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People keep on talking about (prefers-color-scheme: dark), but it isn’t what they want it to be—never has been, and probably never will be (though I will admit

People keep on talking about (prefers-color-scheme: dark), but it isn’t what they want it to be—never has been, and probably never will be (though I will admit that prefers-color-scheme could theoretically be special-cased for favicon rendering). For example, in Firefox, I use the dark theme for the UI, but that’s completely unrelated to the content, and prefers-color-scheme matches the content, not the chrome. Content I keep normal, light. It’s quite possible (not uncommon, even) for the active tab to have a light background and inactive tabs to have a darker background. (A decade ago, this is what would happen by default on the default Windows XP theme, though it was the XP blue rather than anything dark dark.) Or Chromium: like Firefox, it has themes; but beyond that, incognito window chrome gets a dark background. Admittedly, (prefers-color-scheme: dark) matching makes it almost certain that you’re rendering against a dark background of some form, but it not matching tells you absolutely nothing about the background. The fact of the matter is that your favicon could be rendered against absolutely any colour, and you need to make sure your icon will work on very light colours and very dark colours, and not be too bad on anything in between.

mjsir911 5y ago
> For example, in Firefox, I use the dark theme for the UI, but that’s completely unrelated to the content, and prefers-color-scheme matches the content, not the chrome. Content I keep normal, light. Of note is https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1529323 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1529323 which is requesting to change this behaviour to align prefers-color-scheme to the UI theme if there is no overriding behaviour. I prefer this because now rather than setting dark mode to each site I go to, they can be signalled this already. There's no user friendly way to set firefox's prefer-color-scheme: dark if the OS does not have the capabilities to do that.
- chrismorgan 5y ago
  Yeah, I’ve been waiting for that to inevitably happen so that I can revert it. Speaking overly broadly, dark mode everything is normally an at-least-slightly bad idea, but there’s good cause for aesthetic (low-contrast) dark mode of chrome in order to get it mostly out of the way, so that you can focus on the content. This is essentially what most graphics programs default to nowadays, and the same reasoning can be applied to browsers. (Though it only really works if your windows are maximised, otherwise dark between two lights could become a distraction.) No one says “you have a dark desktop background, you must want everything on your system to be dark”. Comment 47’s “When using the "Dark" theme, "prefers-color-scheme" should be dark, because that's what the user requested.” is simply not right. Choosing a dark browser theme is honestly quite a weak hint about whether you want content to be dark. The conflation of this that recent forays into OS-wide dark modes has encouraged is not good.
- account42 5y ago
  > There's no user friendly way to set firefox's prefer-color-scheme: dark if the OS does not have the capabilities to do that. And even if the OS does have that capability, Firefox will ignore it for prefers-color-scheme if you have enabled enhanced tracking protection. Instead, Firefox will always claim prefers-color-scheme: light - the least they could have done is indicate no preference.
  - chrismorgan 5y ago
    (prefers-color-scheme: no-preference) got killed off because it simply wasn’t useful in practice.
    - account42 5y ago
      The only reason its not useful is because browsers did not implement it or removed their implementation. There is even one use in my comment: specifying not providing false information when the browser does not want to disclose any more identifying bits.
krono 5y ago
Yes GitHub does it too. The icon can't update itself so it's stuck on the color it was when you last visited the site. Example: https://i.imgur.com/PTPJ3Fm.png https://i.imgur.com/PTPJ3Fm.png
account42 5y ago
That sounds like a browser bug - if its rendering the icon in the browser chrome it should also use the color scheme setting matching the chrome.
- chrismorgan 5y ago
  It’s not a bug, it’s people using it to mean something it doesn’t mean.

mjsir911 5y ago

> For example, in Firefox, I use the dark theme for the UI, but that’s completely unrelated to the content, and prefers-color-scheme matches the content, not the chrome. Content I keep normal, light. Of note is https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1529323 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1529323 which is requesting to change this behaviour to align prefers-color-scheme to the UI theme if there is no overriding behaviour. I prefer this because now rather than setting dark mode to each site I go to, they can be signalled this already. There's no user friendly way to set firefox's prefer-color-scheme: dark if the OS does not have the capabilities to do that.

chrismorgan 5y ago
Yeah, I’ve been waiting for that to inevitably happen so that I can revert it. Speaking overly broadly, dark mode everything is normally an at-least-slightly bad idea, but there’s good cause for aesthetic (low-contrast) dark mode of chrome in order to get it mostly out of the way, so that you can focus on the content. This is essentially what most graphics programs default to nowadays, and the same reasoning can be applied to browsers. (Though it only really works if your windows are maximised, otherwise dark between two lights could become a distraction.) No one says “you have a dark desktop background, you must want everything on your system to be dark”. Comment 47’s “When using the "Dark" theme, "prefers-color-scheme" should be dark, because that's what the user requested.” is simply not right. Choosing a dark browser theme is honestly quite a weak hint about whether you want content to be dark. The conflation of this that recent forays into OS-wide dark modes has encouraged is not good.
account42 5y ago
> There's no user friendly way to set firefox's prefer-color-scheme: dark if the OS does not have the capabilities to do that. And even if the OS does have that capability, Firefox will ignore it for prefers-color-scheme if you have enabled enhanced tracking protection. Instead, Firefox will always claim prefers-color-scheme: light - the least they could have done is indicate no preference.
- chrismorgan 5y ago
  (prefers-color-scheme: no-preference) got killed off because it simply wasn’t useful in practice.
  - account42 5y ago
    The only reason its not useful is because browsers did not implement it or removed their implementation. There is even one use in my comment: specifying not providing false information when the browser does not want to disclose any more identifying bits.

krono 5y ago

Yes GitHub does it too. The icon can't update itself so it's stuck on the color it was when you last visited the site. Example: https://i.imgur.com/PTPJ3Fm.png https://i.imgur.com/PTPJ3Fm.png

account42 5y ago

That sounds like a browser bug - if its rendering the icon in the browser chrome it should also use the color scheme setting matching the chrome.

chrismorgan 5y ago
It’s not a bug, it’s people using it to mean something it doesn’t mean.