[HN Gopher] Please don't force dark mode
___________________________________________________________________
Please don't force dark mode
Author : vishnuharidas
Score : 115 points
Date : 2025-01-19 21:27 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (iamvishnu.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (iamvishnu.com)
| phyzix5761 wrote:
| Please don't force Light Mode on users. Thanks
| sesm wrote:
| To work around light mode we have Dark Reader extension. Is the
| author frustrated enough to make a Light Reader extension?
| SSLy wrote:
| dark reader can already in fact lighten up dark pages
| 42lux wrote:
| Darkreader has an option to force light mode.
| bee_rider wrote:
| The dark reader extension can force a light theme as well. It
| would be more properly named the "respect my theme
| preferences for real" extension. It is a bit annoying that it
| is necessary.
| nfw2 wrote:
| This particular blog doesn't heed device settings and, as such,
| forces light mode on its readers.
|
| The author also changes their mind halfway through and decides
| the problem is actually color contrast, not dark mode.
| Springtime wrote:
| Yeah their actual point is about contrast ratio, which makes
| the headline a bit disingenuous.
|
| Ironically they end by saying they'll use an invert filter as a
| workaround, while for those who prefer dark mode if doing the
| same on the author's own stark white bg/black text site (such
| as Vivaldi's 'Invert Mode') will produce the very contrast
| ratio in dark they're complaining about :p
| gregmac wrote:
| The author's blog also explicitly defines
| color: #111; background-color: #fdfdfd;
|
| which is a contrast ratio of 18:56:1.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I think the more specific argument is to avoid sudden changes in
| brightness.
|
| Neither dark mode nor light mode is the one true "main" option.
| We had dark mode for a long time with terminals. Then light mode
| a long time with word processors and the web and OSes. And now we
| kinda have both.
| kenanfyi wrote:
| Anthony Hobday [1] has some pre-defined color combinations on his
| website. Sharing, since I find it related.
|
| [1]: https://anthonyhobday.com/sideprojects/containercolours/
| lol768 wrote:
| I very rarely stumble across sites that genuinely force dark
| mode.. they usually respect "prefers-color-scheme dark" (as they
| should).
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Can someone share a guide or how to for detecting the device's
| preference and honouring that? That sounds optimal.
| Zak wrote:
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/pref...
| ss64 wrote:
| It is built into the CSS standard
|
| /* Dark mode */ @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) { ... }
|
| The issue with both dark and light modes is so many designers
| seem to have jumped onto the idea that colour schemes have to
| be either bright white or darkest black.
|
| I'd much rather see colours that are 'slightly darker' at night
| and 'slightly lighter' in the daytime. For one thing there are
| still so many websites with no colour schemes setup at all so
| if you avoid going to extremes it minimises the contrast
| difference.
| bee_rider wrote:
| The dark mode background should be actually black so our OLED
| screens can turn their pixels off completely.
| Springtime wrote:
| The other issue is many sites don't use that CSS media query
| at the minimum for auto setting the theme. They instead use a
| Javascript approach that often involves local storage/cookies
| even if no choice is made, which doesn't work if those are
| blocked and/or Javascript disabled. In such cases the default
| theme is forced.
|
| The optimal approach is applying the appropriate `prefers-
| color-scheme` using CSS alone, while additionally allowing a
| theme override using JS/storage. Fewer do this though, even
| though it wouldn't require any cookies and thus no consent
| dialog.
|
| The worst are sites that only have theme switching gated
| behind registration.
| duncan-donuts wrote:
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/pref...
| bee_rider wrote:
| Firefox has a default color for text and background. I wonder,
| if you just don't set a color, is that what gets used?
| Theodores wrote:
| The truth is that you need to do device detection, so the
| @prefers CSS stuff, then you need to have a toggle to over-ride
| things. Then you need some javascript to store the preference
| in local storage.
|
| On page load you get your javascript to check the mode and
| check the override to add a class to the whole page. It is this
| class that implements the desired light or dark theme.
|
| Fighting against you is what the browser is doing. You can put
| a meta tag in to force it to respect one theme or the other so
| it does not go freestyling.
|
| People that have a page permanently set to light mode (or dark
| mode) have put in the meta tag but they haven't done the extra
| work to implement some meaningful choice.
|
| In summary, there is auto, where the browser does its best, one
| mode enforced with a meta tag, then a full solution where there
| is a pretty button on the page and some javascript to honour
| the preference, keeping the preference in local storage.
|
| Bonus points for adding an event observer to detect the change
| in preferences from outside the browser or in dev tools.
|
| More bonus points for having no FOUC.
|
| Extra, extra bonus points, is to implement not just a 'dark
| mode', but a DARK mode. In light mode everything is kittens and
| rainbows, whereas in dark mode the content is kind of gruesome
| and 'dark'. Any subject can be treated this way, a page on say,
| watermelons could be full of tasty recipe ideas in light mode,
| but, in dark mode, it could be about dropping them off tall
| buildings with busy streets below...
| poisonborz wrote:
| We've again came to full circle, with so many posts damning "no
| dark mode" sites back then. Maybe there is enough audience now
| for a "BrightReader" browser extension?
| smlavine wrote:
| I agree with this. Default, unconfigurable light mode has been
| around for a while, and infrastructure like the Dark Reader
| plugin is around to address this. There is no such thing for
| light mode, though.
|
| In my opinion, light mode is better than dark mode in most
| situations. The only situation dark mode is better than light
| mode is when you're sitting in a dark room with your screen as
| your only light source, and most of the time that's not really a
| healthy situation to be in. Dark mode is a crutch. Turn on a
| light or go to sleep.
|
| Light mode might be annoying to read in no-light environments,
| but dark mode is nigh impossible to read in high-light
| environments. Ever try to read a dark mode UI on your phone on a
| bright summer's day? Can't read a thing, even with brightness
| cranked all the way up.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| > _The only situation dark mode is better than light mode is
| when you 're sitting in a dark room with your screen as your
| only light source, and most of the time that's not really a
| healthy situation to be in. Dark mode is a crutch. Turn on a
| light or go to sleep._
|
| It's always been strange to me how many people without a
| medical reason for doing so want to sit in dark rooms like cave
| trolls, but there we are.
|
| At least now operating systems all have switchable modes that
| get reported to the browser. The browser can/should adapt to
| whatever setting the OS reports.
|
| But UI design is, with a few islands of rationality in history
| from people like Paul Fitts, mostly a cascade of poorly applied
| vibes and fads. First people say that contrast is bad, so then
| people don't use enough contrast. Then people say that
| brightness is bad, so people don't use enough brightness. Then
| people realize why contrast and brightness were important all
| along and the circle of life continues.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| > It's always been strange to me how many people without a
| medical reason for doing so want to sit in dark rooms like
| cave trolls, but there we are.
|
| As a millennial, I grew up with rooms being lit by 1-3
| relatively dim lampshaded 40-60w incandescent bulbs at night.
| As a result that's what feels comfortable and relaxing to me
| as an adult. Rooms at home being brightly lit at night feels
| grating and reminiscent of a grocery store or hospital or
| something.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > It's always been strange to me how many people without a
| medical reason for doing so want to sit in dark rooms like
| cave trolls, but there we are.
|
| Because screens are not bright enough to use outside or in
| well-lit environments.
|
| If E-ink or similar technology manages to get a bit better
| refresh rates, it's going to change building architecture in
| the entire industrialized world.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > * only situation dark mode is better than light mode is when
| you're sitting in a dark room with your screen as your only
| light source,*
|
| Also maybe if you set your screen brightness inappropriately
| high.
| lukan wrote:
| Or if you are sensitive to light.
|
| I feel kind of traumatized for years of forced light mode
| everywhere. It hurts my eyes.
|
| In bright sun when outside, I use light mode. Allmost
| everywhere else, I won't. So please @everyone thinking like
| this, don't assume, what is best for me, because your taste
| is different.
| jezek2 wrote:
| Yeah, most people use their screens with brightness cranked
| up and then wonder why they have all sort of problems.
|
| The trick is to set a low brightness, in my case it's a
| little below what you would call comfortable, but that's
| because you adapt to it in a sec and will be perceived as
| good.
|
| If you can't set it too low on the monitor, set brightness to
| 0 and lower the contrast. If it's still too bright use also
| brightness/contrast controls in your GPU settings. It is also
| needed to adjust the settings during the day. But having a
| more controlled light in your room is a better option.
|
| Once you start getting comments from others that they can't
| see shit on your screen then you've set the correct level :)
|
| Another very often forgotten thing is to set up correct gamma
| correction! Yes that thing from CRTs is often needed on LCDs
| too! LCDs can produce quite big contrast which is unpleasant,
| for example I set mine to 1.3, fixed it nicely for me.
|
| One approach to find a good value is to have antialiased text
| both in white-on-black and black-on-white and switching
| between these. Once the apparent thickness is the same then
| you've got the right value. Beware of ClearType settings
| though, you may need to do the test with a classic
| antialiasing instead.
|
| The result is that you can comfortably use light mode in
| total dark room without any issues.
| Zak wrote:
| A difficulty is that the appropriate screen brightness varies
| with the content it's displaying. Going from a low-contrast
| dark site to a white background is especially jarring.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Or from text and diagrams (which often contain large
| single-color areas) to photos and videos. The default HN
| color scheme looks much brighter than the bright daylight
| photo I currently have as a desktop background.
| whalesalad wrote:
| Nah some of us need dark mode 24x7 and actually benefit from it
| even in broad daylight. Not fair to make this assertion and
| assume everyone is like you.
| bee_rider wrote:
| On my system, the dark reader plugin also has an option to
| force a light theme.
|
| Actually, the browser has the ability to set a default
| background and foreground anyway, so this extension would be
| unnecessary if websites would behave properly and respect these
| defaults unless they really need to. We live in an unfortunate
| world where a "actually respect my preferences" extension is
| necessary, but since it is necessary, it should be noted that
| it covers both options. Overall the situation is pretty stupid
| but hey at least we've got workarounds, right?
| accelbred wrote:
| All the dark mode extensions I've used also would work for
| making pages light mode.
|
| For me, I have trouble focusing when reading light mode
| content, but dark mode is perfectly fine (light backgrounds
| seem not still, as if there is movement, and this effect
| lessens the darker the background is.
| bhauer wrote:
| > _Light mode might be annoying to read in no-light
| environments, but dark mode is nigh impossible to read in high-
| light environments._
|
| Backlit screens are difficult to read in high-light
| environments regardless of whether you're reading black text on
| white or white text on black. I use white-on-black ("dark
| mode") on my e-ink Kindle to read outside all the time. And the
| same is true on our Daylight computer. White-on-black remains
| my preference in high-light environments.
| leptons wrote:
| Are you confusing the brightness setting on the display with
| "dark" and "light" mode? Because I always have the brightness
| on my monitors at max when the lights are on. I practically
| never change it.
|
| As a software developer, who codes about 15 hours a day (day
| job and personal projects), I ditched "light mode" many years
| ago as it's too harsh on my eyes to be staring at a bright
| white screen that many hours a day. Dark mode is far easier to
| look at for long periods of time.
|
| I have no trouble reading code in dark mode in a well lit room.
| If it were difficult to read, it wouldn't last 15 minutes for
| my needs. I don't code in "D4rK M0D3" in the dark, I'm not a
| l337 H4CK3r.
|
| >Ever try to read a dark mode UI on your phone on a bright
| summer's day?
|
| Phone in direct sunlight is one thing. That isn't the way most
| people use devices, that's a more rare use case than sitting at
| a desk 8 hours a day staring at a bright screen. There are also
| high-contrast modes for eyesight challenged people, which can
| be used effectively in bright sunlight too, but I'm not going
| to code that way for hours a day if I don't really need to.
| Phones and other devices also have adaptive brightness, so if
| you are in a dark room the phone's display brightness is going
| to be dimmer automatically, and I'm not really sure you know
| the difference between "dark mode" and "brightness turned
| down". So using a phone screen and high contrast required for
| using screens in direct bright sunlight is a poor example to
| support your argument. Maybe you also need to qualify all of
| your arguments with "on a mobile device in bright sunlight",
| because that isn't the main use case for "dark mode".
| walthamstow wrote:
| I agree broadly but in London it starts to get dark about 3pm
| at the moment. In the winter, dark mode is a lifesaver.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| I like Pure Black mode because the black pixels actually turn
| off on my screens, making it much more pleasant to look at.
| Even in broad daylight! I wish Pure Black mode was an option
| separate from Dark and Light mode, like it is on some Android
| apps. For now I get by by minimizing brightness in Dark Reader,
| but it is a bit clunky.
| bobmcnamara wrote:
| Default, unconfigurable dark mode has been around much longer.
| CrimsonRain wrote:
| > most of the time that's not really a healthy situation to be
| in
|
| Please explain.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| I use dark mode during the day in rooms with lots of natural
| light spilling in because that's what's felt better to me ever
| since we collectively decided that light themes need to use
| stark white and very light grays instead of the mid-grays
| dappled with mid-colors that used to be popular. Dark mode is a
| bandaid for the needlessly bright themes that became the norm
| with the advent of flat design.
| tunared wrote:
| As someone that had cataracts, light mode was very hard to
| read. It was like looking directly into high beams. I used a
| dark reader plugins that was alright, but was not the same as a
| site designed to support dark mode.
| jltsiren wrote:
| In my experience, high contrast dark mode is readable in high-
| light environments, but it causes the issue the images in the
| article show.
|
| Beyond that, I have no preferences between light and dark modes
| on laptop screens and smaller. But I prefer having at least
| some dark elements visible on large screens, because floaters
| can be distracting against large bright surfaces. Usually it's
| a terminal window with the traditional light gray on black
| color scheme, but I tend to use dark mode in IDEs and other
| full-screen apps.
| wruza wrote:
| I use dark mode in a (moderately) lit room, because it makes me
| focus better. Even colorschemes can affect my state of mind and
| make it work differently. I'm not even talking about
| effectiveness here, just comfort, although they correlate. I
| can't _just_ choose light mode.
|
| When screen is too dark (sunlight, etc), I make it brighter.
| Requires >=400 nit or whatever that unit is for an average day.
| cwbriscoe wrote:
| I never knew about the Dark Reader plugin. I just installed it
| and it makes HN, Slashdot and other sites much more readable
| for me. Thanks!
| sgt wrote:
| Also; because system mode happens to be dark, doesn't mean that
| the users would like dark mode by default. Every dark mode is not
| equal, and I'd like to start with light mode if possible.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I don't really see how a website could make a better choice
| than to respect the current theme by default. It should be
| changeable, though.
| Zak wrote:
| Firefox has a setting for this, defaulting to the device theme.
| HellsMaddy wrote:
| Thanks for posting this, it's an interesting perspective that I
| hadn't considered before. Ideally, sites would respect user
| preferences such as prefers-color-scheme and prefers-reduced-
| motion. And, in fact, I just checked MDN and see there is
| prefers-contrast:
|
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/pref...
| Sleaker wrote:
| Your light mode privilege is showing but seriously, maybe instead
| of writing an article with a tone about everything that's wrong
| with a preference you have you could instead. do what every dark
| mode user has done and like you said.. just override the css. And
| then write an article with a tone about how you accomplished it.
| This just feels like complaining for the sake of complaining.
| drpixie wrote:
| Seems like a fashion thing, but the Linux distribs I've recently
| checked out all defaulted to a dark mode. Fine for night but a
| pain to read normally :(
| bbstats wrote:
| ...what is wrong with this person's eyes
| nabbed wrote:
| I don't know, but I have the exact same issue. White text on a
| black background actually hurts my eyes after a paragraph of
| reading, and then when I look away I see those grey bands
| across my vision for the next 20 seconds. As soon as I land on
| such a page, I either immediately back out or, if it's a
| subject I really want to read, I go to Safari and turn on
| reader mode.
| 867-5309 wrote:
| exactly. perhaps a case of their eyes and screen refresh rate
| being incompatible. something smells undiagnosed. whatever it
| may be, definitely a PEBCAK issue
| jemmyw wrote:
| Well hang on a sec. If a website is dark with light text and has
| just that one style, then that's it's theme, it's vibe. Dark mode
| only exists if there is a light mode, and give versa.
|
| Don't force having to maintain two modes on websites who don't
| want to?
| charles_f wrote:
| That's exactly what the article says, right at the beginning
|
| > If dark mode is a characteristic of your brand, please ensure
| you choose a comfortable contrast ratio for the text.
| userbinator wrote:
| If the contrast or brightness is too high, adjust your monitor.
|
| Too many leave theirs at eye-searingly bright and then complain.
| enriquto wrote:
| Graybeard opinion: most sites shouldn't deal _at all_ with
| colors. Just write plain html [0] and let your users choose.
| Default browser styles are not only stylish, they are also
| accessible and responsive by default.
|
| [0] https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/
| ryandrake wrote:
| Not just light vs. dark. I wish web sites would respect my
| system's preferences in general. If my OS theme is purple Comic
| Sans text on top of a yellow brick wall background, then my
| browser should respect that. I want to read text using the full
| width of the browser rather than a tiny 5 inch column down the
| middle of it, I shouldn't have to perform wizardry in the browser
| settings, conjure up some overriding CSS, or install extensions
| to do this. The browser should just say "tough shit, web
| developer, the user's preference wins."
|
| Browsers have handed over way too much control to developers to
| ignore what the user wants. So much for being a "user agent."
| Browsers are more like the developer's agent.
| robertclaus wrote:
| Do desktop apps or anything else really respect this?
| Borealid wrote:
| Desktop apps using a UI toolkit like qt, gtk, wpf, etc do by
| default.
|
| The developer needs to do additional work to un-standardize
| their application.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yes, and too many applications go out of their way to
| ignore user preferences on desktop, too! It's a major
| problem IMO. The user should be in charge of their
| computer.
| worble wrote:
| Well, there's not much you can do about yellow background, but
| forcing Comic Sans is as easy as setting it as your preferred
| font and then deselecting "Allow pages to choose their own
| fonts", at least in the Firefox settings page.
|
| This is what I do and it makes browsing the web so much better.
| kiririn wrote:
| Please don't force low contrast ratios on users. Not everyone is
| calibrated to >100 nits and viewing your content in a bright but
| sensible ambient environment
|
| The recommended grey-on-grey may be unreadably low in contrast
| when viewed on, for example, 0 brightness in a pitch black room,
| or in direct sunlight
|
| The full SDR colour range is there to be used, this isn't HDR
| where you need to limit things to not blind your users
| londons_explore wrote:
| If the contrast ratio is a problem for your eyes, just turn down
| the contrast on your screen.
|
| I'm sure there are filters to do that on both desktop and mobile.
| reddalo wrote:
| I don't agree. I have the same problem described on the
| article; I can't read websites with white text over a pitch
| black background. My eyes hurt after a while. At the same time,
| I use a dark theme on my IDE, but it feels like it's better on
| my eyes for some reason.
| layer8 wrote:
| That's because the dark theme of your IDE also uses lower
| contrast. Which makes it hard to read for other parts of the
| population, even if they otherwise like dark mode. Contrast
| should be a user setting.
|
| I'm dating myself, but this was all so easy with CRT
| monitors, which had a simple analog contrast dial, and
| everyone just set it to their preferred level.
| londons_explore wrote:
| There is a web API to figure out if the user is in dark mode. use
| it. @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
| CSS Rules here... }
| hk1337 wrote:
| Simplest thing is to have light and dark mode themes, use
| whatever the user has set for their system settings, and also
| have a toggle to switch between light and dark. You may like dark
| mode for most things you browse but then would prefer something
| in light mode.
| gwd wrote:
| The problem with this is that you now have 2x the UX testing to
| make sure everything is useable and looks aesthetically
| pleasing. Probably OK for a large website, but as a solo
| entrepreneur, that ends up adding a lot of overhead.
| nottorp wrote:
| Funny because i find the blog's example of "readable text"
| extremely hard to read. Because of the low contrast.
|
| What kind of eye condition or monitor does he have?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| If I had to guess, he has an extremely expensive HDR monitor
| aimed at designers and uses the full color gamut for
| everything.
| Animats wrote:
| For some reason, dark mode sites seem to come with monospaced
| fonts, usually Courier.
|
| I suspect that the next thing will be HaloLite 2.0, where a ring
| of light appears around the screen.[1] There are TV
| backlights.[2] Backlights that follow the screen color.[3] There
| is at least one phone with backlights.[4]
|
| Does anybody like that stuff?
|
| [1] https://movingimage.org/collection/artifact-halolighttv/
|
| [2] https://www.inspiredled.com/product/universal-backlight-
| kits...
|
| [3] https://www.theverge.com/22566408/govee-immersion-
| ambilight-...
|
| [4] https://www.phonearena.com/news/Nothing-Phone-1-What-do-
| the-...
| brine wrote:
| Instead of writing this shortsighted article, just do like those
| of us who are forced to endure light mode, and install Dark
| Reader(https://darkreader.org) that also does light mode.
| layer8 wrote:
| > pure white text on a pitch black background can strain my eyes
| and be very difficult to read. [...] However, light gray text on
| a dark gray background is easy on my eyes.
|
| For me it's the opposite, I need maximum contrast. It's a pity we
| can't just have default text color on default background color,
| and everyone can adjust their browser to their preferred colors.
| While there is reader mode and plugins that try their best, they
| don't work consistently, because HTML and CSS is such a mess.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| I've never quite seen a stupid trend in web design take off like
| dark mode did. Maybe because it's just the ultimate perfect bike
| shed; something so completely inane and pointless, yet
| superficially dramatic, that it can be given entire meetings and
| dev cycles and treated like something important, when it's just 3
| lines of CSS. It has become the very first thing anyone requests
| in a new application, and I have now seen countless entire
| sprints deficated to implementing it in different more
| complicated ways every time in each new app. Really bizarre.
| carrotcarrot wrote:
| Dark mode is such a dumb trend and I'm waiting patiently for it
| to die. It's not easier on the eyes unless you're in a dark room
| with no windows.
| dgeiser13 wrote:
| It's not a trend.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| If anything, light mode is the trend.
| xnx wrote:
| As long as were asking: Don't set color, typeface, font size,
| link color, visited link color, margins, spacing, line height,
| etc. either
| mooreds wrote:
| I hate darkmode. Fight me.
| mukunda_johnson wrote:
| I prefer light mode for most things, but use dark mode anyway to
| save battery on an OLED Screen :)
| dgeiser13 wrote:
| It's interesting how they don't want forced dark mode yet they
| have no problem with forced light mode.
| seanwilson wrote:
| > Upcoming WCAG 3.0 adds a new exploratory requirement for
| "Maximum text contrast" and I hope the working committee will
| address the issue of high contrast text in dark mode and provide
| suitable recommendations.
|
| APCA is a proposed replacement contrast calculation that was in
| discussions for WCAG 3 that mentions a maximum contrast value to
| avoid eye strain like this (https://www.myndex.com/APCA/, I'm
| getting SSL errors right now though).
|
| I wrote an accessible palette creator tool where you can switch
| between WCAG 2 and APCA contrast checking to see how they compare
| (go to "... > Flip to dark/light palette" to explore a dark mode
| palette):
|
| https://www.inclusivecolors.com/
|
| Along with not having a maximum recommended contrast, WCAG 2 is
| also meant to be really inaccurate at measuring dark mode
| contrast, where it'll say colors contrast well when they don't.
| APCA is meant to fix both these problems.
| euamotubaina wrote:
| Just created an account to say that I have that same eye
| condition and indeed, looking at content with high contrast
| ratios (mostly with whitish typography against dark backgrounds)
| gets REALLY uncomfortable after a couple minutes.
| soheil wrote:
| It's worse than that please don't force dark mode even if my
| system has dark mode enabled.
|
| I don't want the primary background color of my computer to be
| dark as I'm browsing the web but I want only the periphery
| control items like the browser address bar, etc. to be dark.
|
| I have the Dark Reader extension to dim white backgrounds only at
| night.
| layer8 wrote:
| At least some browsers have a setting to report a different
| preference to websites than the system setting. That really
| belongs on the user-agent level.
| chaosprint wrote:
| the real problem is that I use a Eink display sometimes but many
| websites are disasters on it, e.g. HN.. I have to use
| https://hn.svelte.dev/ instead.
|
| pls at least provide a switch...
| jvillasante wrote:
| The only reason I have started to use `eww` in Emacs to "read the
| web" is because people pushing those amounts of dark on
| everybody, it has become unbearable!
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| Dark mode was a mistake. Early LCDs were dim so everyone cranked
| up the whites to make up for it. Now LCDs have caught up and it
| burns a significant number of peoples eyes, so we increasingly
| have to support two modes. Apples comically ugly dark mode icons
| shows how hard this is to do well.
|
| I think the ideal thing to do would be to move back to greys as
| the base color for computer interfaces, like we had when bright
| CRTs were the norm. This has the added advantage of allowing
| depth affordances in UI elements, which we should also bring
| back.
| layer8 wrote:
| CRTs also had easily adjustable brightness and contrast dials,
| so everyone could always quickly adjust to their preferred
| setting for black on white or vice versa.
| eikenberry wrote:
| Isn't "greys as the base color" what dark mode is for the most
| part? Light mode is generally off-white and dark mode is grey
| scaled.
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| No. You can't do drop shadows in most dark-mode setups, there
| isn't enough contrast to make it work.
|
| OS9:
|
| https://external-
| content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
|
| Windows NT:
|
| https://external-
| content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
|
| BEOS:
|
| http://toastytech.com/guis/b5pebaqua.png
| jrockway wrote:
| Dark Reader turns dark mode sites light, if you want.
|
| You can control the contrast ratio on dark mode websites with the
| "brightness" control on your monitor. It changes the emissivity
| of the pixels. Turning it down keeps black the same color and
| makes whites blacker. Monitors typically ship with the white
| level way too high for any real work (it looks good in the
| computer store though), and so you should probably always be
| turning this down.
| rishikeshs wrote:
| But what if I have only dark mode?
| SOTGO wrote:
| I'm glad this article included an example of what happens to
| their eyes when they read text in dark mode. I get the same
| afterimages and it's incredibly disorienting when it happens and
| dark mode makes it way worse than normal. As an aside, does
| anyone know if that effect has a name?
| oliviergg wrote:
| Yes, I am glad to see this post, because I had the sentiment to
| be alone with this 'symptom'. Can bear dark mode, give me
| disorientation and nausea' I wasn't able to explain this to my
| ophthalmologist.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| The solution - as always - when it comes to problems with
| usability is to set your browser to open all websites in Reader
| view by default. Then every website will always be presented in
| the way you prefer.
| nighthawk454 wrote:
| Contrast ratios don't go away in light mode. The contrast ratio
| of black-on-white is the same as white-on-black.
|
| Curious then what is the real driver of these issues? If
| accessibility teaches us anything, it's that there's certainly no
| one size fits all. But it's gonna be hard to update the standards
| or make plugins/tweaks successfully unless we get at the root of
| it.
| 1000100_1000101 wrote:
| Dark mode was the traditional normal.
|
| From early green or amber text on black mono displays. Grey on
| black DOS text mode. Light Blue on Dark Blue C-64. Apple 2's
| grey/white (I don't recall) on black. Even GUI wise, Amiga used a
| dark-blue background as the default Workbench, with user
| selectable palettes for everything.
|
| It was Microsoft Windows that changed the paradigm to default to
| a searing white display with black text in most apps, like
| Notepad, Word, etc., because "it's more like paper". Sure, paper
| is white, but it's not glowing white. That transition was
| painful.
|
| I'm glad to see dark-modes return, I agree there needs to be an
| option, not just forced dark-mode. Preferably light mode options
| to use a not-as-bright-as-possible white too.
| amelius wrote:
| Wasn't it the original Mac that changed it?
| thdhhghgbhy wrote:
| I'm more extreme, I dislike all dark mode, including code. Shreds
| my eyes, no idea why. Have tried a zillion themes, just can't be
| one of the cool kids.
| amelius wrote:
| Wasn't the idea that it is more energy-friendly?
|
| (In which case, please also stop all ads)
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