4 ms·
This seems like the right place to ask: I remember some months ago there being a discussion about a dark mode for HN - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2319
by pugio 6y ago
This seems like the right place to ask: I remember some months ago there being a discussion about a dark mode for HN - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23197966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23197966 .
It seemed at the time like dang was amenable to adding it, but nothing seemed to to come of it. Am I missing a setting somewhere? Dark mode is the only reason I use an external app for viewing HN.
- wyclif 6y agoWhy won't HN offer dark mode?
- skissane 6y agoI think it is a matter of development time/resources. One issue is that HN is not really open source. Although there was an open source release years ago, the current code base is an evolution of that and closed. It then comes down to how much time/money Y Combinator is willing to invest in enhancing it, and I assume more essential stuff takes priority over nice-to-haves like dark mode. I think, ideally, the current version could be open sourced, and then people could contribute PRs to add stuff like dark mode. I think dang has said before that the reason why they don't do that, is they don't want to expose certain "secret sauce" (abuse/spam detection, voting code, etc), since if the algorithms were exposed people would exploit them. I guess one solution would be to split the code base into open core and closed plugins, open source the core and then keep the secret sauce in the closed plugins. But, I guess that would take time to carry out that refactoring, which comes back to the issue of limited development time/resources and what priorities that will be spent on.
- tester34 6y agoImma be kinda snarky here SV VCs struggle with once per long time peroid 500 HTML LoC page layout change?
- tomcam 6y agoYou sound pretty accomplished. I bet you could write a Hacker News clone in a weekend. I bet you could even attract an audience the same size in, what, a year or two? I’ll check back after this weekend and see how you’re doing.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoIt's not that they struggle. HN's layout itself does a lot of work shaping the community here, so they understandably want to be careful about changing things.
- neilpanchal 6y agoAs @dang said, I admire the HN philosophy - “Move slowly and preserve things.” There is no need for a dark mode. Just use a style extension. We are all tech savvy people here.
- chmaynard 6y agoDan, Re: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23197966 It's been four months since you agreed that dark mode for HN is a good idea. Any progress? If not, what is blocking you? Can I help? Craig -- We just don't have much dev time. Sorry for the delay. We'll get there. I appreciate the offer of help but we're not currently set up to accept contributions that way... Dan
- square_usual 6y agoYou can use stylus (Firefox: [1], Chrome: [2]) to set a userstyle for HN. I have mine set to a lovely zenburn dark. [3] 1: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/styl-us/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/styl-us/ 2: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylus/clngdbkpkpeebahjckkjfobafhncgmne?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylus/clngdbkpkpe... 3: https://github.com/UserStyles/hacker-news-zenburn-dark https://github.com/UserStyles/hacker-news-zenburn-dark
- oefrha 6y agoMy extensions to hacker-news-zenburn-dark to make downvote state of comments visible: /** * The following colors are chosen with the linear map f(c): [#000000, #ffffff] -> [#dcdccc, #404040] where * f(#000000) = #dcdccc and f(#ffffff) = #404040. */ .c5a, .c5a *, .c5a a:link, .c5a a:visited { color:#a5a59b !important; } .c73, .c73 *, .c73 a:link, .c73 a:visited { color:#96968d !important; } .c82, .c82 *, .c82 a:link, .c82 a:visited { color:#8c8c85 !important; } .c88, .c88 *, .c88 a:link, .c88 a:visited { color:#898981 !important; } .c9c, .c9c *, .c9c a:link, .c9c a:visited { color:#7d7d76 !important; } .cae, .cae *, .cae a:link, .cae a:visited { color:#72726c !important; } .cbe, .cbe *, .cbe a:link, .cbe a:visited { color:#686864 !important; } .cce, .cce *, .cce a:link, .cce a:visited { color:#5e5e5b !important; } .cdd, .cdd *, .cdd a:link, .cdd a:visited { color:#555553 !important; }
- gala8y 6y agoStylus Privacy Policy: "Unlike other similar extensions, we don't find you to be all that interesting. Your questionable browsing history should remain between you and the NSA. Stylus collects nothing. Period."
- TeMPOraL 6y agoStylus is a surveillance-free fork of Stylish, created after the latter turned evil.
- dartharva 6y agoThe DarkReader (darkreader.org) extension gives a beautiful dark theme to HN, just make sure you set the theme mode to "Static" instead of the default "Dynamic".
- rarefied_tomato 6y agoWhile useful, I'm averse to the complexity of such features. The steady devolution of Reddit's UX scares me. I also enjoy the offloaded ecosystem of sites like hn.algolia.com. It feels healthy for a hacker community to build these tailored readers.
- hutattedonmyarm 6y agoDark mode can be done purely in CSS with media queries. I wouldn’t call it complex
- rarefied_tomato 6y agoI see: prefers-color-scheme wouldn't bother me.
- Aeolun 6y agoI agree it shouldn’t be another HN setting when we already have a standard for it.
- darekkay 6y agoI wrote a userscript until a Dark Mode is supported natively: https://github.com/darekkay/config-files/blob/20b5858ff7a464fee11d0fc4d9a92ac87ba2ef28/userscripts/better-styles.user.js#L28 https://github.com/darekkay/config-files/blob/20b5858ff7a464...
- ffpip 6y agoAdd to uBlock origin. To the "My filters" section. ycombinator.com##html:style(background-color: #3e3e42 !important) ycombinator.com###hnmain:style(background-color: #2E2E31 !important) ycombinator.com##.age:style(color: #ccc !important) ycombinator.com##.c00:style(color: #ccc !important) ycombinator.com##.comhead > a:style(color: #dedede !important) ycombinator.com##.comhead:style(color: #dedede !important) ycombinator.com##.hnuser:style(color: #ccc !important) ycombinator.com##.subtext > a:link:style(color: #ccc !important) ycombinator.com##.subtext > a:style(color: #ccc !important) ycombinator.com##.subtext:style(color: #ccc !important) ycombinator.com##.title > a:style(color: #dedede !important) ycombinator.com##a:link:style(color: #ccc !important) Source - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23200038 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23200038
- pugio 6y agoThank you, that's very helpful for desktop, but I'm primarily interested in having this on my phone. There are many nice extensions for desktop browsers, but the only way to get dark mode on my phone (currently) is to use a 3rd party app.
- ratherbefuddled 6y agoIt works fine on Firefox mobile.
- sexy_seedbox 6y agoIf you're on Android, then Kiwi Browser's dark mode works great.
- sydd 6y agoAll these custom stylesheets and extensions are nice, but still are a clunky workaround and sometimes a potential security issue
- tannhaeuser 6y agoMight sound strange, but when I "downgraded" my phone's display to IPS (as found on my iPhone 6s, and as opposed to AMOLED on my former Samsung phones), I had the impression to see HN in all its creamy-ness as intended for the first time in years, whereas on AMOLED with its tendency towards over-saturation, the light yellow background always seemed somewhat arbitrary and synthetic. This is in addition to the much better contrast and natural look of dark backgrounds possible on AMOLED, so clearly, while the problem is going to come back to hurt me, the desire for dark mode is driven by AMOLED. I wonder what CSS should do about this on top of prefers-color-scheme media queries; having to decide to optimize for AMOLED vs IPS seems odd when device color profiles have been a thing for ages.
- Aeolun 6y agoI think the plan was to make it dependent on the ‘prefer-dark’ css setting or something. I think the main problem is settling on a particular theme.