I’ve been fiddling with the display settings on my monitor. With my normal settings, the sidebar background here at AFW is extremely pale as intended. When I reset the monitor defaults though, it’s actually more of a dark gray.
When I look at other sites and photos and such with these default settings, photos don’t look quite right to me, but I figured I’d better ask how everyone else is viewing it before just changing my settings back to what’s “normal” for me. If you guys are mostly seeing the dark gray rather than something barely darker than white, I want to go in and fix up the stylesheet.
Thanks for humoring me. :)
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Cathy Miller
Amandah
Andrew Kardon
Lori
Amelia Ramstead
It is hard to describe… but it is grey, a bit dark but not slighty darker than white…
Thanks Hendry. :) It’s probably more than just “slightly darker than white” so I may not have described what I’m seeing well – it’s pretty pale for me, almost like a cross between a gray and a sort of muted tan or something.
Here’s a better question perhaps – The little pencil icons next to the categories and such in the sidebar have a pale blue background. With my normal view, if I look closely, I can definitely tell they’re different (the blue and the gray background of the sidebar), but it doesn’t scream it (they’re about the same tone / lightness).
When I reset the settings to their defaults, they’re extremely different – a much darker gray and brighter and a much brighter (more obvious) blue behind each pencil.
So let me ask it this way – how does that blue in each icon appear in relation to the gray sidebar? Extremely different, or do they nearly seem to mesh?
The side bar is a rather dark grey for me.
Well, I wouldn’t say dark grey. Looks like a midtone to me. But the background for the pencils pictures is noticeably lighter. If you really look at it.
Thanks Amanda.
Trisha – that sounds more like what I’m seeing. I’m planning to adjust the colors anyway (matching the icon background to the sidebar background), but I want to make sure I’m getting the right color before I do that. I think I’m going to need to look at a few other computers and test my sites out, and ask a few friends what they’re seeing too. I reset my settings to the way I usually keep them (everything looks incredibly odd with the contrast lowered to the point where I’m seeing the dark gray here). I’m wondering if it might soon be time for a new (or second) monitor.
It looks mid-gray to me too. I’d say something like #c0c0c0. :)
I also see a medium gray background and a pale blue background on the pencils.
I see a pale bluish gray (using Photoshop to get a sample of the color from a screen capture, it’s registering as #F4F4F4 for me), and the pencils are in a little white box.
Hope that helps.
Thanks Lillie and Lisa. :)
I actually went in and changed the colors, so I hope everyone now sees the light gray (the old colors are still on the jobs blog through the link at the top of the site though).
Oddly, the value for the color behind the pencil is the same as the value in the background itself, so I can’t figure out why they’re displaying differently. I’ll have to fiddle with that some more.
The gray is MUCH lighter now, and easier to read. For me, the pencil background is kind of a cyan color.
That kind of pale gray is what I’d been seeing the whole time – I feel awful that others were seeing that nasty dark sidebar before.
The image was looking cyan-ish to me when I changed my contrast settings previously, so I’m betting you’re pulling up a cached version of the image. The next time you clear your cache, you should see it with the pale gray / white – still can’t figure out why the same values are turning out two different colors though from the image to the background. I probably won’t have time to play with it again until this weekend though.
I’m seeing the light gray now. The dark wasn’t so bad though. :)