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Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

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Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#181

Post by roelschroeven »

floatrock wrote: post #66
Scarbutt wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just change the brightness of the monitor twice a day.

...buried 2 or 3 menu layers deep, using a magic sequence of three buttons to handle all the up-down/left-right multi-level hierarchical menu navigation complexities. One of Apple's biggest innovations imho was to make brightness +/- two of the default keyboard buttons. Every keyboard should replace their F-keys with brightness by default (seriously, who uses F-keys? It's wasted real estate.) TV's should do this too.…

> seriously, who uses F-keys? It's wasted real estate

I'm sorry, what?

I use them all the time. F5 for refreshing all kinds of stuff, or for setting breakpoints in my IDE. F7, F8, F9 for controlling the debugger, other combinations for building/running. F12 for opening developer tools in the browser. Some programs still use F1 for help. F2 in Windows explorer for renaming things. And so on and so forth.

I can't stand keyboards without function keys, or where you have to press Fn to activate them.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#183

Post by qwerty456127 »

squarefoot wrote: post #85

"Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?" Yes, it is. One thing is reading a newspaper in which text amounts to a good percentage of the available area, and the rest reflects ambient light, and a whole different thing is a screen with some text in the middle and the free area emitting white light right to my eyes, de facto saturating them. I would never read a white text on black paper newspaper, neither in the dark nor in th…

I would love to have a good e-paper laptop for coding, reading and communicating. I actually consider today (and even 5-yr-old) e-paper displays perfectly usable for all real tasks except watching video and playing realtime games. Compilers and editors (and web pages) should change to avoid unnecessary output and require less screen updates though (this would actually be great anyway - whatever kind of screen I have I prefer unnecessary presentation dynamicity to be avoided).

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#184

Post by vladvasiliu »

floatrock wrote: post #66
Scarbutt wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just change the brightness of the monitor twice a day.

...buried 2 or 3 menu layers deep, using a magic sequence of three buttons to handle all the up-down/left-right multi-level hierarchical menu navigation complexities. One of Apple's biggest innovations imho was to make brightness +/- two of the default keyboard buttons. Every keyboard should replace their F-keys with brightness by default (seriously, who uses F-keys? It's wasted real estate.) TV's should do this too.…

I agree that brightness should be easier to reach. On my Dell monitor, it can be configured to be behind one button press, then changed with up / down. On my LG monitor, it's atrocious. Have to go 2-3 layers deep with an awful joystick.

This is one of the reasons I absolutely love my Apple display. It changes brightness automatically and most of the time it does it right.

Also, DDC/CI is a thing and (sometimes) works.

On Windows, I've found Twinkle Tray on the store works reasonably well.

For Linux there's ddcci-dkms on Ubuntu and ddcci-driver-linux-dkms for Arch Linux (on the AUR). They allow configuring the brightness as a regular backlight device. See the Arch Linux Wiki [0].

[0] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Backlight#External_moni...

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#185

Post by moviuro »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #183
squarefoot wrote: post #85

"Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?" Yes, it is. One thing is reading a newspaper in which text amounts to a good percentage of the available area, and the rest reflects ambient light, and a whole different thing is a screen with some text in the middle and the free area emitting white light right to my eyes, de facto saturating them. I would never read a white text on black paper newspaper, neither in the dark nor in th…

I would love to have a good e-paper laptop for coding, reading and communicating. I actually consider today (and even 5-yr-old) e-paper displays perfectly usable for all real tasks except watching video and playing realtime games. Compilers and editors (and web pages) should change to avoid unnecessary output and require less screen updates though (this would actually be great anyway - whatever kind of screen I have…

ed(1) is plenty quiet already.

https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed-msg.html

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#186

Post by globular-toast »

I've never thought that "dark mode" is better for readability or eye strain. It only comes down to preference. And it's a bit weird to quote a load of research to tell people whether or not they prefer one or the other.

The point of research like this is to show what should be the default. The default should definitely still be black on white. Dark mode should only be an option.

For me dark mode completely misses the point when it comes to eye strain anyway. For more than ten years now I've been using a low contrast colour scheme. It happens to be light on dark, but it's far from white on black (it's called Zenburn). I use this for emacs as well as terminals, which is where 90% of my work is done. I use "dark mode" plugins for Firefox simply because it reduces the contrast between the web and my work

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#187

Post by nurettin »

javisantana wrote: post #160

Dark mode is very useful for people with "eye problems", for example, eye floaters are small black points you see all the time, they usually appear with the age, dark mode make them "disapear" making you brain happier. Thanks whoever started dark mode trend

I've got floaters, they are never a concern when reading in dark or light mode until someone reminds me of them.

So byebye anecdotal eye floater guy who supports dark mode.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#188

Post by rooam-dev »

I don't know, I guess it depends. I tried recently to switch to gruvbox dark, solarized dark and so other popular themes. It is difficult for me to use them in the day. Gave up after couple of days, switched back to intellij light + redshift app.

Late nights i just reduce the overall screen brightness.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#189

Post by callmekit »

tartoran wrote: post #130
danielrpa wrote: post #78

If you have eye floaters, dark mode is a life saver. The dark spots from floaters can be maddening against a white background

If you see the floaters then your screen is way to bright. I see my floaters only when looking at the sky during the day and I have lots of them. I think this is because the pupil contracts and the depth of field grows and the floaters project onto the retina

I think the popularity of dark mode is at least partially because people's monitors set way too bright.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#190

Post by yoz-y »

deanclatworthy wrote: post #166
MayorMonty wrote: post #128

The most important part is preference IMO. People have the right to choose which is right for them, and if they determine that dark mode is better for them (even if they just think it looks better), having a setting in the OS that cascades down to all applications and websites is just a nice feature to have. This is why prefers-color-scheme is the perfect mechanism for this. Simply swap out your CSS variables and aut…

Except some people prefer dark UI but light websites. You can't please everyone. There should be a per-site based setting such as microphone access etc. where if prefer-color-scheme: dark is detected, user can toggle it should they choose. But, as a site owner it's my prerogative on the decisions I make regarding design. It's not always about choice :)

I fall in this category. I like light-on-dark background for code and parts where the text is well-spaced. Mainly because it gives place for more distinguishable colors. However I hate reading blocks of texts in white-on-black. I have set Mail to use light background and I wish there was a way to tell Safari to not communicate a dark preference.
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