on "Auto" and
allow the panel to analyze the content and "make
its own mind up". As you work on your Photoshop image,
the color could be "flapping about".

Panels also come in a variety of bit depths. A cheap TN panel
is 6 bit, and achieves 8 bit color by "dithering". There are
honest-to-goodness 8 bit panels, and a few 10 bit panels.
(The 10 bit panels need a bit more cable bandwidth
to do what they do.) I've seen specs for at least one
4K screen that has 10 bit color. It's not exactly cheap.

But this doesn't answer Peters question, and there
are too many items in the software that could be
screwing up the color choices.

I have that problem here on my own gear - I'm unable
to get "black blacks" when I print to the inkjet. I was
able to get a decent black at one time, but not any more.
And I can't figure out what setting I might have changed.
And it was doing that, right after a cart change-out too.
When you change carts, that gives you new heads (and new
2 picoliter ink pumps).

You can calibrate a screen with a Spyder. Or, if your
monitor has a monitor driver, the .icm file gives the
general calibration for the monitor family (i.e. the
"better than nothing" choice). The monitor has color
temperature, with usually three choices. Photoshop
has a gamma plugin for your OS. Just about any
of those could be interfering with a good result.
Some of those affect lookup tables in the video card.

I can't say for the iMac, but the other 2 monitors are IPS.

I just researched on my end goal, which monitors produce the best, most
accurate color. Answer: IPS. Didn't want to over complicate things. G



--
Ken
MacOS 10.14.6
Firefox 69.0.2
Thunderbird 60.9
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

"Big Al" wrote

| Old
| standards of web design (specifically) with white on black but changing
| to a lighter black (grays) on white or off whites. I think it's
| carrying over into OS/software design too.

I wonder if that might be connected to the notable
sharpness of phone screen displays. But also, there
are fashions, as with everything else. At one point wood
grain was even considered snazzy for a software GUI.

In general, I find fashions move toward the flashy until
they reach a limit. Then subtlety rules. Pre-tech societies
tend to value bright colors because they're rare and fleeting.
But now that we can even have as much fluoresent color
as we like, architects like to spec tiny variations of a hue
that might be best named as "dustball", to show off how
discerning they are. Bright colors are for hayseeds who don't
know enough to "express their power quietly, with taupe".

Similarly with computers. We yearned for good graphics and
full color. Once we finally have that, sophistication takes
the form of subtlety. If Lord Jobs were still here he'd probably
be working on a new line of iPhones in 6 versions of beige.
And people would be *so proud* to choose their own special
beige. (Except for the "babes", of course, who would still want
pink or "gold pearl".)

Webpages started plain. Then there was 3-D button
mania. Apple, as usual, tried to make the most refined
3-D button with their "jelly buttons". And remember how
webpages went through a phase where everything was
blue? Most corporate pages that wanted to express,
"we do business big time" would have a blue header,
with a blue-ified photo of a young woman with headphones,
or a man in a white shirt using a mouse. Or sometimes
there would be a V-formation, still blue-tinted, of perhaps
7 white collar people, embodying type-A mentality. And the
same pictures showed up on different sites: "Our team
works for you!"

These days the fad is anti-fad. To the extent the pages function
at all they tend to mimic magazine pages. White background, lots
of space, pictures for everything, even when the picture
provides no information. For instance, there might be a photo
of a generic storefront for a story about Staples earnings
report. Or a young woman. Despite MeToo, attractive women
seem to be used more than ever. There's just such a tasteless
photo today on the cover of the NYT. The story is about the
shootings in California. The photo centers on a shapely
teenage girl wearing a revealing top.

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019...y=90&auto=webp "Yeah, some people were killed... bummer... but check out thatsexy bellybutton. Califronia is so sexy...." But the old days wasn't all roses. Remember how teenagersused to like to use black background with chartreuse text, asthough that were some kind of Klingon fashion statement? Or people would frame a text field with a clunky, repating,ivy GIF that seemed to say, "Once upon a time..."? The only things that really bother me, though, are 1) theextreme overuse of javascript where it serves no purpose(such as in links and flyout menus, which end up brokenunnecessarily without script) and 2) those silly slide buttonsthat I think Apple invented. They replaced clearcheckboxes with ambiguous, poorly functioning widgets thatimitate a plastic slide switch. They've become a scourge.They're more work, take up too much space, and it's notalways clear what "checked" looks like. But they've becomestandard in phone apps.

"Peter Jason" wrote
|
| Thanks to all. My monitor is about 10 years old (a Benq) and I'm
| trying the hi-contrast settings. This looks good.

LED monitors have gradually improved. And as Paul
noted, IPS is worth it. Especially if you work with color.
Because the pre-IPS displays are dependent on angle of
viewing. A single color can look like a gradient due to
variations in the angle of the monitor related to your line
of sight.

I bought a new Dell IPS awhile back that was well rated.
A Dell 2719H. I think it was $200. And you can get them
closer to $100. I just like it really big for reading text. And
I do photo editing so for that screen size and color quality
are both nice.

On Fri, 15 Nov 2019 12:26:29 +1100, Peter Jason wrote:

The tabs on dialogue boxes are too faint, as are most street lines on
Google Maps. In fact they're all too faint and I'm getting eye
strain. In File Explorer the borders of the search box can be hardly
discerned and all else is too faint too.
Where is the adjustment for this? It has always been OK in the past.
Please help....desperate!

I don't know about 'solved' in your case but if I want to print a map
of any location I use https://www.openstreetmap.org/

For you this search might start with a map of Australia and a panel
where you can enter your search argument - be it a suburb or town - or
whatever area you have in mind.

You might be pleasantly surprised at the clarity !!!

HTH

"Monty" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 15 Nov 2019 12:26:29 +1100, Peter Jason wrote:

The tabs on dialogue boxes are too faint, as are most street lines on
Google Maps. In fact they're all too faint and I'm getting eye
strain. In File Explorer the borders of the search box can be hardly
discerned and all else is too faint too.
Where is the adjustment for this? It has always been OK in the past.
Please help....desperate!

I don't know about 'solved' in your case but if I want to print a map
of any location I use https://www.openstreetmap.org/

For you this search might start with a map of Australia and a panel
where you can enter your search argument - be it a suburb or town - or
whatever area you have in mind.

You might be pleasantly surprised at the clarity !!!


+1. I've been using it for several years.
If you want to print out your map do a print preview first as you don't get
the amount you see on screen in the print.

--
Regards
wasbit

In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Fri, 15 Nov 2019 12:19 +0000 (GMT Standard
Time), (John K.Eason) wrote:

In article , (Big Al) wrote:

I have however read that others are complaining about the lack of
contrast and readability in software and more specific web pages.

Not just relating to computers! Some ready-meal cooking instructions (at least in
the UK) use white text on a yellow background in a font so small that it would be
almost unreadable even if the text was black!

Why do they do things like that, on paper and on screens. Don't they
want people to read what they wrote?

I've seen brown text on black backgrounds.

Often Ctrl-A will make things readable, but not always.

On Sat, 16 Nov 2019 10:16:02 -0000, "wasbit"
wrote:

"Monty" wrote in message
.. .
On Fri, 15 Nov 2019 12:26:29 +1100, Peter Jason wrote:

The tabs on dialogue boxes are too faint, as are most street lines on
Google Maps. In fact they're all too faint and I'm getting eye
strain. In File Explorer the borders of the search box can be hardly
discerned and all else is too faint too.
Where is the adjustment for this? It has always been OK in the past.
Please help....desperate!

I don't know about 'solved' in your case but if I want to print a map
of any location I use https://www.openstreetmap.org/

For you this search might start with a map of Australia and a panel
where you can enter your search argument - be it a suburb or town - or
whatever area you have in mind.

You might be pleasantly surprised at the clarity !!!


+1. I've been using it for several years.
If you want to print out your map do a print preview first as you don't get
the amount you see on screen in the print.

My printer has three options in regard to quality -
Fast
Standard Quality
High Quality

Fast is hopeless with any maps

Standard Quality is good for most maps from 'openstreetmap.org' but
not, in my opinion, for Google Maps.

High Quality is excellent when very good quality and detail is
required when printing. I have only used maps from
'openstreetmap.org' for this quality. I have no problem seeing the
fine detail in a print with the 'High Quality' selection.

And I did not have to make any colour changes to my monitor. What a
mess that could make of scenic and family pictures.

On Sun, 17 Nov 2019 12:01 +0000 (GMT Standard Time),
(John K.Eason) wrote:

In article ,
(micky) wrote:

Often Ctrl-A will make things readable, but not always.

Not under fluorescent light in a supermarket it won't, especially if you've
forgotten to take your reading glasses with you! :^)

In that situation, I either take a photo and zoom in to where I can read
it, or I just point the camera at it and read off the camera display, which
is already enlarged compared to the original.