Fed up with monitor glare burning your eyeballs out? Can’t find an anti-glare screen for an LCD monitor (and SHELL-SHOCKED by the price of anti-glare screens anyway)?
You’ve probably tried manually adjusting your monitor brightness. That’s a pain.
DimScreen is a lovely little scrap of software that will do this for you with just one press of a hot-key.
Download DimScreen. Double-click on the icon in your downloads folder to start the programme. An icon should appear in your tray menu. Right-click on that and select ‘Settings’. Select a hotkey textbox and press a key for dimming; do the same thing for brightening. From now on pressing either of those keys will brighten or dim the screen incrementally.
To get the programme auto-starting in Windows right click on the icon in Windows Explorer and select ‘Create Shortcut’, go to Start/Programmes/Startup, right click on that and select ‘Explore’.
You should now have two Windows Explorer panes open. Drag the shortcut into the Startup folder.
Other tips for reducing monitor glare:
- Have a dimmable light in the room where you work. Energy-saving fluorescent bulbs aren’t usually dimmable and are also pretty harsh on the eyes. You might struggle to find the ‘old-fashioned’ bulbs, but halogen bulbs can be dimmed.
- For Word documents and text editor documents create a nice green background.
- Sit as far back from the monitor screen as possible. You need two computer desks – one for the monitor, one for you.
- Avoid any foods or drinks that make your eyes hurt – be aware of any discomfort that comes within minutes of eating or drinking a particular food or drink.
- There’s a difference between being fascinated by a problem and busting your brains out on a problem that refuses to be solved. One is largely effortless, the other EATS up concentration. Recognise when you’re eating up concentration because that’s when your eyes will start hurting the most.
Update 2012: you might like this Firefox AddOn (Color That Site, link to video) that allows you to change the background or foreground colors of any site.