Beginning with this edition of Brigada Today, we’re making changes in hopes of helping some of our participants with readability. First, several have been complaining that their Brigada arrives with white text on a white background (it’s like a Brigada snow-out — otherwise known as “the case of the vanishing Brigada”). So in this edition, we add a hopefully-subtle background color to each item. If you still have trouble reading this, we’ll never know, because you won’t see this text anyway. :-) Other readers have complained that Gmail is truncating their edition short of the 7th or 8th item. If this is happening in your case, simply click on the link above to read the entire edition on the web, unabridged. Do you have comments on these color or style changes? Other suggestions? Please just click “Comment” immediately below the web version of this item and tell us your idea! We want to make things easier to read for everyone, so if these changes don’t help you, we need to know.
I found the new email format a bit challenging to read with that new color scheme. Can you change the background color to a very light blue instead?
Brigada email (via Gmail with MSOutlook client) is still completely blank.
I use gmail and outlook and no truncating. Never any problems in the past.
The new contrasting colors are not good on my two screens. I had to go to the webpage.
The changes are much harder to read. The problem is the green background color. Not enough contrast with the text color
I find this new color scheme almost impossible to read. It is painful to my eyes. I went to the website immediately.
+1 on the color scheme (and perhaps font size?) making this one more difficult to read. The links were particularly hard to see. A page like http://www.dasplankton.de/ContrastA/ might help determine maximum readability…
Anyone using gmail should be used to having longer messages truncated (that’s just part of using gmail), but I appreciate your efforts on behalf of those receiving blank emails. One workaround would be to have them change to receiving text-only emails (assuming icontact supports that).
Black text works on the new background color. The blue on the headlines not at all satisfactory.
The background color is BAD. The dark text with white or light color background has always been good on my desktop computers and laptop computers. I say you need to go back to your original colors.
How about making the background color a little more subtle? It’s hard to read black on dark green. I had to get right up to the computer screen and squint to read it. For those whose computers turn black type into white (how?), I would suggest a link to a PDF with white type reversed out of black. You’re not going to find a background that works well with both white and black type.
Olive drab might not have been the best color change. I agree with the light blue suggestion. It’s easy on the eyes and provides good contrast with the black text and hyperlinks. I wouldn’t go back to the plain white – that’s definitely a turn off.
Sorry for all the recent problems. Mine have been totally blank for several weeks, including today. (Mindspring/earthlink email account.) Forwarding to the same address didn’t help, but could see it on phone when sent to my gmail account (truncated at #13). I too would recommend a much lighter background color. I like blue but that might not be best given that your headlines and links are blue
With Windows 7 Pro and Outlook 2013 the message displayed as blue and black text on a medium gray background. Black was readable; blue headlines were readable; blue hotlinks were very difficult to read.
The new black on dirty green is just too hard to read …insufficient contrast, had to go to the webpage to read
Since you raised the question of readability, I had a look at the HTML version of the newsletter for the first time (I normally read the plain text version).
I found it very difficult to read, with large grey boxes.
The things saying “To comment, see the web version” looked lick clickable links in the HTML version, but not in the plain text one, but in any case they didn’t work.
To get to this page I went to the plain text version, found a list of numbered URLs labelled “References” right at the end (the list did not appear in the HTML version). They too looked like clickable links, but didn’t work. I copied No 5 and pasted it in my browser address bar and finally reached this page to comment, but it was not intuitive and I reached this page by a process of trial and error.
The web page is readable — just. I don’t no what it was like before, but it seems to be too light text on a too-bright background, but thast could just be my monitor, which is one of those fancy new ones with no adjustment knobs, which automatically adjusts too bright.
The plain text version is readable, but the links don’t work. My mail reader normally turns URLs into clickable links of a different colour in the plain text version, but in this case they didn’t work by clicking on them, either in the plain text or HTML versions.
I really liked the new format! No problems at all.
I wish you would eliminate numbering on posts to make posts look like normal blog posts. I get Brigada by RSS so I don’t have any of the email issues addressed here. But I do like to share Brigada posts and when I do, I usually delete the numbering because it’s confusing for people who are not on the Brigada list. I think removing numbers would make posts more accessible to outsiders (& therefore more likely to be clicked on) when shared. Thanks.
As before, I can read the email on my internet provider homepage, but it is still blank on Windows live mail. The new background is too dark
The background color is way too dark–dark green on my iPad, dark gray on my PC. And the font is now teeny-tiny–very uncomfortable to read. I too had to go to the website to read it without frustration and discomfort. This is clearly (no pun intended!) not the way to go.
I also went to webpage to read as the green background was too dark for me.
The idea is a good one, the present color scheme was hard to read. Links were very difficult to see.
For what it is worth,I have read that blue and yellow are the most readable color scheme.