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 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 Bjarnason
Lou Cyx
Mike [SEC=OFFICIAL]