It makes me incredibly sad that people are willing to stare straight ahead at a fucking lightbulb (a.k.a. sites with a white background) and destroy their vision.
There's a lot to discuss here. I personally cannot read through light-on-dark digital designs. After a few lines everything blurs. With dark-on-light on the opposite I can read for hours.
Most probably is due to a non-optimal screen both at home and work-place, but I suffer from the same issue even on 2010 iMacs.
But the most pleasant scheme for me (I mean, my eyes) is light-gray-on-dark-gray.
It's the contrast between the text/content and the background that affects your comfort though. There was an article about how you should never use black for your text on a white bg[0]. I think the points there are rather salient.
In fact the W3C has a good calculator for colour contrast [1], which I think is a good guide for calculating colour contrast when designing sites
I think there are no points in [0] what so ever to support the claim than one should not use black (#000). The author does not argue at all. All he does is present a photo he has taken which does not have black pixels. What the hell is that supposed to prove?
I agree.
"Why the Web is White"
Because it's designed by people who are not using the websites. It's easier to 'sell'.
Same reason AutoCAD is shown with a white background in publicity, but users switch to a dark background the instant they have to use it professionally.
Same thing with a text editor... Emacs default to white, but the first thing I do with a fresh install is to change it to a dark theme.
