anything that can change professional white webpages to a darker color?

November 30, 2008 8:57 PM

Is there a firefox addon, or anything, that can change professional white webpages to a darker color? All this trendy white space bugs my eyes!

Yes, I could change the settings on my monitor, but I don't want to have to change it back every time I want to play an FPS.

posted by Citizen Premier to technology (10 comments total)

I asked something very similar, and got a very handy bookmarklet.
posted by pompomtom at 9:16 PM on November 30, 2008

The accessibar lets you change the background color or the text color to one of your choosing and does a lot of other neat stuff.
posted by jessamyn at 9:27 PM on November 30, 2008

You can do all kinds of things like that using Proxomitron. I override background colors on a lot of sites using it. It's also my main ad blocker, and I use it for a lot of other things. It's extremely versatile, but it isn't very friendly.

It runs as a proxy, sitting between your browser and the net. Everything that goes either way passes through it, and you can set up rules which cause it to make changes as you want to.

There are a huge number of rules for Proxomitron already created by afficianados, many of which are included in the install. (Things like overriding "OnMouseOver" events.)

Oh, and it's free.
posted by Class Goat at 9:34 PM on November 30, 2008

That Proxomitron look great, but what if I'm using another proxy already? (Like Privoxy) Can proxies be "chained"?
posted by telstar at 10:05 PM on November 30, 2008

Never mind, here's the answer.
posted by telstar at 10:18 PM on November 30, 2008

Proxies can usually be chained, unless someone's gone out of their way to prevent it. I used to use Proxomitron along with an ad blocker, but I ultimately realized I didn't need the other one and got rid of it. (Proxomitron's ad blocking was good enough for my purposes, and that ad blocker caused me a lot of trouble.)

Both the incoming port and the outgoing port that Proxomitron uses can be changed, which makes it quite flexible in that regard.
posted by Class Goat at 10:21 PM on November 30, 2008

On a Mac, you can just press these four keys at the same time:
ctrl, option, apple, 8
It reverses the colours, so black type on a white page turns into white type on a black page.
Same four keys to reverse it back to normal.

Also useful when you want to read the internet at night without the light waking up your SO or blazing your retinas into a state of wakefulness and exacerbating your insomniac tendencies.
posted by pseudostrabismus at 10:59 PM on November 30, 2008 [4 favorites]

The relevant file for Firefox is userContent.css, it will probably be in your profile folder under the name 'userContent-example.css', just remove the '-example' bit from the name to start using it. A quick Google will get you lots of information.
posted by mandal at 2:49 AM on December 1, 2008

Privoxy can modify content -- no need to chain proxies. (I'd be a little surprised if Proxomitron did anything Privoxy can't -- they're both pretty arbitrarily flexible.)

With just Firefox's options (Options -> Content -> Colors) you can set your own background and foreground colors. But if you're setting light on dark, you really need to override all pages' colors, or some of them will helpfully set a light off-white background without setting a foreground color, leaving your light foreground text invisible. There are other difficulties with some buttons and other form elements.
posted by Zed_Lopez at 10:32 AM on December 1, 2008

Options -> Content -> Colors button doesn't work? Or you don't want to do it to every page?
posted by timepiece at 4:31 PM on December 2, 2008