Re: Default style

On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 3:25 PM, Christian Vogler <
christian.vogler@gallaudet.edu> wrote:

> Before going off on aesthetics, I think it would be useful to take a
> long hard look at readability. For instance, things like this article:
> http://captionmax.com/blog/2011/02/dvd-subtitles-are-unreadable/
>

Neither of the images in this post are using a text outline, so there's not
much of a comparison to draw.  Of course white text with no contrast
element at all is unacceptable.

I also beg to differ with respect to modern captions not using a dark
> background.


The only major case I'm aware of is closed captioning, and those aren't
modern.  They probably date to hardware which wasn't capable of anything
else.

While outlines help, they're still not as readable as a
> suitable background. The question that needs answering here, I think,
> is whether suitable outlining of fonts makes dark backgrounds
> superfluous. I'm not sure that this is the case. Anyone have data on
> this?
>

I disagree that dark backgrounds help at all compared to text outlines.  I
only find them ugly, and very distracting.  There are lots of examples of
outlined text here:
http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Use_cases_for_timed_tracks_rendered_over_video_by_the_UA,
and they're easy to read even at thumbnail size.

-- 
Glenn Maynard