Why doesn’t wolfram.com have a defined background color? Once Wolfram Alpha comes online, perhaps I’ll ask it that question. In the meantime…

The Link
http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/ and most of their other pages.
The Problem
Undefined background color.
The Fix
The background: transparent on the body selector overrides the background color. It should instead be background: #fff
The Screenshot
Wolfram
Click to Enlarge

For the record, I do work for a competitor to Wolfram.

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Web Designer Help Needs Help

April 18, 2009, 2:50 pm ET by Define Your Colors

Sometimes, the posts just write themselves. There is one thing worse than designers who don’t define their colors: sites that purpose to help you be a web designer, like today’s offender, Web Designer Help.

The Link
http://www.webdesignerhelp.co.uk/ and all their other pages.
The Problem
Undefined text colors.
The Fix
Adding color: #000; to the body selector in the style.css file.
The Screenshot
Web Designer Help
Click to Enlarge

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Layer Tennis Partners

April 9, 2009, 3:53 pm ET by Define Your Colors

It always amuses me when designers, who really should know better, end up not defining their background or foreground colors. For example, the two Layer Tennis participants tomorrow both could use some defined colors. Among other things.

The Link
http://httpcolonforwardslashforwardslashwwwdotjenniferdanieldotcom.com/ (love that domain name)
The Problem
Undefined background color.
The Fix
Adding background-color: #fff; to the body selector in the test2.css file.
The Screenshot
Jennifer Daniel
Click to Enlarge
The Link
http://jilliantamaki.com/ and other pages.
The Problem
Undefined background color. Font tags. No CSS. Frames.
The Fix
Nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
The Screenshot
Jillian Tamaki
Click to Enlarge

Tags:

Gotta love sites that define background colors on all sorts of items, like links and headers, but forgets to put one on the body.

The Link
http://www.motherjones.com and all their other pages.
The Problem
Undefined background colors.
The Fix
Adding
background-color: #fff; to the body selector in the style2.css file.
The Screenshot
Motherjones.com
Click to Enlarge

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YouTube, Noooooo!

January 15, 2009, 6:59 pm ET by Define Your Colors

YouTube’s site used to be correct, but I guess Google’s lack of consistent colors is infecting them. A couple of days ago, their background and text colors were fine. Today, they are undefined.

The Link
http://www.youtube.com and all their other pages.
The Problem
Undefined text and background colors.
The Fix
The typical: adding
background-color: #fff; color: #000; to their oddly named CSS file.
The Screenshot
YouTube
Click to Enlarge

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Wacom: Nice Tools, Bad Colors

January 12, 2009, 7:48 pm ET by Define Your Colors

The Wacom products page needs some adjusting. I always enjoy seeing sites that cater to professionals in the design, art and web development world making these mistakes.

The Link
http://www.wacom.com/index2.php and all their other pages.
The Problem
Undefined text and background colors.
The Fix
Adding color: #000; to body selector in the style.css file. Also, since there’s an embedded frame, they also need to add
background-color: #fff; color: #000;
to tabs.css.
The Screenshot
Wacom
Click to Enlarge

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Boing Boing: Offworld is just a tad difficult to read, since they’ve neglected to define their text color.

The Link
http://www.offworld.com and all their other pages.
The Problem
Undefined text color.
The Fix
Adding color: #000; to body selector in the base_styles-offworld.css file.
The Screenshot
Boing Boing: Offworld
Click to Enlarge

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Reddit.com’s comment system is hard to read, since they omitted to define their text color. I also picked an amusing example: "If you’re a web designer working alongside print designers with little to no web design/dev knowledge, how is your experience?" My experience is that web designers should know enough to define their text colors.

The Link
http://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/7fu6x/if_youre_a_web_designer_working_alongside_print/c06jlj1 among other pages.
The Problem
Comment pages are missing text colors.
The Fix
Adding color: #000; to body selector in the reddit.css file.
The Screenshot
Reddit.com
Click to Enlarge

Tags:

Geeks of Colorblind Doom!

November 27, 2008, 9:50 am ET by Define Your Colors

I love Geeks of Doom, but they really need to define their colors.

The Link
http://geeksofdoom.com/ and every other page on the site.
The Problem
Pages on the site are missing both background and text colors. It’s fairly obvious that the template was designed for a white background.
The Fix
Adding background-color: #fff; color: #000; to the master.css file.
The Screenshot
Geeks of Doom
Click to Enlarge

Tags: ,

Another day, another site without defined colors.

The Link
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/ and every other page on the site.
The Problem
Pages on the site are missing both background and text colors.
The Fix
Adding background-color: #fff; color: #000; to the global.css file.
The Screenshot
Minnesota Public Radio
Click to Enlarge

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