As long as people can change the style as they prefer, and have it saved with cookies or login settings (I don't know how much this forum/bbs software can do that), and a decent style is available (the original isn't bad, but I went with the blue for myself). If I wrote forum software, I would include the ability for users to tweak the hue, saturation, and luminance of the colors present with any style that is provided. It would be easy with stylesheet classes. A few things might need the colors in images, and that could require dynamic image generation on the server (but I've done that, before, too).

I use the Dark (Black) setting, to reduce the eye strain.

Have AutoCAD set with Black Backgrounds - for Model and Layout(s).

MS Word is set with Blue Background.

Would be great to set Excel with darker views of Spreadsheets, especially since I perform >40% of a project's Engineering / Design tasks via Excel.

Back in the day (1990 - 1995), most of the Apps were DOS Apps, so the "Background" was Black (or a charcoal Gray).

My 80386 Machine had an EGA Monitor, which included a Manual switch to go into Monochrome (Green Scale), or back to Color mode - with the EGA's whopping 16 Colors!

Was great for MS Word / Excel for Windows (view in Monochrome).
Also was nice for Word Star (DOS), and the "Has To Be The Origin Of HTML" tagging used to format a Document!
(if you remember Word Star, you know what I am talking about!)

Scott

On my DOS boxes I always use yellow on light blue.

PROMPT $e[1;33;44m

I would go against the dark theme as a default, some people may think their computer is broken if they are visiting here for the first time.
I had a look at the Forums before, with my browser set to display default colours, I must say I do like both the coffee and the blue themes, if that is any real help to the cause!

Mike,

I agree. I'll rotate through the other styles periodically and maybe throw in some Special or Seasonal type themes from time to time.

Bill

I don't know... on the old monitors (60 Hz refresh rate, very low resolution) white on black is great, but on modern monitors it makes my eyes hurt, there I prefer it just the other way round, AutoCad being the only exception.

I had one of those EGA color/amber/green monitors too... definitely cool!
My first memories of computers date back to the 1980s when I was a fairly small kids (for comparison, I was born in 1985) at a big electronics store, amber screens and the screeching of dot matrix printers. My dad's first Apple PowerBook was another world back then with it's light yellow black and white screen and graphics.