akersten5 hours ago
kind of sad that the CSS specification wound up with this clunky `light-dark(white,black)` thing instead of literally anything more extensible like, `themed(dark(black), light(white), retro(purple))`.
Then you'd be able to have a cool theme dropdown like sites used to have, fully CSS-driven with essentially no JS required, in a compatible and modern way.
ChrisMarshallNY2 hours ago
Like the xkcd one?
Not sure if it shows up for everyone, but there was a popover under the comic that did all kinds of crazy themes.
apparent12 hours ago
I thought this was going to be about how people prefer different levels of blackness for the background in dark mode. I've heard people say that pure black is more battery efficient for OLED displays (but don't know if this is true), and I know some folks prefer a less-inky grey.
I was wondering how there could be six levels though; I'd think 3 or 4 would be the most anyone could notice or care about.
Tallain5 hours ago
I do wish there was more conversation around the levels of blackness for dark modes. Black screen and white text is physically painful for me. I usually have to resort to reader mode, or open up dev tools and change colors myself, to make a page like this readable for me.
I appreciate how hard it can be to make a good dark mode; I've spent months building a custom dark theme I term "mid-contrast". It's still WCAG compliant, but easy on my eyes, and I've stuck with the (maybe silly?) requirement of 16 colors only, like Solarized.
2ndbigbangan hour ago
I'm the opposite. Anything other than pure white on pure black for dark themes gives me eye strain. If you use the dark reader web extension you can adjust the brightness and contrast to your liking.
bryanhogan2 hours ago
Pure black background with pure white elements is a common accessibility issue.
And just curious, why would using "only" 16 colors be silly?
layer810 hours ago
The more universal solution would be to standardize Reader Mode compatibility, and for browsers to let users configure how they want Reader Mode to look.
In other words, instead of an n x m solution where every web site has to cater to each different user preference, there should be a simplified content view that every web site only has to support in a singular way, and that allows browsers to cater to the various user preferences.
apparent8 hours ago
This likely would have happened already if it weren't for Google's hostility to Reader Mode. It's hilarious to see the Reader Mode that they offer, where it's a resizable 2-column view, to ensure that ads are loaded and kept in sight. We get it, Google: you don't want to endanger your ad revenue.
a964 hours ago
Shh, don't tell web designers about reader mode! They'll try to break it!
f33d51738 hours ago
It's just n x 2 for light and dark themes.
hakfoo6 hours ago
I feel like we could go beyond that, especially for more app-like experiences. Maybe we want themes that do things like "add specific trim to make editable fields more identifiable." or adding "high contrast" versions of the themes for low-quality screens or low-vision users.
There's no reason a webpage shouldn't be as themable as, say, a GTK or Qt based desktop application.
We should be trying to snatch back styling power from the designers and putting it back on the user-agent's side. Let the page look brutalist until the user has chosen an appropriate theme for their needs rather than railroading them into what someone in Marketing decided looked good.
layer84 hours ago
The comment I was responding to was suggesting n x 6. And there are also aspects beyond brightness and contrast, like font styles and sizes, line height and margins, justification and hyperlink style, and so on. The things you can or want to configure in an e-book reader.
literalAardvark4 hours ago
It is significantly more efficient for oled displays, as off oleds don't use power. It also causes burn in on a smaller part of the display which is usually good (but this could end up being a disadvantage over time as the burn in contrast is higher).
It's also more efficient for led matrix backlights.
Edit: sorry, realized this is misleading: my testing was with light vs dark, not something like dark grey vs 00 black
gruez8 hours ago
>I've heard people say that pure black is more battery efficient for OLED displays (but don't know if this is true)
No.
https://www.xda-developers.com/amoled-black-vs-gray-dark-mod...
K3UL5 hours ago
Did you even read before pasting? Yes technically it is, which would indeed be in line with "levels of dark mode".
mudkipdev7 hours ago
Grayish dark themes are underrated
t-writescode9 hours ago
for OLEDs, I tend to prefer pure black because it doesn't burn-in. Since they have a limited lifetime, any "on" time is costing me usage in the long-long-long run and I'd rather have my monitor last 5+ years than ... 2 or 3.
gruez8 hours ago
>any "on" time is costing me usage in the long-long-long run and I'd rather have my monitor last 5+ years than ... 2 or 3.
Going from dark gray to pure black isn't going to halve your monitor expectancy, if it makes a difference at all. Due to how human perception works something that's merely dark gray is actually orders of magnitude brighter than pure white, or even 50% gray. Therefore most of your burn-in is going to be driven by bright content like photos or white text, not whether you're using 5% gray vs pure black.
intronic44 minutes ago
What is the recommended way to add support for additional functional themes to support users like colour vision friendly, high contrast for poor vision, daylight mode, and night vision preserving (no blue channel) - rather than just light/dark?
zamalek11 hours ago
Is there still no way to prevent the flash bang while waiting for initial content from the server?
ethan_smith3 hours ago
A small blocking `<script>` in the `<head>` that reads the saved preference from localStorage and sets a class on `<html>` before any rendering happens is the standard approach. You can also set `<meta name="color-scheme" content="dark light">` which tells the browser to use the OS preference for the initial paint, covering the default case without any JS at all.
silverwind10 hours ago
Use `background-color` in Firefox's `userContent.css`.
zamalek9 hours ago
I love the idea of ending it for myself, but my users are still screwed?
akersten5 hours ago
how your users' browsers choose to render `about:blank` while waiting on your page to be delivered is outside of both your control and concern
on Gnome i've got system-wide dark mode turned on and idk, my Firefox is dark gray until it gets any content. so users have the power and should exercise it to tailor their experience as they wish
jagged-chisel8 hours ago
I don't know if I misunderstand the problem, but what about a style tag at the earliest part of the page indicating the background color to use?
zamalek8 hours ago
That flashbang happens during the initial latency (DNS, RTT, any server slowness).
MitPitt8 hours ago
make dark mode the default, then it's a flash of dark in either case
NSPG9118 hours ago
send a blank black page then load from there?
pocksuppet11 hours ago
Decrease screen brightness. Turn off dark mode. No flashbang. Bonus: Battery lasts longer.
yyy888sss11 hours ago
Level 9 (or 0): Turn off the computer and go to sleep.
gwern12 hours ago
Glad OP got the tri-state toggle right!
chrismorgan9 hours ago
> Dedicated files make sense if you do a lot of customization. The browser may ignore any CSS file that does not match the query, so there’ll be one less thing to download.
That’s not how it actually works: in practice, browsers download them all. They may prioritise them differently, but they’ll still download them all in the end.
sambellll12 hours ago
Would've been cool if the levels came into effect while you scrolled down the page
jagged-chisel9 hours ago
Or were selectable by the reader at each appropriate position in the page.
stevage11 hours ago
It's 8 levels though?
andrehacker12 hours ago
Obligatory ? https://xkcd.com/3227/
mrexroad8 hours ago
Ah, the unofficial sequel to The Last Question.
NooneAtAll37 hours ago
so sad that he disabled this ability to propagate to other pages :(
it was the first time my eyes got comfortable reading his comics
everybodyknows12 hours ago
2024
lokthedev5 hours ago
[dead]
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