> * Conversely, never use white! Modern macOS sucks at this! A large window of Mail.app in light mode is pretty blinding. What if you want to add a subtle highlight to a button border on a white background? #fafafa was always a go-to white for me because its easy to remember.
I always thought the grey window backgrounds used by the Classic Mac OS Platinum appearance were great for this. Bright enough to not be dingy and depressing like the more middle-greys used by Win9x, but dark enough to not be blinding, and also dark enough to use actual black for text to maintain high contrast ratios.
Platinum was designed at the height of CRTs, which were considerably brighter and higher contrast compared to the LCDs that followed them — even run of the mill budget CRTs outperformed the average early LCD, and consumer LCDs didn’t really catch up for a good 10-15 years after CRTs went out of style (in some aspects, LCDs are still playing catch-up). I wonder how much the hardware was responsible for shaping screen content design trends.
I always thought the grey window backgrounds used by the Classic Mac OS Platinum appearance were great for this. Bright enough to not be dingy and depressing like the more middle-greys used by Win9x, but dark enough to not be blinding, and also dark enough to use actual black for text to maintain high contrast ratios.
Platinum was designed at the height of CRTs, which were considerably brighter and higher contrast compared to the LCDs that followed them — even run of the mill budget CRTs outperformed the average early LCD, and consumer LCDs didn’t really catch up for a good 10-15 years after CRTs went out of style (in some aspects, LCDs are still playing catch-up). I wonder how much the hardware was responsible for shaping screen content design trends.