Certainly better. Black would be best, though. I know, black isn't "pretty", but it's the highest contrast possible, which is what ease of reading requires. If you really don't want to use black, then make the background color as dark as you can tolerate for your aesthetic.
A suggestion that others have used is to make the transparency of the textbox background adjustable. That way, you can give people like me a nice, dark solid background to help them read, but you could set the default transparency to give you the color you like best (or no background at all, if you set it all the way to fully transparent...)
In any case, thank you for being responsive to my grumbling.
