I spend a lot of my time reading online articles. And if you’re like me, your eyes start to get dry and light-sensitive (to the monitor) after a few hours of reading.

To ease the pain, I’ve found two Firefox add-ons that help:

- Greasemonkey + Tired Eyes script (only works with Greasemonkey)

- NoSquint

Now, before you go ahead and download/install the first app, I’ve prepared my own version of the Tired Eyes script – available for download here. I will explain the differences later below.

Greasemonkey is an add-on that changes how a website looks by running user-generated javascript code. One of the script that I use is the Tired Eyes script which changes the text and background colors of any website. I’ve found that the color combination used for the script isn’t ideal for me, so I’ve played around with the colors a bit. The end result is this:

Although the top image is better to read in this example (partially due to pixelation), after a few hours the bright-white background feels like a flashlight in your eyes. The only way to really feel the difference is to try out the script and then turn it off by hitting the assigned (changeable) F2 hot-key. You will soon realize how bright your monitor really is, and how much light is shine through your eyes. No wonder our eyes feel tired sometimes! Really, try it out yourself!  Download Greasemonkey + My ‘Darker’ version of the Tired Eyes script.

The second add-on, NoSquint, remembers the zoom level you’ve set on any website. For example, I always increase the font size of Wired.com articles just because I find their font size a bit too small. This add-on remembers how much I’ve zoomed, and displays the website at the last zoomed level – saving me from having to zoom-in after every visit.

Hope this helps! Protect your eyes, and happy reading

Edit: You can also use a bookmarklet called Readability if you are not using Firefox. It strips a webpage of annoyances and leaves only the necessary text and pictures. Thanks Rajesh for the mention!

Peter Kao