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Comment by some1else | Hacker News Reader

I don't have perfect vision, so these sort of glows kick in automatically, especially when I'm tired. I't problematic enough to make me switch to a lower contrast theme when I work at night. It would make sense to apply an effect like that only if it were _increasing_ legibility.

Take a look at this a demo pic: http://cl.ly/image/1i0x2X3W3G0x

Notice the rare case where the drop-shadow helps increase the contrast between foreground and background. You'll get props for doing that any time you pull it off.

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Good point. But I may make the case, that ascii art is more about pictures, and less about text. So the reduced readability of text might not matter as much. I tried shadowless, and its less visually appealing.

             /\_/\
        ____/ o o \
      /~____  =-= /
     (______)__m_m)

But in the context of ascii-diagrams, then I can see you point of not including stylised drop shadows.

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Btw, no shadow example is added now.

I suppose what you like about the effect most, is that it fills the gaps that are intrinsic to ASCII art. But our brains are already wired to do that: http://bit.ly/1xeEci5. The shadow blur eats away at the details that are in fact a quality of ASCII art (like which characters were chosen to emulate a shape). The demonstrated CSS drop-shadow effect is really easily toggled by squinting your eyes instead: http://bit.ly/1DNrkXK.

Guess you're right in stating that it looks "cooler" though. Try making the shadows dark grey instead of black: http://cl.ly/image/073a412z0f34.

I agree. Lighter black seems to do the trick. Page corrected.

text-shadow: 0 0 5px rgba(100,100,100,0.5);

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