Tired Eyes From Reading…

Participating in the WordPress PostADay2011 Challenge is taking its toll on my eyes.

Visiting the sites of other bloggers and switching from light coloured backgrounds with dark texts, which my eyes like, and then arriving at the blogs with dark coloured backgrounds with light text can really tire my eyes. This is what’s bugging me today.

Actually, it was bugging me when the challenge started.

Now, don’t get me wrong here, the sites look fantastic but my poor little eyes don’t like the dark backgrounds. Put that together with a small font size and it’s a little difficult to read. I know I can’t be the only one having trouble with this.

When I started working with computers in the 70′s it was green text on a black background. After a couple of months, daily headaches and finally a visit to the eye doctor told me I needed eyeglasses but for distance only. Once I got the eyeglasses the headaches disappeared. Now I only wear them for watching television and driving, but never for reading.

I’ve tried out a few different bookmarklets and they each have their good points and bad. I have three of them for you.

The first one is Notforest, it strips away all the distractions like flash ads, and just leaves the text of the article or blog post you want to read. It centers the article in the middle of the page and it also increases the font size making it easier to read. All hyperlinks remain active and if you click on one it takes you out of Notforest view and goes to the page.

The second one is Readability. This is similar to Notforest for use on articles or postings,  but gives you the added options to email or print the page. One thing I’ve noticed is that not all hyperlinks remain intact if they are at the bottom of the page.

click here for Chrome

click here for Firefox

The third one is ‘a lovely bookmarklet’.  This one changes a dark background to white, and white and coloured text to black with everything else still in place. However, if you click on a link to another page you have to click on the bookmarklet again. This can be a little annoying but at least you can read the page now and not go blind.

I found it in a blog posting on 456 Berea Street and how I installed it on my tool bar. I’ve tried to post it here but can’t seem to get it to work so you will have to go to his blog posting and click on the link in the update to his post.

One of his readers left it in a comment.

Of the three, I would say that a lovely bookmarklet is my favourite.

Now there is nothing bugging me today!

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• PostADay2011 Bloggers – Click the Like Button Please
• PostADay2011 – Bloggers With No Links

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