3 ms·

I'm surprised that there is any need for an explicit dark-mode, and that Notepad++ wouldn't just pick up the system colors; it's old enough that it was customar

I'm surprised that there is any need for an explicit dark-mode, and that Notepad++ wouldn't just pick up the system colors; it's old enough that it was customary to do that, and use the system named colors instead of specifying RGBs for control colors.

Grumbledour 5y ago
Do System colors even exist in windows 10? The option to set global color schemes seems to be long gone and Microsoft needed to spend extra effort to adapt a dark color scheme in explorer (It didn't support dark mode for a long time and then took some updates to work well across the board). I always find it kind of funny and sad at the same time, that something windows could do 20 years age now needs to be implemented by each application separately.
- Ayesh 5y ago
  Oh this brings memories of my Windows 98 tweaks and linear gradients in title bars. I'm afraid that's the peak of customizability and it's only going downhill in each operating system version.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- badsectoracula 5y ago
  Technically the API is there and you can actually run DESKN.CPL from an old version of Windows which allows you to customize the colors. Of course it also depends on applications to use them - most applications that use native controls use them, but others ignore them. Windows 10 'personalization' use them mainly to configure high contrast mode, but you can only edit a handful of values.
adzm 5y ago
There do not seem to be system colors defined for dark mode. Explorer does it via uxtheme but does not seem to expose the colors themselves. Plus it ends up being un-configurable.
- thrower123 5y ago
  Ideally, dark mode would just be an OS-wide palette switch, which is how it used to work. Probably still would, as I don't think that the guts of Windows have actually changed; you just can't get at them through the Control Panel easily like you used to do.
  - adzm 5y ago
    Since Windows XP the common controls are themed which do not support the usual color customizations which were available before then. Some still support WM_CTLCOLOR but some don't, or only do in certain situations.

Grumbledour 5y ago

Do System colors even exist in windows 10? The option to set global color schemes seems to be long gone and Microsoft needed to spend extra effort to adapt a dark color scheme in explorer (It didn't support dark mode for a long time and then took some updates to work well across the board). I always find it kind of funny and sad at the same time, that something windows could do 20 years age now needs to be implemented by each application separately.

Ayesh 5y ago
Oh this brings memories of my Windows 98 tweaks and linear gradients in title bars. I'm afraid that's the peak of customizability and it's only going downhill in each operating system version.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
badsectoracula 5y ago
Technically the API is there and you can actually run DESKN.CPL from an old version of Windows which allows you to customize the colors. Of course it also depends on applications to use them - most applications that use native controls use them, but others ignore them. Windows 10 'personalization' use them mainly to configure high contrast mode, but you can only edit a handful of values.

adzm 5y ago

There do not seem to be system colors defined for dark mode. Explorer does it via uxtheme but does not seem to expose the colors themselves. Plus it ends up being un-configurable.

thrower123 5y ago
Ideally, dark mode would just be an OS-wide palette switch, which is how it used to work. Probably still would, as I don't think that the guts of Windows have actually changed; you just can't get at them through the Control Panel easily like you used to do.
- adzm 5y ago
  Since Windows XP the common controls are themed which do not support the usual color customizations which were available before then. Some still support WM_CTLCOLOR but some don't, or only do in certain situations.