7 ms·

Sure it's not an issue with whatever is doing that (hacky) dark mode CSS? Looking at the google example, they are setting the font color. It just doesn't look g

Sure it's not an issue with whatever is doing that (hacky) dark mode CSS? Looking at the google example, they are setting the font color. It just doesn't look good when dark-mode CSS doesn't take the existing colors into account.

lucideer 8y ago
> Looking at the google example, they are setting the font color In most examples, they're setting the background colour without corresponding font colour. In the Google example, they're making the opposite mistake. One should set both or none.
luuio 8y ago
The dark mode is actually coming from the GNOME system colors, not browser plugin. From inspecting the CSS in the developer console, the cases in the screenshot either set the background color without setting the text color, or vice versa.
- deckar01 8y ago
  I have a dark theme enabled on xfce, and this is not a problem for me in chromium. The inputs in native apps are dark, but they are the default light color in web pages on chromium.
  - robrtsql 8y ago
    Really? I might have to switch then.. I use Firefox and GNOME, and enabling one of the dark themes causes most forms on the web to become unusable because of this very issue.
    - lol768 8y ago
      There's nothing special about Chrome's implementation here. You can override the widget GTK theme in Firefox by setting the "widget.content.gtk-theme-override" configuration option to something like "Adwaita" or "Arc".
    - deckar01 8y ago
      I just tested Firefox on xfce and it shows the problem. Safari, Firefox, and Chrome on MacOS in dark mode do not have this problem. This appears to just be a Firefox on linux issue.
      - michaelmrose 8y ago
        Firefox is doing what is technically the correct thing in using system colors text color and background when not specified. Web developers are just not terribly competent. It should be obvious that setting text color but not text background is erroneous. Since expecting basic competence from web developers seems to be a losing battle several things suggest themselves. - provide a gui option to select the theme/style to use for firefox separate from the gui. This is already possible at the command line. - Explicitly check for text that is to close to the background wherein only one attribute is set and adjust the smartest solution - Just ignore the users colors like chrome does. Personally I have a dark gtk theme but run firefox with a light one because otherwise the web is unusable.
        dTal 8y ago
        I don't think you necessarily even have to check for colour similarity - we agree that setting only one attribute is broken, so just detect when only one attribute is set and either ignore it, or (if you feel like being clever) set the other attribute to be its complementary colour.
    - michaelmrose 8y ago
      env GTK_THEME=Adwaita:light firefox or whatever your desired theme is in fact I have the following fish shell function function withtheme env GTK_THEME=$argv[1] $argv[2..-1] end For my browser I run withtheme Adwaita:light aurora -P default You can copy the firefox desktop file from /usr/share/applications to ~/.local/share/applications and edit the exec line as you please.
  - ppseafield 8y ago
    It was a problem for me using Firefox, but there's a workaround: You can set the GTK theme Firefox uses for inputs to a light theme. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1283086#c7 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1283086#c7
- blattimwind 8y ago
  > The dark mode is actually coming from the GNOME system colors, not browser plugin. It's the same when you are using classic Windows theming and change the colors. The default background and font colors adjust accordingly (in Firefox, Chrome and Chromium-based things like Steam), which means that (many) pages that only alter the font color to say #333, but don't change the background color, become completely unreadable. Black on black.
chriswarbo 8y ago
> Looking at the google example, they are setting the font color. It just doesn't look good when dark-mode CSS doesn't take the existing colors into account. Did you read the accompanying text? What you've said is literally the exact opposite of what is happening. Google's CSS is not taking the default system colours into account. All of these sites seem to be assuming that the default system colours, implemented by the OS, are black text and white backgrounds. There is no reason to assume this, and indeed this is not the case on a minority of machines. The author's system happens to use white text and black backgrounds. So do I. Others are using low-contrast grey-on-grey themes, still others have a variety of multicoloured themes. The author is trying to spread awareness that this seemingly common assumption about default colours is wrong. Hopefully this awareness has reached at least one person (yourself) ;)
- luuio 8y ago
  > The author is trying to spread awareness that this seemingly common assumption about default colours is wrong. I guess I could've made that point more clear in the post. Thanks for your replies in this thread :)

lucideer 8y ago

> Looking at the google example, they are setting the font color In most examples, they're setting the background colour without corresponding font colour. In the Google example, they're making the opposite mistake. One should set both or none.

luuio 8y ago

The dark mode is actually coming from the GNOME system colors, not browser plugin. From inspecting the CSS in the developer console, the cases in the screenshot either set the background color without setting the text color, or vice versa.

deckar01 8y ago
I have a dark theme enabled on xfce, and this is not a problem for me in chromium. The inputs in native apps are dark, but they are the default light color in web pages on chromium.
- robrtsql 8y ago
  Really? I might have to switch then.. I use Firefox and GNOME, and enabling one of the dark themes causes most forms on the web to become unusable because of this very issue.
  - lol768 8y ago
    There's nothing special about Chrome's implementation here. You can override the widget GTK theme in Firefox by setting the "widget.content.gtk-theme-override" configuration option to something like "Adwaita" or "Arc".
  - deckar01 8y ago
    I just tested Firefox on xfce and it shows the problem. Safari, Firefox, and Chrome on MacOS in dark mode do not have this problem. This appears to just be a Firefox on linux issue.
    - michaelmrose 8y ago
      Firefox is doing what is technically the correct thing in using system colors text color and background when not specified. Web developers are just not terribly competent. It should be obvious that setting text color but not text background is erroneous. Since expecting basic competence from web developers seems to be a losing battle several things suggest themselves. - provide a gui option to select the theme/style to use for firefox separate from the gui. This is already possible at the command line. - Explicitly check for text that is to close to the background wherein only one attribute is set and adjust the smartest solution - Just ignore the users colors like chrome does. Personally I have a dark gtk theme but run firefox with a light one because otherwise the web is unusable.
      - dTal 8y ago
        I don't think you necessarily even have to check for colour similarity - we agree that setting only one attribute is broken, so just detect when only one attribute is set and either ignore it, or (if you feel like being clever) set the other attribute to be its complementary colour.
  - michaelmrose 8y ago
    env GTK_THEME=Adwaita:light firefox or whatever your desired theme is in fact I have the following fish shell function function withtheme env GTK_THEME=$argv[1] $argv[2..-1] end For my browser I run withtheme Adwaita:light aurora -P default You can copy the firefox desktop file from /usr/share/applications to ~/.local/share/applications and edit the exec line as you please.
- ppseafield 8y ago
  It was a problem for me using Firefox, but there's a workaround: You can set the GTK theme Firefox uses for inputs to a light theme. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1283086#c7 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1283086#c7
blattimwind 8y ago
> The dark mode is actually coming from the GNOME system colors, not browser plugin. It's the same when you are using classic Windows theming and change the colors. The default background and font colors adjust accordingly (in Firefox, Chrome and Chromium-based things like Steam), which means that (many) pages that only alter the font color to say #333, but don't change the background color, become completely unreadable. Black on black.

chriswarbo 8y ago

> Looking at the google example, they are setting the font color. It just doesn't look good when dark-mode CSS doesn't take the existing colors into account. Did you read the accompanying text? What you've said is literally the exact opposite of what is happening. Google's CSS is not taking the default system colours into account. All of these sites seem to be assuming that the default system colours, implemented by the OS, are black text and white backgrounds. There is no reason to assume this, and indeed this is not the case on a minority of machines. The author's system happens to use white text and black backgrounds. So do I. Others are using low-contrast grey-on-grey themes, still others have a variety of multicoloured themes. The author is trying to spread awareness that this seemingly common assumption about default colours is wrong. Hopefully this awareness has reached at least one person (yourself) ;)

luuio 8y ago
> The author is trying to spread awareness that this seemingly common assumption about default colours is wrong. I guess I could've made that point more clear in the post. Thanks for your replies in this thread :)