6 ms·

> The very bad move in this case, was hard-coding foreground colours, while simultaneously not hard-coding background colours. Oh holy. People act like dark t

> The very bad move in this case, was hard-coding foreground colours, while simultaneously not hard-coding background colours. Oh holy. People act like dark themes, or theming is a relatively recent invention. But in fact, Windows 95 and even earlier were already entirely themeable, system-wide (well themeable is a bit of an exaggeration, you could modify the color scheme, but still...). But the quoted problem is exactly what was already happening back then to basically prevent you from ever deviating from the default colors too much. Sure, you could make the default gray background a little darker or brighter, but I remember I tried doing white text on black background, and after a couple days I encountered enough programs that at least in some places hard-coded black text but used the system default background color. What worked a little better was programs that forced both, some text editor forcing black on white, but that looked pretty jarring too, contrast-wise. Switched back to default colors and never bothered again to this day.

deafpolygon 4y ago
Back in 95 "SE", you could invert the colors on your own. My mom had this need to use a reddish background and black text that was a bit maddening. I would set the black text to white. It worked, for the most part.
- bestham 4y ago
  I don't think there was a Windows 95 "Second Edition". Are you talking about the theming that was possible with the "Plus! pack" or something related to the OSR2 version of Windows 95?
  - deafpolygon 4y ago
    You're right. I'm talking about the Plus pack. I don't google and verify every fact I type (though, I probably should). Edit: I really somehow remember having an "SE" designation next to Windows 95, though. Not sure why. Edit: edit: I might be mixing it up with Windows 98 SE. But the Plus! pack is what I'm most likely remembering.
    - fredoralive 4y ago
      The ability to set UI colours was a basic part of Windows 95 (or indeed 3.x before it). In 9x its just part of the Display control panel. The Plus back added the Desktop Themes control panel and the various preset colour / wallpaper / sounds / icons combinations like Mystery and Inside Your Computer. This later became a standard part of Windows 98.
rhn_mk1 4y ago
This problem is a scourge of the Web. Literally half of all web sites set one of the two, assuming the default color scheme of black-on-white, resulting in beautiful unreadable blanks when the actual preset is white-on-black.
ryandrake 4y ago
The article itself concluded this: > Please, for the love of all that is good and decent in this world, the next time you force a visual change upon users, include a colour picker option to let the user override your choices, or, you know, respect the system theme. Ironically, the article itself displays with hardcoded white-on-black text and neither 1. allows me to override its choices nor 2. respects my system theme. I have to "Disable Styles" in my browser to accomplish this. I wish app and web developers would be more respectful of user's style preferences and their system theme. Some designer living 1000 miles away in Silicon Valley should not be able to simply dictate how my browser displays text or what color my application windows are.
- KennyBlanken 4y ago
  It's also the first blog post I've seen in a long time that put up a javascript error.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  > I wish app and web developers would be more respectful of user's style preferences and their system theme. The problem for app developers is that there are so many completely different implementations of theming in platforms. On Windows, you have the Win95 era legacy theming (color schemes, fonts and window framing), like five or six different UI frameworks that may or may not integrate with the legacy settings, and on top of that the entire DPI settings which many app developers don't bother to test. On Linux, you have the big players KDE and Gnome and a truckload of splintered smaller projects. On macOS and iOS, you don't have anything but dark mode. On Android, you have dark mode and fonts. On web, you don't have anything but dark mode (and I wonder if that's going to be taken away like a million other things that got exploited to fingerprint users!). Oh and you have Java frameworks that have the same limitation. And depending which kind of framework you use, it may or may not well integrate with whatever implementation the OS provides.
  - Lex-2008 4y ago
    > On web, you don't have anything. Well, you have at least prefers-color-scheme CSS media feature, but maybe you can also use System Colors: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/color_value#system_colors https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/color_value...
dspillett 4y ago
> But in fact, Windows 95 and even earlier were already entirely themeable, system-wide All the way back to version 1: https://winworldpc.com/screenshot/c2b371c2-afc3-871d-c3ab-11c3a4e284a2/2eee20f6-eae3-11e7-a562-fa163e9022f0 https://winworldpc.com/screenshot/c2b371c2-afc3-871d-c3ab-11...
tjoff 4y ago
Eclipse with derivatives are incredibly bad at this. Feels like every time I boot it I get different results depending on what order eclipse colors and theme colors is applied or something. (no, I don't "use" eclipse but in the embedded world eclipse is still king (if you ask the vendors) so when I am on a new platform I often play around some in it before I managed to move off it entirely)
ilyt 4y ago
There is other, more sinister way to fuck it up, by just loading "wrong" color keys from the theme that still sorta look okay on white theme but are unreadable. Basically, instead of reading description and using a color key from theme as designed, someone uses "default" (or whatever they have currently set on machine) color theme as essentially palette to paint their app with, disregarding original purpose and end up broken with some themes.
int_19h 4y ago
I think the fact that Windows is much less themable these days is a part of the problem. Back then, people actually used all kinds of weird themes, and that was a forcing function on the developers to stick to system colors. Win7 was the last version that supported it, though, and even then only if you used the Classic theme. Dark mode for Win32 apps wouldn't show up until Win10.

deafpolygon 4y ago

Back in 95 "SE", you could invert the colors on your own. My mom had this need to use a reddish background and black text that was a bit maddening. I would set the black text to white. It worked, for the most part.

bestham 4y ago
I don't think there was a Windows 95 "Second Edition". Are you talking about the theming that was possible with the "Plus! pack" or something related to the OSR2 version of Windows 95?
- deafpolygon 4y ago
  You're right. I'm talking about the Plus pack. I don't google and verify every fact I type (though, I probably should). Edit: I really somehow remember having an "SE" designation next to Windows 95, though. Not sure why. Edit: edit: I might be mixing it up with Windows 98 SE. But the Plus! pack is what I'm most likely remembering.
  - fredoralive 4y ago
    The ability to set UI colours was a basic part of Windows 95 (or indeed 3.x before it). In 9x its just part of the Display control panel. The Plus back added the Desktop Themes control panel and the various preset colour / wallpaper / sounds / icons combinations like Mystery and Inside Your Computer. This later became a standard part of Windows 98.

rhn_mk1 4y ago

This problem is a scourge of the Web. Literally half of all web sites set one of the two, assuming the default color scheme of black-on-white, resulting in beautiful unreadable blanks when the actual preset is white-on-black.

ryandrake 4y ago

The article itself concluded this: > Please, for the love of all that is good and decent in this world, the next time you force a visual change upon users, include a colour picker option to let the user override your choices, or, you know, respect the system theme. Ironically, the article itself displays with hardcoded white-on-black text and neither 1. allows me to override its choices nor 2. respects my system theme. I have to "Disable Styles" in my browser to accomplish this. I wish app and web developers would be more respectful of user's style preferences and their system theme. Some designer living 1000 miles away in Silicon Valley should not be able to simply dictate how my browser displays text or what color my application windows are.

KennyBlanken 4y ago
It's also the first blog post I've seen in a long time that put up a javascript error.
mschuster91 4y ago
> I wish app and web developers would be more respectful of user's style preferences and their system theme. The problem for app developers is that there are so many completely different implementations of theming in platforms. On Windows, you have the Win95 era legacy theming (color schemes, fonts and window framing), like five or six different UI frameworks that may or may not integrate with the legacy settings, and on top of that the entire DPI settings which many app developers don't bother to test. On Linux, you have the big players KDE and Gnome and a truckload of splintered smaller projects. On macOS and iOS, you don't have anything but dark mode. On Android, you have dark mode and fonts. On web, you don't have anything but dark mode (and I wonder if that's going to be taken away like a million other things that got exploited to fingerprint users!). Oh and you have Java frameworks that have the same limitation. And depending which kind of framework you use, it may or may not well integrate with whatever implementation the OS provides.
- Lex-2008 4y ago
  > On web, you don't have anything. Well, you have at least prefers-color-scheme CSS media feature, but maybe you can also use System Colors: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/color_value#system_colors https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/color_value...

dspillett 4y ago

> But in fact, Windows 95 and even earlier were already entirely themeable, system-wide All the way back to version 1: https://winworldpc.com/screenshot/c2b371c2-afc3-871d-c3ab-11c3a4e284a2/2eee20f6-eae3-11e7-a562-fa163e9022f0 https://winworldpc.com/screenshot/c2b371c2-afc3-871d-c3ab-11...

tjoff 4y ago

Eclipse with derivatives are incredibly bad at this. Feels like every time I boot it I get different results depending on what order eclipse colors and theme colors is applied or something. (no, I don't "use" eclipse but in the embedded world eclipse is still king (if you ask the vendors) so when I am on a new platform I often play around some in it before I managed to move off it entirely)

ilyt 4y ago

There is other, more sinister way to fuck it up, by just loading "wrong" color keys from the theme that still sorta look okay on white theme but are unreadable. Basically, instead of reading description and using a color key from theme as designed, someone uses "default" (or whatever they have currently set on machine) color theme as essentially palette to paint their app with, disregarding original purpose and end up broken with some themes.

int_19h 4y ago

I think the fact that Windows is much less themable these days is a part of the problem. Back then, people actually used all kinds of weird themes, and that was a forcing function on the developers to stick to system colors. Win7 was the last version that supported it, though, and even then only if you used the Classic theme. Dark mode for Win32 apps wouldn't show up until Win10.