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Ask HN: Dark mode for HN please?

news.ycombinator.com

311–320 of 469 posts

Re: Ask HN: Dark mode for HN please?

#311
post #32

Ok, you guys, this isn't the first time we've heard this request ( https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... ). I'm willing to do it (edit: not to change the default! just to add the option). It's just that any CSS issue that goes more than a quarter-inch deep is outside both my expertise and my interest. We can add CSS to https://news.ycombinator.com/news.css for prefers-color-scheme: dark , bu…

I have some styles I use. Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/WZAaJST I don't love when dark modes skew blue, so tried to keep it neutral with blacks and greys ``` @media (prefers-color-scheme:dark) { body { background-color: #2a2b2e; } #hnmain { background-color: rgb(32, 33, 36); } a:link, .hnmore a:link, a:visited, td, .c00, .c00 a:link { color: #e8eaed; } .subtext, .comhead a:link, .subtext a:visited, span.subtext a:…

Looks awesome!

Re: Ask HN: Dark mode for HN please?

#312

I took a shot at it: https://monokai.nl/lab/hacker-news/hn-dark1.png https://monokai.nl/lab/hacker-news/hn-dark2.png https://monokai.nl/lab/hacker-news/hn-dark3.png The principles I followed: - Alligator energy. No need to redo the layout or apply the latest design trends. HN is fine as is. - Respect the original design. The dark version uses the same color hierarchy as the elements in the original design. - No-nonse…

I love it! Looks natively enough.

Re: Ask HN: Dark mode for HN please?

#313
post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, not only should "dark mode" be the responsibility of the browser, it already is. There's plenty of plugins that do this and people that want it should use them. ( http://i.9ol.es/dark.png )

Sadly few browsers support extensions on mobile, which is possibly where dark mode is most useful.

firefox does;it works great

Re: Ask HN: Dark mode for HN please?

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please, for God's sake, don't screw it up. I can keep up with news on this site from a 15 kb/s shared satellite link when I'm out at sea. Except perhaps for the really big threads. I love the simple interface. It's text, it's simple, it's readable, and when I hit the spacebar, it scrolls down a page. No fancy fonts, no javascript, no nothing. I love HN for its simplicity and speed. Thanks for maintaining a good engin…

"No fancy fonts, no javascript, no nothing." Truthfully, there is some Javascript. For example, onclick(). Voting without Javascript requires some extra effort.

> without some extra effort

Thanks for the riddle! I guess you could use iframes?

Edit: Ohhh and you could use data-urls as iframe src, so as not to make a large number of requests.

Re: Ask HN: Dark mode for HN please?

#315
post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, not only should "dark mode" be the responsibility of the browser, it already is. There's plenty of plugins that do this and people that want it should use them. ( http://i.9ol.es/dark.png )

Sadly few browsers support extensions on mobile, which is possibly where dark mode is most useful.

chromium for android is open source ... that's where the solution should be and if you're really passionate about it, go do it. It shouldn't be the responsibility of every individual website to independently implement the feature.

Could you imagine if we entrusted every website to independently implement scroll bars and zoom? What a mess that'd be.

Re: Ask HN: Dark mode for HN please?

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they screw it up then I'll personally host some service that scrapes all the text and only dumps a few kbs to you :)

Honestly theres a lot of other sites that would benefit from that too. A well written and maintained scraper for a bunch of popular sites may be worth a subscription for some bandwidth limited people.

I've thought about this, too; some of my favorite sites are forums that are a pain to use on mobile (e.g. RuTracker).

Seems like a fun project, so I may start planning it when I have time.

Re: Ask HN: Dark mode for HN please?

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't. Strong contrast helps readability; grey-on-color is lower contrast than white-on-color. Most HN threads linking to a site that has light-grey-on-dark-grey or dark-grey-on-light-grey text have at least one (off-topic) complaint about site style. Let's not make HN one of those sites.

For me strong contrasts, especially on dark backgrounds, give me retina burns and eyestrain. I find pastel shades more comfortable. That said the grey text on white fad that happened a few years ago was a very silly idea. I guess everyone's mileages vary depending on their eyesight, my eye's are 53 years old now and aren't as spritely as they used to be.

It's all about your monitor settings. High contrast monitor - you prefer low contrast style. Low contrast monitor - you prefer high contrast style.

This is something I don't like about VS Code. by being low contrast it means I have to turn up monitor contrast meaning everything else burns.

Re: Ask HN: Dark mode for HN please?

#318
post #174

I don't get the appeal of dark mode. Do people really like to pretend that they're on a submarine or something?

"Nothing" on an additive medium, the screen, is black. With absorptive color (paper) it is white. I just find everything to look better if you stick to this. I find light mode apps and sites uncomfortable and ugly, much like a white-on-black print book.

That said, I've heard from many people that they struggle to read light-on-dark. So it's best to have both options, especially for a site like HN where it doesn't require a huge design effort.

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