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Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

kevq.uk

191–200 of 552 posts

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#191
> When I was in the military, a key tactic of camouflage was to never, under any circumstances, expose yourself on a hilltop or similar, where your silhouette could be easily identified. A dark blob on a light background is far easier for the human eye to see, than the reverse.

I hate these obviously one sided arguments. Here they could have said to not use a flashlight while hiding in the dark. But they tactfully left that out.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#192
This just reminded me that HN doesn’t have a dark mode. Also, bigger fonts would be nice. I can’t use user scripts or custom CSS on my iPad, and Reader Mode tends to fail here unless I point it to a meatier comment (it looks for the biggest blogs of text), so any tweaks towards improved readability here would be great.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#193
post #5

They taught us this in advertising. White text scatters over the iris on a dark background, so it’s harder to read the copy. I’ve even read it in UX articles. It was amusing to get out of school and into the tech industry to find dark mode everywhere. Granted, I use it too. Both my terminal and editor have dark themes. I’m not really sure why. The terminal isn’t really a big deal to me. I could go either way there. B…

If science says I'd be more productive with a light theme, then we need better science. "On a biological level, our eyes prefer the contrast between a light background and dark foreground." On a biological level, our eyes prefer not to stare at a light source all day every day. Yet here we are.

Science says we read faster with black on white. But reading speed isn't important when you're coding, comfort is.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#194

>Is Dark Mode Such A Good Idea? Yes. >Many people quote light mode as being a contributory factor to eye strain. Based on the reading I’ve done, this doesn’t appear to be true. I'll test that now. - Blindy migraine mode: Hurts. - Dark mode: Doesn't hurt. - Different result ever? No. The above is from the undisputed, worldwide expert on what I feel.

Maybe your monitor is set too bright? The white on the monitor should be roughly as bright as a sheet of white paper in the same room, less than 50% brightness usually.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#195
> A nice dark screen with light text is easier to read, right? Well, according to multiple studies, that’s wrong apparently.

That was really funny. "Do you like chocolate? Well, according to multiple studies, you don't apparently."

How can a study tell me what is comfortable for me? Are we going crazy? We are starting to treat studies like little gods which tell us what to do, and apparently, what to like.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#196

"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've seen a couple who hacked together setups using Android e-ink tablets, but I'd love to see someone make (and sell) a product with a little more polish.

The main barrier is that almost all modern GUIs depend on high refresh rates, but it's not hard to imagine a GUI designed from the ground-up for ePaper. Little-to-no transitions, pagination instead of scrolling, maybe a customized version of Firefox with a prominent Readability toggle, etc

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#197
Dark modes are a choice. Light modes are a choice. Everyone is free to choose what they like, so trying to influence people one way or another, or criticising their choice, is unproductive.

I live in Wales, a country where our default weather is "meh". I live on the dark side of a mountain. I work in a room with no external windows. Yes I use dark modes, and if you used light mode in my office I'd think you were a fucking nutcase, but I'd leave you to it because that's your choice.

Light mode in my office is painful, dark mode in bright sunshine doesn't work. Shocker.

The parent article here is actually difficult for me to read; the text appears to have ghostly halos for me. Perhaps I'm being hypocritical when my own blog (https://senryu.pub/afternoonrobot) isn't much different; although I made a concious effort there to make sure it inverts easily with iOS dark-mode/Dark Reader etc.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#199
post #76

Apparently light-on-dark is terrible if the person has astigmatism: the edges get very blurry and doubled. There was an article on HN about this, specifically about keynote slides. Also apparently “in Europe and Asia, astigmatism affects between 30 and 60% of adults” (says Wikipedia). I have it too, and couldn't figure out in the past why text sometimes looks horribly blurry and sometimes doesn't. With this knowledge…

Yes I see the text blurred, but it's simply less painful to read it in a dark room.

Dark mode is usefull and is not something new.

When car had integrated navigation system, the screen would go in dark mode if external lightning is too low.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#200
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain what you consider to be the difference between emitted and reflected light? I'm asking because in the models of global illumination that also handle emissive materials that I've worked with, there's literally no difference between whether a photon was emitted by a surface, or came from somewhere else and bounced off the surface. So I'm trying to understand if there's some fundamental property here (…

Emissive displays don't react to incident light in the same way as paper, even if they try. And they've been trying for a long time -- my grandmother had a TV from the 1970s with an ambient light sensor that would match the ambient color temperature.

They're getting better: https://www.samsung.com/us/televisions-home-theater/tvs/the-...

The first time I saw one of these in the flesh, it was striking. I'd be surprised if this kind of context-awareness in screens didn't work its way into most devices within the next decade.

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