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Ask HN: Dark mode for HN please?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask HN: Dark mode for HN please?

#421

Post by HeavyStorm »

fermienrico wrote: post #91
dang wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on board with ceasing and desisting from screwing it up.

Can we have a review before we merge the change? Make sure all issues are ironed out. HN design is simply the best thing out there. "Moving slowly and preserving things" - I would get this engraved on my grave. This philosophy has died unfortunately and with it went robustness, simplicity, elegance, poise, beauty, accessibility, elegance, maintainability and practicality. Thanks dang for your gandalf-like wisdom and…

Couldn't agree more.

Re: Ask HN: Dark mode for HN please?

#422

Post by [deleted] »

dang wrote: post #53
kazinator wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now, the profile has a single property "topcolor" where you can slightly customize HN. It seems that this could easily be extended with a few more similar properties, suitable values of which could produce a darkmode.

I'd love to do that just by offering people a CSS blob that we could inject into their CSS when they browse HN. Our original idea (actually kogir's idea from back in 2014—he's a forward-thinking guy) was that people could create skins this way, if that Winamp-era term isn't too obsolete by now, and share them. However, someone who is plugged into Reddit told me that they used to allow user-defined CSS for customizing…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Dark mode for HN please?

#423

Post by kazinator »

dang wrote: post #79
toupeira wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit's user CSS was different, mods could edit it on subreddits and all visitors would receive it. On HN you'd only get the CSS you've set yourself, so there shouldn't really be a security concern (except for CSRF attacks against the settings form I guess).

Thanks—that's an important clarification, and maybe is the thing to do after all.

Not so fast! Just because the CSS is only served to the authenticated account which installed it doesn't necessarily mean things are 100% okay.

There could be cross-site scripting attacks whereby the user clicks on something evil in a malicious site which attacks that user's HN authenticated session by installing some malicious CSS in their profile. The UI could require a confirmation of the account password for updating any security-sensitive properties.

Users could also shoot themselves in the foot with bad CSS. The obvious fix for that is that the profile settings page itself doesn't inject the CSS, or there is a safe variant of its URL which doesn't inject CSS.

Re: Ask HN: Dark mode for HN please?

#424

Post by austincheney »

dang wrote: 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…

Challenge accepted: https://github.com/prettydiff/hn_dark

The CSS works well for me, but I understand presentation is highly subjective and some people may not like it.

Perhaps more important is that tiny bit of JavaScript in the readme.md so that anybody can rapidly experiment with CSS themes for Hacker News on live pages with just copy and paste.

This was my first time to do a deep dive into the front-end code of Hacker News and the HTML is archaic. If you would like I can help spruce it up to modern 2008ish HTML code that is fully semantic, accessible, and much better for SEO. Just let me know how I can help.

Re: Ask HN: Dark mode for HN please?

#425

Post by mmmBacon »

monokai_nl wrote: post #297

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…

A question, how would the black bar appear in dark mode? It should be set out somehow. Also would be useful if when the black bar appears there’s a link to the person honored.

Re: Ask HN: Dark mode for HN please?

#426

Post by tallgiraffe »

im3w1l wrote: post #317
teh_klev wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Great point. Our environmental factors are so easy to forget. I do use a very high contrast monitor and definitely prefer pastel colors at night, so my eyes dont hurt, but now I can clearly see how someone with low contrast wont' see a damn thing.

There is a solution, but it's a bit more complicated and requires introducing additional user preferences. Supply two color options in the css, and allow user to choose high/low brightness.

HN already has some profile filters, so adding one more might not be a problem, but I can also see how it becomes a slipper-slope of new features.

Re: Ask HN: Dark mode for HN please?

#427

Post by im3w1l »

stev0lution wrote: post #419
im3w1l wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sorry for asking but is there any reason why you don't just use a different color theme for VS Code?

Fair enough. It's because it's not my main editor, and I didn't look into theming.

Re: Ask HN: Dark mode for HN please?

#428

Post by dang »

chaos_a wrote: post #296
dang wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pg told me that he wanted HN to look like the output of `top`. The older it gets, the more we approach that goal. I've never seen a proposed redesign that didn't either add too much whitespace or too little (well, always the former), which makes me think that the current design is in the ballpark of optimal, despite its being unfashionable. Also, HN is very much a text site and that goes deeper than look-and-feel. Th…

The textiness of the site likely scares off a lot of new/non-techy users. Reddit switched from being a text site to a modern UI a few years ago, in doing so they managed to gain a lot of new users. Which in turn ruins the sites community and discussion when users are focused on making cheap jokes and memes for upvotes.

I think I agree with your main point but some distinctions are important. We don't want to scare off new users—we love new users. We don't want to scare off "non-techy" users—they are completely welcome. The users we want, though, are the intellectually curious ones. And there I agree that HN's textual orientation is an asset.

Re: Ask HN: Dark mode for HN please?

#429

Post by JoshTriplett »

albedoa wrote: post #245
JoshTriplett wrote: post #228

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.

> grey-on-color is lower contrast than white-on-color. > Let's not make HN one of those sites. The OP of the thread you are replying to is #828282 on top of #f6f6ef. That is lower contrast than black on white.

I was responding to the comment I directly replied to, not commenting on the specific color scheme of the style.

Re: Ask HN: Dark mode for HN please?

#430

Post by [deleted] »

monokai_nl wrote: post #297

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…

[deleted]
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