7 ms·
Add dark mode to your sites, or at least let the browsers do it for you
- dawnerd 5y agoAnd please don't make dark mode = everything is just black. You can still have contrast in dark mode. The worst is the sites using pure white and pure black.
- kowlo 5y agoworth the £5 or whatever I paid https://imgur.com/a/xoKlXYr https://imgur.com/a/xoKlXYr
- ksec 5y agoAnd Still no Dark Mode on HN [1]. Although I think this is mostly a problem on Safari where as Chrome and Firefox has workarounds like Stylish [2]. And Safari requires some paid solution via their App Store. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26978950 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26978950 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23197966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23197966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25697173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25697173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18178239 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18178239 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24621899 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24621899 [2] https://userstyles.org https://userstyles.org
- linkdd 5y agoAnd yet, thanks to Stylus[1], I have a darkmode HN: https://imgur.com/a/TayEsyS https://imgur.com/a/TayEsyS NB: I also have an extension to run some javascript to edit some of the layout. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stylus_(browser_extension)
- paulcarroty 5y agohttps://darkhn.herokuapp.com https://darkhn.herokuapp.com
- zozbot234 5y agoHN is too orange, that's why the site devs have had trouble coming up with a good dark mode design for it.
- deadbunny 5y agoIt is just me or is the Stylish website unusably slow? I'm talking 5+ min page loads.
- LandR 5y agoYeah, same here. It's ridiculous slow.
- ruined 5y agoin the meantime, dark reader for firefox has served me well, and it works on mobile too. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/darkreader/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/darkreader/
- jdc0589 5y agoI always end up disabling it, and I can never remember why. it works just well enough that I like it, but just badly enough I end up abandoning it every time.
- dotancohen 5y agoIt cannot be set per-site. Thus, the sites that are already in dark mode with it enabled now become bright lanterns.
- faho 5y agoIronically this site's dark mode doesn't trigger in either firefox or chromium for me. Compare https://fishshell.com/ https://fishshell.com/, which I recently added a dark mode to and which does trigger in both (linux chromium needs to be started with "--force-dark-mode").
- llacb47 5y agoSame in iOS safari, your site works perfectly.
- DavideNL 5y ago> Ironically this site's dark mode doesn't trigger in either firefox or chromium for me. Nor in Safari on iOS…
- hbt 5y agothe great thing about https://fishshell.com/ https://fishshell.com/ us it works even if you have forced dark mode flag enabled in android chrome where as the OP site renders light
- Abishek_Muthian 5y agoIsn't media query 'prefers-color-scheme: dark' and 'prefers-color-scheme: light' with respective color changes is all that's required? Recently added it for https://startuptoolchain.com https://startuptoolchain.com on request and for https://hntokindle.com https://hntokindle.com on my own for functionality i.e. the kindle images switch for light/dark mode respectively.
- psim1 5y agoNo. I hate the look of dark mode and thus choose not to publish my site with that option.
- landonalder 5y agoWhat if your users prefer the look? I presume you don't just publish your site for your own consumption
- chomp 5y agoAt least in my opinion, they can either put up with it or keep walking. My website is my personality on a page, and if they badly need dark mode, they can use the reader mode built into their web browser, which I make sure is properly formatted on each of my posts.
- whatshisface 5y agoIt's possible to lay down enough javascript and css on your website that reader mode doesn't work well.
- chomp 5y agoIt certainly is, for my personal site though I made a conscious effort to reduce js to zero and css to minimal (no bootstrap, etc.) I clock in at a 94 on web.dev, and could get that to 100 if I removed the single web font I use. It's also a hobby, and the point where the nice-to-haves of other people start creating work for me, is the point it stops being fun. For a service or brand, it's probably a good idea to deliver a dark mode at some point (especially one that people are forced to stare at for extended periods).
- brundolf 5y agoMy website gets a perfect score on Lighthouse - total download size without images is 7.1kB - and it supports dark mode: https://www.brandons.me/ https://www.brandons.me/ The dark theme is 10 lines of CSS.
- disposekinetics 5y agoConversely if you keep your site simple enough the user can apply styling as needed.
- smoldesu 5y agoNo. My website's background is blue, and if you don't like it you can leave.
- DiggyJohnson 5y agoI'm not that old yet but I anticipate holding this line throughout my lifecycle.
- smoldesu 5y agoMe neither. If you wanna visit my blue website, it's live over at blog.toast.cyou
- cbeley 5y agoI like your blue color! Also, I feel like dark mode becomes more awkward to do if your sites uses a less traditional color scheme. I'm like you, and decided I like my desert theme and gave up on trying to do a dark theme (https://chrisbeley.com https://chrisbeley.com)
- philwelch 5y agoI can write a client side CSS that turns your website's background to red and there's nothing you can do about it.
- 5y ago
- rhn_mk1 5y agoWe've gone full circle, and ended up in a worse place. From web sites using the system theme via the browser, to web sites overriding all styling, to trying to adapt to user's preferences by giving only 2 styling options.
- philwelch 5y agoI really think server-side styling was a mistake. It's too late now of course.
- rhn_mk1 5y agoThere's still hope. Reader Mode seems to be quite popular, and it could be extended until it becomes the user-styled way to view web sites.
- falcolas 5y agoPatreon, on mobile (Firefox on an iPhone), recently broke reader mode. How? A hidden iframe pointing at "www.googletagmanager.com" Fuuuu
- rcarmo 5y agoNot sure if the title is a subtle jab at HN.
- joemi 5y agoI don't know that a website needs a dark mode. Does anyone really not visit a website because it doesn't match their desktop color theme? That seems absurdly picky to me.
- nonameiguess 5y agoAs a frequent user of dark mode, it isn't that at all. I don't care about things matching. I care about browsing in the middle of the night with the lights off and not killing my eyes. It doesn't have to be an all the time thing. It's just a matter of letting people tailor what is hitting their eyes to be appropriate to the surrounding ambient light level. Like high-end flashlights offering a red light mode. You acknowledge that it looks worse, but it also doesn't blind your users.
- joemi 5y agoThanks for clarifying. I guess my real issue (which I forgot to mention previously) is: why is this something that the website needs to implement? Shouldn't a personal preference such as dark mode, like reader mode, be something browsers implement instead of the individual websites?
- kitsunesoba 5y agoI don’t think most will outright not visit a site for not having dark mode, but it’s certainly good enough reason to avoid it and find alternatives that do have dark mode.
- elefantastisch 5y agoAgreed. It seems like a lot of people don't understand that dark mode is an accessibility issue for many people. If I couldn't use dark mode for the majority of my apps, I probably couldn't be a developer. Even with a monitor with a blue light filter and carefully adjusting the brightness and contrast to be as gentle on my eyes as possible, some days, my eyes are sensitive enough that even 15 minutes on light mode apps causes blurry vision and headaches. Dark mode I can use all day, no problem.
- alphabet9000 5y agoI gave up trying to use dark themes in the browser due to the 'white flash' bug in chrome thats happened on and off for years. here's a bug report about the issue from 2008 [0] and video of it happening from 2020 [1]. it's intolerable with dark theme stuff. [0] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=311 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=311 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5sRlVwvQDE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5sRlVwvQDE
- dotancohen 5y agoThe site in TFA doesn't even have a real dark mode. Sure, it has an alternate CSS mode that makes the background darker than the text, but a real dark mode would not have a bright yellow banner spanning the top 230px of the viewport.
- amanzi 5y agoAnd the author has the audacity to complain about a site that has a light scrollbar in dark mode: 'I absolutely detest sites that "have a dark mode, BUT DON'T MAKE THE SCROLLBAR DARK!",...'
- gfiorav 5y agoI always get a chuckle out of people who are entitled enough to call their opinion a PSA... What a narrow view of the world
- xwdv 5y agoI will not add dark or light mode to any site. You get one mode. Adding two is basically double the work if you want to do it right.
- wishinghand 5y agoIf you think about 10 lines of extra CSS is double the work, then I feel sorry for you son, I got 99 problems but CSS isn't one.
- joemi 5y ago10 lines might be what it takes for some sites, but there are surely plenty of sites out there where it would take significantly more than that.
- r3trohack3r 5y agoYou can make the entire web “dark mode” by installing a single extension: https://darkreader.org/ https://darkreader.org/
- smoldesu 5y agoI used Dark Reader for a while, but I found that it consistently messed up the contrast ratios of each site, making them significantly harder to read.
- r3trohack3r 5y agoI’m not sure when you used it, but personally I’ve found it’s new “Dynamic” filter to be a significant improvement.
- meinfuhrer 5y agoI like that Samsung Internet has a standard dark mode for all websites. Super useful especially when browsing the web just before going to sleep. That's one of the major reasons I prefer it to all other mobile browsers However, I wish it supported the standard dark mode API so that I could get the original implementation of dark mode for specific websites, and the default for all other sites without a dark mode. Now, that would be truly special.