Decides to try a trendy new open source text editor
It launches in dark mode with tiny font sizes because the devs are obviously all teenagers with perfect vision and no astigmatism
Change the font size. Seems to work
Change to light mode. Seems to work
Touch another setting. App immediately switches back to dark mode and default font size and stays there
Coolcoolcool. I don't actually need to be able to read the fucking text to work on it, right?
Dark mode isn't the default in OSes for a reason folks. It's one of those accessibility aids that's grossly inaccessible to a ton of people.
Respect the OS settings if you're making an app!!!!!!!
If a user has chosen light mode and reduced motion, don't fucking launch with dark mode and swishy animations!
Don't be an asshole!
Too many devs are being absolute assholes!
@baldur
When I started in computing, all screens were "Dark Mode" (mostly green on black VDUs).
It was a readability revolution for most of us when modern screens appeared which supported 'paper-white' (black-on-white) screens. These worked well for the last couple of decades(?).
I'm still astonished that anybody wants to go back to the dark mode.
@MishaVanMollusq @tpuddle @baldur
It's implied that idiomatic cases exist. Duh.
Tell *MY* migraine brain to look at dark mode for more than 10 seconds and all i'll see is after images of lines for the next 10 minutes.
@MishaVanMollusq @tpuddle @baldur I don’t have my screens very bright at all, but they’re all still white background with black letters. Little glowy letters stab at my eyes no matter the brightness levels.
I have intermittent photophobia, photophobia, and the very trippy Alice in wonderland type visual distortions. (Things get larger and larger but never feel like they’re moving or changing position)
@baldur Same from the other side. Don’t be an asshole. Respect my choice for a dark theme.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/color_value/light-dark
The light-dark() CSS <color> function enables setting two colors for a property - returning one of the two colors options by detecting if the developer has set a light or dark color scheme or the user has requested light or dark color theme - without needing to encase the theme colors within a prefers-color-scheme media feature query. Users are able to indicate their color-scheme preference through their operating system settings (e.g., light or dark mode) or their user agent settings. The light-dark() function enables providing two color values where any <color> value is accepted. The light-dark() CSS color function returns the first value if the user's preference is set to light or if no preference is set and the second value if the user's preference is set to dark.
@lennybacon Yeah. Agree. Respecting basic accessibility configuration is table stakes for an app.
(Less concerned about content websites, personally, as long as the site works in reader/readability mode, but those modes fundamentally don't work with app UIs.)
It's sometimes developers, most often it will be product managers.
@baldur when I do CSS theming for websites, I make the dark/light mode depending on OS settings, but if the browser doesn't know what the user preference is (like in some Linux distributions), I default to dark mode. The physical pain a user can experience if everything is in dark mode and suddenly a website is all white is worse than the other way around.
Either way, the discussion here should be about font sizes and contrast-ratios, not about light vs dark.
@mike @baldur Thanks for clarifying. I still keep my point, tho. Ideally the OS you chose should let apps know what your preference is, and if a site doesn't respect that, that's a bad design. My point is that if I have to chose a default when I **can't** get user preferences, I default to dark because I find all the reasons to support dark mode have more weight than light:
- Sudden change is generally less harmful (what we discussed).
- Less energy consumption = More battery + Less emissions.
@mike @baldur About the energy argument, here's a paper (TL:DR, depends on the screen, but the industry is moving to OLED and similar because it gives better blacks, so should be a net positive): https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3458864.3467682
About a11y the argument is wider, you can find that dark is better for people with migraines, while is worse for some types of astigmatism, there's all kinds of arguments in pro of one of the other. Either way for a11y is way more important to talk about high-contrast theming.
@loucyx @baldur I'm done with this discussion as it's going nowhere, but I don't think using Twitch as a basis for this is at all helpful.
Right now I'm standing in the middle of an office building with approximately 200 screens under standard fluorescent lighting. This building has 30+ similar floors. There are hundreds like it in this city.
A Twitch chat does not represent general computer users and never will.
@mike @baldur office worker? Ohh yup, we'll never see eye to eye on this. I've been remote for more than 10 years, I have a whole other discussion I could start about how bad on-site work is when you could do the same from any location (good ol' "remote vs on-site"). Either way, good call ending the discussion. At least I think we agree sites and apps should support both modes, and a high-contrast as well ☺️
Have a good rest of your day! 👋🏻
@baldur For the web developers reading this: these things are fairly easy to accomplish using modern CSS media queries. There are a whole slew of them that can be used.
prefers-color-scheme: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/prefers-color-scheme
prefers-reduced-motion: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/prefers-reduced-motion
I hear you … and yet::
I need dark mode and large font
Very typical 40 ish year old eyes need big text. Plus a smattering of retinopathy that make the light mode painful.
Pretty sure that light mode is the default for the reason that bright shiny things play well on camera.
Sigh
@baldur very true, I don’t put that entirely on devs, the graphics design teams that don’t really take the time to brush up on the design rules/guidelines for a platform are usually the ones that can push for that change.
I feel like it’s far too often devs in companies don’t want to push that change because they’re told to implement the design and nothing more. accessibility should be in the mind of designers and really the whole chain of design/dev. indie devs have little excuse.
@jyarbrough @baldur I think it's a lack of training all round too, or a lack of prioritising from the top down as well.
I lost my main career in 2016 partly cos they procured new work software and didn't consider accessibility despite being rude to me in several meetings. The devs who they made me to access consultancy with had Zero Clue and I then got blamed for "not explaining it" despite not being a software engineer or access consultant. Priority has to come by law & from the top.
@baldur yep, and the inverse is also true: unless the user has specifically requested your app to use a theme other than the os default, if your app has a dark theme, and the user has their preferences set to that.. use it!!
basically, respect the os settings!
@baldur
It's also very annoying when you get apps that refuse to use anything else. I use apps in either mode, depending on which works better and it's infuriating when they won't let me choose.
(I also calibrate my monitors, the default brightness is almost always too bright. It's set to look good in brightly lit showrooms, not in offices or homes)
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