[untitled]
84 comments
And the backlight (presumably 99% of power usage) is on no matter what you do with your pixels.
My second screen (an LG) turns the backlight off whenever it's all black. My Dell monitors don't do the same, and it's a shame. It's always on but effectively off all the time as it usually is all-black, and thus there's no backlight.
> My second screen (an LG) turns the backlight off whenever it's all black.
Did you test that setting every pixel black actually triggers this? Most OS just shut the monitor after inactivity (by ceasing to output video signal, or something like that).
Did you test that setting every pixel black actually triggers this? Most OS just shut the monitor after inactivity (by ceasing to output video signal, or something like that).
Yes, it happens within seconds. It's not VESA blanking.
That's a huge misfeature, then. Is it a computer monitor?
Ahh maybe you are referring to dynamic contrast (which is still a misfeature).
Ahh maybe you are referring to dynamic contrast (which is still a misfeature).
It's a computer monitor, yes. I don't know about a misfeature, I love it. What's dynamic contrast?
I have never seen a monitor that turns off with a black screen (aside from dynamic contrast mode). What happens when the screen needs to turn back on? Does it freeze for 1-3 seconds?
> What's dynamic contrast?
Shutting certain backlights to raise the contrast between the dark side of the screen and the lit side. It has various undesireable side effects such as the darkening and lightening giant areas unexpectedly. They often try to make the transition gradual which just makes the screen even less real-time.
> What's dynamic contrast?
Shutting certain backlights to raise the contrast between the dark side of the screen and the lit side. It has various undesireable side effects such as the darkening and lightening giant areas unexpectedly. They often try to make the transition gradual which just makes the screen even less real-time.
> What happens when the screen needs to turn back on? Does it freeze for 1-3 seconds?
No, it takes around 200ms for it to turn back on.
> Shutting certain backlights to raise the contrast between the dark side of the screen and the lit side.
Ah, no, there are no sections in this one, the whole backlight turns off and on.
No, it takes around 200ms for it to turn back on.
> Shutting certain backlights to raise the contrast between the dark side of the screen and the lit side.
Ah, no, there are no sections in this one, the whole backlight turns off and on.
Great read, it would definitely help us on the long run.
Ctrl+L
data:text/html,<body bgcolor=maroon>
Enter
F11
For maximum points I'd expect candidate given task "fill your screen with black" to simply turn it off.
I never understood the point of interview questions like this. Like, really? You're going to ask another adult to fill a screen with black and expect them to turn it off? Why??
Because often times interviewers like to feel clever and come off as smarter than the people they are interviewing. It’s a very human thing to do. And something we should strive to avoid as I think it’s a terrible quality.
As an interviewer, you're not looking for a solution; it's supposed to be an ice-breaker, to get a technical conversation going.
Doesn't always work, but good enough.
(OTOH, if the interviewer has no idea why they're asking this, and they're just blindly checking off boxes from "The Greatest Checkbox List For Interviewers (tm)", it will fail like any other tool wielded by a clueless user. A very specific failure mode here is "THE BOOK has The One True Solution, and I'm expecting you to read my mind and choose this.")
Doesn't always work, but good enough.
(OTOH, if the interviewer has no idea why they're asking this, and they're just blindly checking off boxes from "The Greatest Checkbox List For Interviewers (tm)", it will fail like any other tool wielded by a clueless user. A very specific failure mode here is "THE BOOK has The One True Solution, and I'm expecting you to read my mind and choose this.")
this like most trivia based interview questions really just prod "Have you thought about solving this specific, arbitrary problem that pleases your interview lords today?"
Which company do you interview for? I will make sure to never apply.
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paint.exe
fill tool, black
F11
Bsh: undefined command paint.exe
You have to print screen, paste, delete first; that's the fastest way to set the image bounds to the screen resolution.
People are posting all sorts of code one-liners to do this, but... what happened to just pressing the power button?
Pros:
Pros:
* Only 1 keypress per display
* The button is guaranteed to be present on all displays by default
* It doesn't frustrate you by pointing out the dead pixels
* Optimal energy efficiency
* You don't have to customize scripts or settings on your OSs, even if you reinstall
* You don't have to know if you've got an OLED that turns off the hardware pixels when they're black, or LCD that turns off its backlight, or whatever a CRT display used to do
* You don't have to worry about a working Internet connection to access the site
* You don't need a browser
* You don't even need a CPU
* The off color is not customizable> Only 1 keypress per display
Nope, two on my right hand monitor
> The button is guaranteed to be present on all displays by default
Nope, no button at all on the left
> You don't have to customize scripts or settings on your OSs, even if you reinstall
reinstall? What is this 1998? If I did have a new computer then when I restore my essential home directory (~/bin, ~/.vimrc etc) any script would be in there
Nope, two on my right hand monitor
> The button is guaranteed to be present on all displays by default
Nope, no button at all on the left
> You don't have to customize scripts or settings on your OSs, even if you reinstall
reinstall? What is this 1998? If I did have a new computer then when I restore my essential home directory (~/bin, ~/.vimrc etc) any script would be in there
> Nope, two on my right hand monitor
That UX seems completely unnecessary
> Nope, no button at all on the left
Buttons are nice. You can press them. You can feel them. You can see them.
> reinstall? What is this 1998?
Believe it or not, in 2021, if you've missed the window to do a dist-upgrade before Ubuntu EOLs the release (which is much quicker on non-LTS), there's no easy way to upgrade the distro - the recommended option is to reinstall.
> any script would be in there
What about on Windows? Now you've got different repos for different OSs, which you manage. Any script you write needs to be maintained. The button is universal. No extra effort needed. No maintenance.
You press the button and the monitor shuts off. It's the perfect UX.
That UX seems completely unnecessary
> Nope, no button at all on the left
Buttons are nice. You can press them. You can feel them. You can see them.
> reinstall? What is this 1998?
Believe it or not, in 2021, if you've missed the window to do a dist-upgrade before Ubuntu EOLs the release (which is much quicker on non-LTS), there's no easy way to upgrade the distro - the recommended option is to reinstall.
> any script would be in there
What about on Windows? Now you've got different repos for different OSs, which you manage. Any script you write needs to be maintained. The button is universal. No extra effort needed. No maintenance.
You press the button and the monitor shuts off. It's the perfect UX.
I'd do-release-upgraded many 1404 machines after it went EOL
I don't know about Windows, nor care about it, I don't use it. I may have many OSes that I do use, but I only have one on my desktop with a monitor plugged in, and it's been the broadly the same for 21 years (debian, then ubuntu)
Yes the buttons on the monitors are rubbish, they're also what there is. My TV which has my monitoring screen and music on is controlled from a remote control, one button to mute, one to turn it off completely. If I didn't have the remote though, the button would be awful (it's on the back, and again is a multi stage menu system to turn off)
I don't know about Windows, nor care about it, I don't use it. I may have many OSes that I do use, but I only have one on my desktop with a monitor plugged in, and it's been the broadly the same for 21 years (debian, then ubuntu)
Yes the buttons on the monitors are rubbish, they're also what there is. My TV which has my monitoring screen and music on is controlled from a remote control, one button to mute, one to turn it off completely. If I didn't have the remote though, the button would be awful (it's on the back, and again is a multi stage menu system to turn off)
> The button is guaranteed to be present on all displays by default
Mine doesn't have one, it does have a touch activated area that's not findable by touch because it's completely smooth.
Mine doesn't have one, it does have a touch activated area that's not findable by touch because it's completely smooth.
Please take the time to spray the monitor with gasoline and light it on fire. There's no need to accept such terrible UX. The power button has been the perfect UX since the invention of power buttons.
Cons:
* power button is some gimmick optico fingerprint reading crap that is somehow less user-friendly than a light switch for 10 cents
* turning the monitor back on will take 3-15 seconds, and due to above you may end up waiting 20 seconds to discover you didn't activate the button properly, depending on the monitor
It's true. Under MacOS, one of my displays flickers 3 times when I turn it on, the other one twice. Somewhere along the way, we made a wrong turn.
Before my current Chromebook, which allows fully turning off the display, I had a bookmark to a black image so that I could use my Chromebook at night for listening to comedy, etc while falling asleep. Making a black image fullscreen would almost make it so that the display wasn't giving off light.
I have a multi-monitor setup. I have three monitors, acquired over the years, of different manufacturers and sizes, and all have buttons on the bottom or back of the frame. I have to hit the buttons by feel. Usually it’s to switch inputs, but I think it’d be just as annoying to constantly turn them on and off via button.
The pursuit of aesthetics, in this case, is at the expense of usability.
The pursuit of aesthetics, in this case, is at the expense of usability.
Maybe if you have a download or some other long-running process that you don't want to interrupt? What I think would be useful is some way to manually use DPMS to actually power off the display. The only thing I'm aware of is using xset on Linux / X11.
I'm old enough to remember screensavers, but surely people would lock their screen for this situation rather than just load a webpage (cmd-ctrl-q on a mac apparently, and windows-L used to do it back in the 2000 days, I assume it still does it on windows)
My off white "back / home / app switch" bar remains so it's not even close to being all black. (chrome on android. Works on ff.)
> Save energy
Only on one type of oled? It's more energy intensive than white on the majority of screen types.
> Stealth mode / Meditation / Better than standby mode
This might blow your mind but... phones can be placed face down. Or hit the standby switch. Or put it in your pocket. All way easier than going to your browser, finding it in bookmarks, and selecting black.
Monitors have an off switch you can just reach over to, that is also way easier.
Additionally, both of these methods _actually_ save energy.
The reasoning is super flawed but I'm glad you probably had fun writing it. That's all that matters.
> Save energy
Only on one type of oled? It's more energy intensive than white on the majority of screen types.
> Stealth mode / Meditation / Better than standby mode
This might blow your mind but... phones can be placed face down. Or hit the standby switch. Or put it in your pocket. All way easier than going to your browser, finding it in bookmarks, and selecting black.
Monitors have an off switch you can just reach over to, that is also way easier.
Additionally, both of these methods _actually_ save energy.
The reasoning is super flawed but I'm glad you probably had fun writing it. That's all that matters.
as other poster mentioned, some LCDs have voltage = white and some have voltage = black. it's certainly not majority, and it doesn't matter anyway because the backlight stays on regardless
Some months back I built http://keylight.us to use my second monitor as a light during video meetings.
It's always great to see simple and effective tools like this. I went ahead and downloaded the html+js into a single file to put in my arsenal. Maybe you could consider putting the whole iro.js into the initial pageload and turn this into a truly one-file tool.
Love this. I don't want to have to reassure colleagues that I really don't look this bad normally.
Thank you! I've been wanting to throw something like this together for this exact reason. Normally I just open a blank webpage and manually set the CSS to the color I want but this is way easier and exactly what I'm looking for.
This is exactly what I was looking for, thank you. I use my second monitor the same way, but I just quickly google the name of a color before a meeting.
I know it's only a few buttons away, but you could add a button to switch to full screen.
I know it's only a few buttons away, but you could add a button to switch to full screen.
It seems to resort to a video for iOS, which is interesting.
I imagine that might negate the claimed energy savings.
function allscreen(){
if (iOS) {
if (!vid) {
let e = document.createElement('video');
e.src = color.substring(1) + '.mp4?v=2';
I imagine that might negate the claimed energy savings.
from page:
Frequently asked questions Does it work on iOS devices? Yes. We're using a workaround, since iOS does not support native browser fullscreen.
Frequently asked questions Does it work on iOS devices? Yes. We're using a workaround, since iOS does not support native browser fullscreen.
This is kind of creepy: for some reason Firefox only displays the “Full screen” pop-up warning several seconds after the website has actually gone full screen. I don't know what causes this delay, but if there's a way to raise it high enough, it completely defeats the point of the warning, and could lead to fishing.
Can't reproduce. The notification starts scrolling into view the same time the webpage becomes full-screeen. Firefox Nightly on Linux Desktop here.
Please report a but with more details if this is also true for you on Firefox Nightly.
Please report a but with more details if this is also true for you on Firefox Nightly.
This is also the case on up-to-date regular Firefox on Linux, and has been for several years.
I remember there was a proof of concept that beat a similar warning in Flash by displaying a background filled with similar text.
This worked, because Flash merely overlaid the full screen warning over what the app displayed. A huge dump of random text meant most humans missed the warning.
This worked, because Flash merely overlaid the full screen warning over what the app displayed. A huge dump of random text meant most humans missed the warning.
Yeah, I definitely do not like non consensual meddling outside of a browser window, even if it's just annoying and not actually harmful.
<body style="background: black;">
<script>
document.addEventListener('click', () => document.body.requestFullscreen())
</script>
</body>I was inspired to do something similar, a bookmarklet:
javascript:let b=document.body;b.bgColor="black";b.innerText="";b.requestFullscreen()Interesting, I would have assumed the browser would have blocked the fullscreen request as it wasn't initiated by an action on the document itself.
Is anyone else getting a certificate error?
also.. tangentially I have been experimenting with directly exposing photo paper with my phone screen, and pulling it away in a fraction of a second. Do any android devs out there know if it would be feasible for me to whip up an app that flashed the screen including backlight on and off to show an image for a fraction of a second at a specific brightness?
also.. tangentially I have been experimenting with directly exposing photo paper with my phone screen, and pulling it away in a fraction of a second. Do any android devs out there know if it would be feasible for me to whip up an app that flashed the screen including backlight on and off to show an image for a fraction of a second at a specific brightness?
My guess would be a 'display over other apps' app which swapped from black to transparent and back might be more responsive than trying to use the backlight. Just a guess though.
I might be missing a trick. Some options, listed below, do most of the things and even those which the FAQ admits are beyond its scope. Amongst a multitude of alternatives, I have settled upon TwinkleTray for Windows. MonitorControl on macOS. OLEDify for iOS/iPadOS/Android, or just take a shot at one of the superb wallpapers from r/Amoledbackgrounds. As an example, in order to comprehensively test the display, I used DisplayTester on Galaxy S20, when I first acquired it. There are similar tools for other OS'.
https://twinkletray.com/
https://github.com/MonitorControl/MonitorControl
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/oledify-pure-black-wallpapers/...
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gombosdev....
https://www.testmyscreen.com/
https://twinkletray.com/
https://github.com/MonitorControl/MonitorControl
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/oledify-pure-black-wallpapers/...
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gombosdev....
https://www.testmyscreen.com/
I love this as a pinnacle side project. It hits all the notes for me
1. Pretty simple to implement, you could make this in a few hours 2. Tell's a story and justifies its existence. 3. It has some degree of utility so at the least the creator will use it for a week or two before giving up on the gimmick 4. Easy to understand within 30 seconds, which makes it good for interviews 5. The code is probably small enough that it could be reviewed during interviews
Good project lmao
1. Pretty simple to implement, you could make this in a few hours 2. Tell's a story and justifies its existence. 3. It has some degree of utility so at the least the creator will use it for a week or two before giving up on the gimmick 4. Easy to understand within 30 seconds, which makes it good for interviews 5. The code is probably small enough that it could be reviewed during interviews
Good project lmao
If you haven't switched to Wayland (don't know what the equivalent on there is):
xset dpms force off
This doesn't work for Vivaldi for some reason. I get a dark grey screen, text says "Press esc to exit full screen mode" for a few seconds, then that disappears leaving just the dark grey. No matter which colour I select in the app. Seems like a weird thing not to work in a usually pretty good browser but I'm not sure exactly what this is using.
Works fine for me on Vivaldi. I get the "Press esc to exit full screen mode" message but see the colours just fine.
Even weirder! MacOS?
Since a few month I have a tab with this URL:
data:text/html,<html style="background:black;"><head><title>Black</title></head></html>
I don't need it very often, but turning the monitor off, creates other issues which were harder to fix than to use this tab ;-)
data:text/html,<html style="background:black;"><head><title>Black</title></head></html>
I don't need it very often, but turning the monitor off, creates other issues which were harder to fix than to use this tab ;-)
One more reason to use this is to use your screen or TV (via Chromecasting or Airplay) as a green screen. I've used this trick a couple times when I wanted to photograph an item or person and remove the background without having to invest in an actual green-screen and lighting.
I use a completely black image as my desktop background just to avoid the background light around windows with dark/night mode (the impact is more pronounced at night because I like to turn-off the lights in my room at night while using the computer). Also makes watching movies nicer when I don't want them full screen.
I always have a dimmed light behind my monitor to reduce contrast strain from monitor backlight.
I have no idea if this is actually rooted in science or something I just adopted and post-rationalized, but I guess I know what to research next coffee break.
I have no idea if this is actually rooted in science or something I just adopted and post-rationalized, but I guess I know what to research next coffee break.
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Yes, it is called bias lighting. Here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_lighting
Nice! Might benefit from hiding the mouse cursor on idle. Something like: https://gist.github.com/kidGodzilla/33ad45808e995a7e3ec714fd...
For monitor-testing I prefer EIZO's monitor test web app:
https://www.eizo.nl/monitor-test/
Use space to hide notes and arrow keys to switch contents.
Use space to hide notes and arrow keys to switch contents.
it's a cute little project that probably more people need/would like to have as one might think. Well Done. My solution for a long time was a shortcut to a blank screensaver. Nowadays, I have a shortcut for a screensaver that actually powers the monitor off - someone made that via AutoHotKey for Windows: https://www.dcmembers.com/skrommel/download/monitoroffsaver/
(although I'd wish Windows screensavers wouldn't go off through mouse movements.)
(although I'd wish Windows screensavers wouldn't go off through mouse movements.)
There should be "where's waldo?" option to find 1 pixel that's off.
The green can be very helpful during video productions where screen replacement is needed in post production. Though, it’d be even more helpful to not only be green, but to have tracking markers as well.
Very cool!
More colour choices would be great. Sometimes I use my second screen just for face illumination during video calls. I found that ft.com salmon-pink is one of the better choices.
More colour choices would be great. Sometimes I use my second screen just for face illumination during video calls. I found that ft.com salmon-pink is one of the better choices.
Doesn’t work properly on iOS Brave. The first one worked but the others displayed a video which was oriented the wrong way (landscape vs portrait).
I like this, though would be useful for a bookmarkable (ie. clickable with url) version of the individual colours.
javascript: (()=>{const div = document.createElement('div'); div.style.background = 'black'; document.body.appendChild(div); div.requestFullscreen();})();
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it is possible to choose any color by:
right click > inspect > editing `.color.*{background-color:#______}`
I love these one domain one function web apps.
Can't say I will use it, but good on you for rolling it out.
Can't say I will use it, but good on you for rolling it out.
What is the point of this?
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For many monitors this is not true. For a screen where the resting state of the LCD pixels are open displaying black means the monitor has to switch the diffuser to closed in order to block the light, which uses more energy than displaying white. There are lots of different LCD technologies which affect whether black or white is more efficient. For CRT screens black is always better.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-b...