It's looking like my next pair of glasses will be bi-focals. Will I need two pairs/types of eyeglasses- one for reading and one for everyday stuff? Are progressives the same thing as the above? I also have an astigmatism (sp?).

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Bifocals combine the near-distance (reading) and far-distance (everyday stuff) prescriptions into one lens. The near-focus part is at the bottom, which explains why you often see older folks tilting their heads back a bit while reading. You don't need two separate pairs; that's the whole point of bifocals.

Progressives are a variation on standard bifocals. With Ben Franklin's original design, the near lens was basically slapped against the far lens, which left a visible line or discontinuity between them. (Later the two lenses were ground from the same blank, but the effect was the same.) Progressives have no discontinuity -- the near lens blends into the far lens, and you can't see the line between them. I have progressives and like them, but some people prefer the distinct transition of standard bifocals.

Astigmatism is different, and doesn't affect the bifocal situation. (I have it too.)

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"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

By the way, the reason folks like us need bifocals when we get older is that the lens in the eye tends to become stiffer as we age. That makes it harder for the muscles to change the shape of the lens, and therefore to allow it to "accommodate" -- i.e. change focus from infinity to up-close. Reading glasses (for those lucky enough not to need glasses all the time, or who wear contacts or have had Lasik surgery) make up for the loss of near-focus due to the stiffer lens. Bifocals do the same for us glasses wearers.

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Bring back Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

I have progressives. I'm quite nearsighted with an astigmatism. I still take my glasses off to read.

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Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
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I also frequently take my progressives off to read. It's not that I can't read with them, it just allows me to hold my head at any angle instead of needing to look through the bottom band of the glasses.

Before presbyopia set in, I was so nearsighted that I needed glasses for anything over about six inches away. Now my eyes have changed so that I see fine without glasses at a comfortable reading distance. Even computing distance, I have them off right now. I also used to be much more nearsighted in one eye than the other; I had to adjust the right eyepiece on my binoculars by two diopters. Now both eyes are the same.

If you go for progressives, get good ones. I made the mistake of trying to save money by getting them at a big-box "wholesale" store. It was a fiasco. I basically had tunnel vision with them. My wife finally took them right off my face, handed me my old ones, and took them back. Then I went to the optician at the eye doctor's office and got Varilux (if it's ok to mention a brand.) When I went in to pick them up the optician warned it might take some time to adjust to them. It did. Two or three seconds. I haven't had anything else since.

Oh, and when you first get your bifocals, be careful walking down stairs!

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I also have bifocals and would vote for progressives too. I find that when my prescription is fresh I can read ok through them, but over time (several years) as my vision gets a little worse, I go back to taking them off or looking over the top (of the frame). And even more than reading, if I'm doing really close modeling work, I do better with out them. I've worn glasses since I was about 8 years old; I didn't find the change from regulars to bifocals too bad.

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One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009

I got progressives a couple of years ago (I am very near sighted) and I love them. I should have gotten them long ago, as it was getting very hard for me to read my star charts (I was taking my old glasses off and putting my nose up to the chart to read it)!

Some people don't like progressives, or have a hard time getting used to them. Me, I loved them from the first moment I tried them on.

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"I'm as accurate as any psychic. And I'm a cartoon!" -- Squidward

"Arrrgh, the laws of physics be a harsh mistress!" -- Bender

I hve had progressives for about 10 years, it DOES take a while to get used to them, at first when I moved my head things changed shape slightly. After about a week I didn't notice the effect (it may depend on your own personal prescription) I still have to be careful walking down stairs, because when I'm looking down at the steps I look through the bottom of the lens which is designed for reading. The same thing happens if I try to watch TV when lying down, I look through the wrong part of the lens.
That said, I love the convenience of of not having to change glasses all the time, I would hate to go back to reading and distance glasses, I just wake up, put them on and that's it for the rest of the day.
What I need now is some way to fix my colour blindness

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The meek will inherit the earth ... the rest of us will go to the stars.

i had progressives & never liked them & went back to bifocals with, for these days, HUGE lenses-- sort of airline pilot type -- makes things easy. cannot understand how people manage with progressives in the narrow style now fashionable, but my wife has them. She does not read as much as i do.

You can get progressives with large lenses. Mine are certainly not tiny, they are pretty large measured from top to bottom.

I should also have mentioned that I cannot wear contacs because of dry eyes, if I wore contacts then I would have simply purchased reading glasses.

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"I'm as accurate as any psychic. And I'm a cartoon!" -- Squidward

"Arrrgh, the laws of physics be a harsh mistress!" -- Bender

I also have astigmatism and progressive bifocals. My lenses are on the smallish side and took a bit of getting used to with the bifocal.

If you spend a lot of time at the computer, you may wish to get a pair of glasses made for working at just that distance. With my progressives, I had to tilt my head back just so to get the right power and keeping it there was a...well...pain in the neck.

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Brett
Peters Creek, Alaska

Fortunately the really narrow frames (I call them "slit glasses") are not as popular as a few years ago. The last time I got glasses I had to argue with the gal at the optician's to show me something that actually covered my eyes. This time there was a better selection, and few of the skinny ones. And the technician admitted that the skinny ones basically didn't work for progressives.

And I'm typing this with glasses off again!

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Cum catapultae proscribeantur tum soli proscripti catapultas habeant.

I think all progressives have smaller "reading" areas than divided bifocals of the same size. Two ophthalmologists I know are dead set against them. But they are older guys, so maybe just conservative. And they don't sell eyeglasses. Opticians will try & sell you progressives -- the profit margin is better I am told.
The answer is try it & see - pun intended.

I "graduated" to progressives a couple of years ago. My optometrist finds that going from bifocals to progressives is a harder adjustment than the other way, so I took the plunge. There are some unexpected effects I've seen. One is that to this day, looking at my feet while going down stairs is weird, because me feet are out of focus and not quite where my kinesthetic sense says they are (variable image scale and all that). My solution is to try not looking at them. When driving and needing a sun visor, it's odd that I may have to choose between not having the sun in my eyes and having the view in good focus, since tilting my head up to put shade on my eyes results in looking through a lower part of the lenses. And since I do a fair bit of brass playing, I sometimes have to remind conductors to use broad gestures, since, if my embouchure is pointing the horn in a socially acceptable direction, I may not have the freedom of movement to see them in good focus. All that said, they definitely improved my reading comfort, with eye accommodation tightening as time goes on. I keep waiting to see whether presbyopia might reduce my degree of nearsightedness, but no luck so far.

Quick edit for related point: I've read that one Shuttle commander (John Young?) had special multifocals made so that he could see nearby controls above and below the window while keeping infinity focus in the middle.

I have regular (lined) bifocals. What a waste - for me. I either look through the top (distance) part or I take them off (to read).

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I think that's fairly common among earthbound pilots as well. And off-topic: One of my favorite photos ever was of John Young going through a checklist on the very first shuttle flight. With gray hair. And reading glasses.

Toejam: Progressives probably have a smaller reading area than regular bifocals because they are more equivalent to trifocals. There's an area in the middle which works well for mid-distance, such as the instrument panel of a car. It also works for my computer screen at work, which is farther away than the home ones. (Glasses are off, again, at home!)

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Cum catapultae proscribeantur tum soli proscripti catapultas habeant.

I know competitive shooters that have their bifocals made upside down so they can focus on their front sight when their head is down and have normal distance vision when their head is up.

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Brett
Peters Creek, Alaska

well i dont need them anyway..because i have a good vision now and its 20/20..before i was using contacs because i have Astigmatism but i got to a LASIK procedure in LASIK-1 well now i got 20/20 without any help...

many thanks!
michelle C.