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63% Prefer a Dark Themed Text Editor
- buster 15y agoFor a long time now the first thing i do in a new text editor is to look for a nice dark theme.. i don't know.. it's somewhat more relaxing :) Oblivion was probably one of the first i used in all those gtk based editors. edit: Also, default colorschemes on terminals are dark, why is that?
- easy_rider 15y agoThis is what I do. My terminal is green on black, best contrast evahr
- jkmcf 15y agoProbably historical, as CRTs are black by default and you could burn in a solid white background.
- shasta 15y agoGiven how opinionated the dark background folk I've met have been (possibly just because they feel ignored by common windows editors) I'd worry about selection bias in a result like this.
- jpadvo 15y agoThis is a really great point. In fact, _any_ survey with self-selecting participants is highly susceptible to selection bias. What surveys like this are good for is measuring the opinions of a group of people, weighted by degree of explicit interest in the subject. Most people just use the default light-backgrounded-schemes, and don't even think about it. The silent majority. However, this survey is useful in that it reveals that there is indeed a passionate core of users who prefer dark backgrounds. The survey author seems to understand all this, as his conclusion is that it is definitely worth adding a dark background option, but that it may or may not be the default.
- elektronaut 15y agoI prefer a dark background in my text editor, but I think that would look out of place when integrated with the browser chrome. Going with a light theme is probably a good default.
- videoappeal 15y agoStatistic is flawed. Most people who use the default white themes probably dont read HackerNews, dont care to optimize their setup or routine. Those that read hackernews with a woren out F5 key are likely to be heavily influenced by the dark theme propaganda (screencasts etc..) that swamp HN. Just saying.. I can draw any reasonable conclusions from your stats, or even my own devil's advocate view.. Does it matter?
- rgoddard 15y agoThis reminds me of the discussion on the where are people located survey and how self reported data like this is essentially worthless. Since the only conclusions one can draw from this sort of survey is that of those who responded 63% prefer the dark background, and that there are people who like light and those who like dark. Further generalization is meaningless.
- tlrobinson 15y ago"influenced by the dark theme propaganda (screencasts etc..) that swamp HN" The thought of people consciously using screencasts to promote their dark theme agenda made me chuckle.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- mhartl 15y agoShhh... Don't tell everyone! The editor screenshots and code samples in the Rails Tutorial book are light because dark was too jarring against the surrounding text. The screencasts, on the other hand... Mwa hah hah!
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- yesimahuman 15y agoI love a dark color scheme, but the chrome also has to be dark. For example, I can't use dark browser themes because most websites have a white background and the contrast is difficult to deal with.
- hopeless 15y agoThis is one thing that Sublime 2 gets wrong
- jkmcf 15y agoIs this what you are looking for? https://github.com/buymeasoda/soda-theme https://github.com/buymeasoda/soda-theme
- hopeless 15y agoI'd tried that and it totally messed up the chrome because it could load the required images. But this was on Windows. Perhaps I'll try again.
- JonnieCache 15y agoAre you referring to the sidebar? You can apply colours to that as well, it's just that the built in themes dont have them defined yet for some reason. At least the default one doesn't anyway.
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- falcolas 15y agoI prefer light backgrounds, for one simple reason. Less eye strain. If the majority of the screen is light, my pupils contract, which results in less eye strain to keep everything in focus. I can use smaller fonts & maintain readability. I used to love the Zenburn color scheme, but that just doesn't work as well for me anymore. Note - I'm not talking black on white. I'm talking dark grey (ebebeb) on light grey (0f0f0f).
- botker 15y agoI disagree. A black background on a backlit screen is less eyestrain for the same reason that a white background on printed paper is. In both cases, the significant information is on while the background is off. Reading black on white from a backlit screen is akin to reading the wattage information from a glowing lightbulb. It hurts.
- ajross 15y agoReally? I found exactly the opposite. I moved from white backgrounds to a dark theme (emacs color-theme's "gnome2", basically #f5deb3 on #2f4f4f, not unlike zenburn) a year ago and found my eyes were much more relaxed after a bunch of coding. I actually find looking at white-backgrounded web sites (like HN) to be fatiguing these days.
- dunham 15y agoFWIW, I also find black backgrounds straining. I usually have to hit dark sites with readability to read them comfortably. Perhaps it's a matter of what your eyes are used to?
- ajross 15y agoTo be clear, a true black background is awful, I agree. Some sites think things like white/yellow on #000000 is a good idea, and it's just a terrible readability disaster. But the "DarkSlateGray" background of gnome2 is entirely different, IMHO. Give it a shot for a few days and see what you think.
- bitsoda 15y agoYou can take my life, but you can never take away my Monokai. http://www.monokai.nl/blog/2006/07/15/textmate-color-theme/ http://www.monokai.nl/blog/2006/07/15/textmate-color-theme/
- oacgnol 15y agoI switched to vim and immediately found a vim colorscheme for my beloved Monokai: http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2340 http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2340
- billybob 15y agoI use the Solarized theme in Vim and find it's very nice: http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized It has a dark version, which I use for coding, and which I think works better with syntax highlighting. It also has a light version, which I like for regular text editing. Both have nice contrast, and you can toggle between the two with a single keypress.
- burke 15y agoI didn't understand the love for solarized until I got a decent quality monitor. Now I use it for MacVim, iTerm2, and Adium (I just tweaked the colours in minimal_mod, and can share if anyone cares). It's perfect.
- teilo 15y agoYes, if you don't have a proper gamma curve, a lot of the medium-contrast darker themes look poor.
- mattdeboard 15y agoYou may be pleased to note that this comment finally pushed me over toward finally trying Solarized in Emacs. I'm very used to high-contrast themes (blackboard for almost a year) so it's taking some getting used to. Especially in the emacs rcirc client where chat text is low contrast on the background. edit: Lasted about a half hour for me; too low contrast and the cursor seems to be invisible, so impossible to tell where I'm about to type.
- JoshMock 15y agoI've been using Jellybeans for Vim (https://github.com/nanotech/jellybeans.vim https://github.com/nanotech/jellybeans.vim) for some time and, try as I might, I can't make the switch to Solarized.
- blaenk 15y agoNice theme! All of the vim themes I tend to see are very simple in terms of color. Understandable that some might find more than a couple colors to be distracting, but I find it very helpful. Syntax highlighting was the one last thing I regretted leaving TextMate for, but yesterday I spent a day tweaking my own theme (based off of Tomorrow-Night https://github.com/ChrisKempson/Tomorrow-Theme https://github.com/ChrisKempson/Tomorrow-Theme , which does have a vim theme but I found it lacking and not at all like the TextMate version) and I like it so far. But it's nice to finally know of another theme with nice colors. Thanks :) In fact I think I like the string highlighting on this one, I might try it on mine :)
- cleaver 15y agoI suspect it has something to do with when you started using computers. In the VT-100 and MS-DOS days, you pretty much got light text on a dark background. So when GUI environments came along, dark text on a light background became the new cool thing. That's my story, so I grew to like a light background. I'm guessing that the majority of coders today started out on Windows. Notepad is dark on light, so that became associated with the "common" user. The first peek under the hood would have been Windows command line or Linux. I could see that a dark background would feel more 'tech'.
- jff 15y agoAlternately, the current batch of programmers grew up on the Matrix movies and associate green-on-black with leet hackerdom. At least, that's the only reason I can come up with--use a VT220 for a while and everything will look purple when you look away.
- johnohara 15y agoAlways preferred amber instead of green. Got spoiled with a VT240.
- joshaidan 15y agoI remember having a discussion about this with a buddy who noticed I used a dark themed editor. He cited some study, I don't know exactly what study it was, that said our brains work better looking at a white background. (Perhaps more neurons fire or something like that) What do you think about this? Do you feel you work better with a black background, or do you just use one because it's more cool/retro looking than a white background?
- zargon 15y agoIf I'm going to stare into a light bulb all day, I prefer to dim it down by working on a black background.
- lurker14 15y agoConsistent average brightness across your field of view (both within the monitor and beyond) is far more important to your visual strain than whether monitor is dim or bright. Next time you feel strained looking at your screen, look around it at the other lights in the room/outside and notice how even the brightness is.
- OriginalSyn 15y agoI honestly cannot tell a difference other than I prefer working in a darker environment in general. When I'm at home I have a 40watt desk lamp behind my monitor pointing at the wall full screen vim with modified IR_Black as my theme.
- easy_rider 15y agoSame here! desk bulb pointed at the wall, illuminated keyboard, and dark editor :)
- lucian1900 15y agoIn fact, there have been numerous studies that show we're much better at reading white-on-black text, but because of historical reasons (paper) many of us are conditioned to prefer black-on-white. That 63% would be higher with a different cultural background.
- kreek 15y agoI use both, I think it came out of not being able to edit eclipse's themes easily. So static languages I code in light themes and dynamic I go to the dark side. I've converting to one or the other but I think it helps with the mental mode switching, light theme ok I'm in static land.
- andrewcooke 15y agodoes anyone know of a simple (preferably one click) way to get eclipse or intellij idea to work with a dark theme (on linux/kde)? i use a dark kde theme and it causes chaos in eclipse (or at least used to when i last tried - black text on dark backgrounds etc), while intellij idea at least works, but uses a light theme. i'd love an ide for java/python that was easy to configure dark (yes, i have emacs working fine white on black, but that's not what i am looking for). [edit: i just installed eclipse 3.7.1 and it picks up the general theme correctly, but the editors have dark text on dark backgrounds and i don't see any simple way to change that without changing each font setting in turn.]
- wladimir 15y agohttp://www.eclipsecolorthemes.org/ http://www.eclipsecolorthemes.org/ can do this.
- andrewcooke 15y agothanks. just to expand for others: the minimum you need to do is install the plugin. that comes with some default schemes that are dark. you can also build your own scheme on the site, building off someone else's. that's easy too, and then can be loaded by the plugin. my own is at http://www.eclipsecolorthemes.org/?view=theme&id=5095 http://www.eclipsecolorthemes.org/?view=theme&id=5095
- richardg 15y agoBeen using the Dark scheme on Komodo Edit. Its easier on the eyes and is a big factor especially if you sit in front of your monitor most of the day (or night). See here - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/498698/white-light-vs-black-dark-backgrounds-health-effects http://stackoverflow.com/questions/498698/white-light-vs-bla...
- bnegreve 15y agoYour result image does not work for me (ff, gnu/linux debian stable)
- tvon 15y agoI find it depends on the environment. If it's a bright room (or the sun is shining in the window) I might go to the light background, otherwise it'll probably stay dark. Related, I always figured the dark desktop UI themes (eg, for GNOME, KDE, Windows, etc) were highly preferred by people working in dark rooms, like a studio or college dorm at 3am. Once upon a time I liked these, but since I'm less nocturnal these days I prefer lighter themes.
- ryanjodonnell 15y agoI'm doing rails and use the same dark theme featured at railscasts by Ryan Bates: http://railscasts.com/about http://railscasts.com/about
- CoffeeDregs 15y agoI prefer white backgrounds when reading. Everything is consistent with a white background and black text, and I can scan the text quickly. With coding, my preference is exactly the opposite (I prefer a black background). The difference is that the structure of a program is much more complicated than the structure of prose and that structure is more apparent with white/colors on a black background. Further, the colors of syntax highlighting seem to be much more apparent when displayed on a black screen rather than on white.
- jvdh 15y agoWhile I prefer a dark background, I'm in an office with sunlight coming from behind my screen. I've noticed about six months ago that I was getting headaches when using a dark editor. Since I've changed from dark to light background the headaches have gone away.
- aresant 15y agoThis feels like the old Coke vs. Pepsi blind-taste challenge. Pepsi won a majority of the time on first taste because it is instantly sweeter. But long term people prefer the flavor and full experience of Coke. In my experience this translates: the dark-theme instantly feels more clear and crisp. But over time I find that the dark creates too much contrast and slows me down.
- burgerbrain 15y agoPersonally I'm a fan of dark backgrounds that use a dark grey background with various earth tones for the foreground. Rather low contrast.
- whatgoodisaroad 15y agoI thought everyone at Hacker News used green text on a black background...
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- kooshball 15y agoSon of Obsidian is currently my favorite http://studiostyl.es/schemes/son-of-obsidian http://studiostyl.es/schemes/son-of-obsidian I do not like the contrast of Solarized (low contrast) nor monokai (super high contrast with bright pink). Son of obsidian is a good in between.
- rcthompson 15y agoI would let the survey go over at least a full 24 hours. If you ask at night, you might only get responses from the nocturnal people, and same problem for asking during the day.
- MaysonL 15y agoI decided we need a definitive HN poll, so see: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3374755 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3374755
- duck 15y agoWhy? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3373018 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3373018
- roestava 15y agoI prefer white backgrounds out of habit. So my terminal is white, text editor is white, browser is white, Linux desktop theme is brighter... I must say that other users may well like it the other way, because when I used to browse for GTK themes on the http://gnome-look.org/ http://gnome-look.org/ site, many of the new themes were cooler when they were darker... BTW, I just found out the http://gnome-look.org/ http://gnome-look.org/ itself is whiter and brighter. Oh the joy! Cheers.
- mixmastamyk 15y agoOne size doesn't have to fit all... The compiz negative (Super N) and brightness (Super B) plugins allow me to use bright themes when the sun is pouring in and dark themes at night when illuminated only by xmas lights. I also use a greyish theme with a redshift type program on Windows. When reading HN or other obnoxiously bright sites at night, +Super N and kaboom, grey on black. Give it a try. Remember that the ergonomic choice for many years was amber monochrome on black and it was quite soothing.
- warmfuzzykitten 15y agoHow odd that virtually all editors are doing it wrong. I don't believe that result for a second. 1600 replies, self-selecting.
- Terretta 15y agoWhat makes you say you don't believe it? Once upon a time "everyone" knew amber text on black screen was the easiest on the eyes. // A lot has changed since.
- warmfuzzykitten 15y agoI see I'm losing points by not taking seriously this survey with a handful of respondents. Well, so be it. People haven't changed. We've all been raised reading black text on a white background. "Everyone" didn't know any such thing about amber text, it was just a less bad choice given the technology of the day. It was cheaper to manufacture a display that produced bright text on a black background - fewer pixels to light. Green text was very popular in dumb terminal days. Didn't make it readable (or unreadable). It was just a step in the inevitable transition to more book-like displays. If you enjoy reading light text on dark backgrounds, go back a few years and peruse the mostly unreadable issues of Wired Magazine.
- Terretta 15y agoOn the contrary, the research studies done in the mid 80s showed conclusively that amber text on black was superior, though those monitors cost far more. They also showed that though green was cheap, it performed better than black on white, which performed about the same as white on blue (think WordPerfect for DOS). Yes, the "technology of the day" was one factor -- part of the problem with the light backgrounds was the flicker of CRTs, which was extremely fatiguing to those of us who can see fluorescent bulbs flicker. However, amber also performed better for a key reason that remains true today for driving glasses or ski goggles -- amber offers the human visual system better contrast discernment, so much so that amber is used correctively for human visual system contrast loss from brain injury or diabetic vision[1]. It's used indoors, and notably, for reading. Wired magazine is a poor example. Paper and ink work by indirect lighting, while with monitors, the information itself is lit. Your brain processes these differently. Furthermore, as a subscriber to wired, I know their dark backgrounds are shiny, dramatically reducing contrast. As my grandparent comment remarked, technology has changed. Today's LCDs have high enough contrast they can offer a less fatiguing contrast. For reading the web, I prefer Safari's Reader button (black on white) or the Readability bookmarklet (set to black on ivory). With the high contrast screen, I can run at 30% brightness backlighting and get a brightness and contrast very similar to well lit ink and paper. Moderate brightness black on white crisp text does give the fastest reading and most retention, as studies in the mid 00s have found. It's not been shown if this is natural, or the result of, as you noted, our upbringing with traditional books. For terminal windows, IM, and coding, I prefer syntax colored text on black. In IM I use greens, sky blues, and ambers for others, self, and group text; code is white on black with colored syntax, terminals are amber on black for glance-able contrast even with very small print. That it is easier to pick up text colors on black than on full spectrum white is noted by the overwhelming majority of coders here. Significantly, when you're creating terminal commands, IM messages, or code, you don't need the fast reading and high retention of ink and paper, because you are generating the information structure in your own mind. This frees you to deploy your color use for the visual contrast and syntax clarity of colors on black instead. 1. http://www.hemianopsia.net/contrast-sensitivity-loss/ http://www.hemianopsia.net/contrast-sensitivity-loss/
- tikhonj 15y agoI don't know about other operating systems, but Firefox respects KDE's system colors. Unless this new addition randomly breaks the trend, I'll be able to have the editor in a color scheme of my choice immediately.
- philwelch 15y agoI used to actually use the red background Apple offers in one of their Terminal themes, but after combining that with vimdiff my coworker described the effect as "psychedelic overload".
- thom 15y agoLight theme on a glossy screen, dark on a matte one.
- bascule 15y agoI have vitreous floaters (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floater http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floater) which are significantly more visible against a white background. This is especially annoying while programming. I've always preferred a dark background though tried switching to a white one a few years ago. Floaters made the decision for me: dark it is.
- pspeter3 15y agoI use the tomorrow theme with gedit https://github.com/ChrisKempson/Tomorrow-Theme https://github.com/ChrisKempson/Tomorrow-Theme
- bzalasky 15y agoCobalt FTW!
- miohtama 15y agoWhy on Earth Turbo Pascal used yellow on blue theme? That was pretty popular in 90s.
- epaga 15y agoWow, I no longer feel as alone and weird for using a dark background.
- jff 15y agohttp://news.ycombinator.com http://news.ycombinator.com or http://hackaday.com http://hackaday.com Which one do you find easier to read?
- samwyse 15y agoI love white on black when I'd actually using a product, but I really prefer black on white when I'm taking a screenshot (such as the illustration in the article). I think the issue is the non-linear response of the human eye to illumination. Screenshots tend to get rescaled to make them fit on a page, and this generally causes white-on-black to become (to the eye) dark-gray-on-black. Black-on-white, when rescaled, becomes (to the eye) dark-gray-on-white, which has better contrast. In summary, I want it super-easy for me to reverse or otherwise change my theme when I'm taking a screenshot, perhaps even embedding it into the application.