What browser is that, by the way?
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It’s called surf, from the people who do dwm, dmenu, etc.
http://surf.suckless.org
http://google.com/search?q=suckless+surf
The GTK theme is, like, “High Contrast Inverse” or whatever from mate-themes, but that only affects the scrollbar.
I do the text colors with a CSS file.
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Ugh. GTK. Do they hate themselves? 
Thanks for the links. 
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Sadly such settings are not available on IOS devices.
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It’s basically just webkit with some keyboard commands.
Attention web and software designers: accessibility is not a dirty word. Neither is contrast.
I get it. Screen readers are hard to use, and there’s like so much assistive technology out there to consider. The good news is there’s tons of tools out there to automate testing stuff like this.
Jeez, yesterday I go off on an i18n rant and today it’s accessibility. Hopefully Cory doesn’t start a thread about like tabs vs spaces next or I’ll totally lose my shit.
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Getting notified about Gdk-Critical errors makes me feel like I’m at a real computer, getting real work done.
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There is a relatively simple way to increase contrast AND have your black on grey text. The important thing to know is the human eye is bad at picking up gradients, it’s much better at picking up contrast. Modern browsers support a css property called “text-shadow”. With text-shadow you can put a gradient around letters, giving them a glow. With a subtle enough glow (in HSL terms you would keep the same hue and saturation) it’s really hard to spot the gradient but you still get the boost in legibility because it increases the contrast.
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Completely off topic, but what is up with those shoulder pads?
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Like, hinting in TrueType/Cleartype/whatever?
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Even worse when combined with the style of putting a scrolling translucent foreground over a fixed background image.
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Every show I’ve worked on has addressed this problem as responsibly as they can. I mean, they don’t mix the show for shitty mono Magnavox tube TVs from the 70s or anything, but they try to strike a balance between dynamic range for those of us with fancy home theaters, and comfort and legibility and a reasonably limited dynamic range for folks with older, more modest setups. Most of the sound mix session is conducted using the dub stage’s large, expensive 5.1 speakers that are suitable for a high-end movie theater (and many of the stages are equipped to handle much fancier mixes than simple 5.1 or 7.1 mixes), but at the end of the mix, the show is played back on small home-theater-size (though still pretty high-end) speakers, usually in stereo to ensure everything comes through clearly for those whose setups can only handle the LT/RT mix. Each network has strict limits on levels and dynamic range, since those networks (not the studios) get the angry calls from viewers who have to actively ride the volume knobs to hear the quiet dialogue without blowing out their windows during the explosions and gunshots. Show producers often want to maximize the dynamic range for best dramatic effect, and try to optimize the mix for the very best home theater setups, but the network delivery requirements aim for a more homogenized set of standards. It’s a constant struggle.
Still, if you have a surround system, it’s up to you to set your levels. Nearly all the dialogue comes out of the Center channel, so make sure it’s at a reasonable level compared to the Left and Right channels.
If you have a simple stereo or mono setup, you should be able to hear everything just fine without fiddling with it, unless the mixer genuinely fucked up the mix, or something got out of phase during layback.
They’re not. They’re just compressed to stay right at the top of that range. The TV programs need more dynamic range so explosions and gunshots don’t sound exactly as loud as whispered dialogue, and vice versa. Commercials just sound louder because they’re mixed very near the peak allowable levels for their whole 30 seconds. If your speakers are clipping during commercials, you have your amp too loud anyway.
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Nope. I’ve done audio engineering, and I recorded straight off the set top box, and I got commercials soft-clipping straight off the RCA output.
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Are the commercials coming from the network or the headend though?
I’ve found the crap that cable companies insert into the stream to be a mixed bag of suck - loud audio, change in resolution, etc. I’d imagine the stream from the network itself would be somewhat consistent.
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It’s FIOS, and I think they inject commercials at the Head end, because they interrupt each other pretty often.
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Then that’s an issue with your local affiliates. I haven’t done shows for all of the networks, just NBC, ABC, Fox, CBS, TBS, Netflix, and Freeform over the past decade, and I could show you their audio delivery requirements which (except for Netflix) should normally apply to their commercials. But except for network bumpers and promos, a whole bunch of your commercials are going to be specific to your local affiliate, and they might not be too choosy about those technical requirements when selling ads, particularly outside of prime time programming. The only ads I’ve heard clipping were crappy local car dealership ads and the like, and the L.A. market is such that even our crappy ads are reasonably professional these days. Advertisers don’t want to annoy viewers any more than the networks themselves do.
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Ctrl-scrollwheelup is your friend.
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That reminds me. I have a pretty tangled rat’s nest of stuff setup on my pc for controlling audio levels I just don’t have on the TV setup.
On the pc I have a bunch of LADSPA plugins that ALSA runs through first to level everything and normalize and do SBR, and turn down the LFE channel and equalize and and and. And it all sounds way better and accomodated my poor hearing well.
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