Hi,

I'd like to read a lot more Japanese books but it's too much trouble to import physical ones so I end up reading exclusively on my PC (mostly innocent). What sucks is that I can read physical books for 10 hours straight without a problem, but when reading on my LCD screen I get headaches and my eyes hurt after only ca. 30 minutes (and much more so when reading Japanese compared to English).

Which made me think that a big part of the problem might be the font/background color etc. that I use, currently this:

font-family: 'MS Gothic', sans-serif;
font-size: 15pt;
color: #000000; (black)
background: #FFFFFF; (white)
text-align: center;
margin: 10px 400px; (reduce width so you don't have to move the head, only the eyes)
line-height: 200%; (space between lines for less clumping)



What styles do you guys use? Please post them here so others can try them out/copy them and post suggestions!

Well, doesn't it seem immediately obvious that a black background would be an awful lot easier on the eyes than a white one? I use black backgrounds on pretty much everything I possibly can, and then f.lux on top of that. I can't stand anything being completely white.

This is how I format books with JNovelFormatter: 26 Font / Meiryo

If you're using Chrome/Safari, then -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; is a nice one. There's a Firefox equivalent that I don't remember. I'm not sure if it reduces eye strain though (it just looks good like on this page). I think Windows font rendering is pretty bad whatever you do though. I saw a Surface 3 in Yodobashi and it still wasn't anything like as clear as my retina Mac.

Amazon's Kindle apps have a nice sepia theme. Copying those colours could be a good idea too.

The very popular solarized color schemes were designed to reduce eyestrain for programmers. The light version is based on the color of paper in the shade on an otherwise sunny day. The dark version is an inversion of the light one in CIELAB color space and is very attractive also. Here's what it looks like:




I've also had good luck with f.lux to reduce my eyestrain. People use it to warmify their screen colors at night but I also have it make my colors quite warm even during the day.

I don't know numbers or whether this would be a good option on an LCD screen (I don't have problems with eye-strain often, but I don't read novels on the computer), but in real life, pencil or dark ink on a green tinted engineering comp pad (such as Staedtler green tinted bond pad) makes for very easy viewing; if none of the above work for you, you might try replicated those colors.

I agree with the other about using f.lux to reduce eyestrain. Here is the colors I suggest if you want a warm/sepia type of reading experience.

font color: #330000 --->darkcherryred (Safe Hex3)
background color: #EED5B7 ---> bisque2

I don't really know any CSS but I was just testing it on the Harry Potter (innocent) books I have acquired here in the forums the past and I seem to like it. It uses html. Screenshot



more warm colors here: http://www.december.com/html/spec/color1.html