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Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

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Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#211

Post by iCarrot »

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #196
qwerty456127 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 promine…

I'm aware of some options:

The Boox Max 3 e-ink tablet can be used as an external monitor (HDMI connection) with good refresh rate.

Dasung Paperlike 3 is a dedicated e-ink external monitor that can actually play video with really good refresh rate.

Waveshare also makes e-ink external monitor, not as good as the Paperlike but coming at half the price.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#212

Post by stared »

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…

> Yes, it is.

Well, it's very dogmatic.

Sure, for you it may be better, and if you "would never read a white text on black paper newspaper", it is fine.

At the same time, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs. If you have a research paper that Dark Mode is better for everyone, please share.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#213

Post by esperent »

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…

My old Kobo Aura e-reader (gen 2 I think, amazing device) had a browser built-in. On one occasion I had to use it to log in and retrieve flight details when my phone battery died. That was probably my most frustrating tech experience of the last five years. Partly, the browser app was not great, but also because every single action required multiple 1-second long refreshes of the screen. Type a letter? Refresh. Scroll? Multiple refresh. Zoom? Multiple refresh. Select a button? Multiple refresh. Press the button? ... you get the picture.

As you say, every app and website would need to be completely redesigned to work with e-paper. I don't see that happening, but even then typing or editing text with a long delay is very annoying, as anyone who has used SSH over a slow connection will tell you.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#214

Post by cnity »

aasasd wrote: post #114
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…

Emitted light isn't a problem per se, because reflected photons aren't somehow radically different from emitted ones. Color and brightness profile is the problem. On a display, you have to have high contrast and brightness for images (that have lots of darker areas), so the system interface is in turn tuned for this high brightness—and then you have to deal with bright white under text. Note how text on e-ink is exce…

These are good points but miss an essential part of the story: reflected light almost by definition matches the brightness of the surrounding environment, meaning that the periphery is roughly the same brightness and white balance as the reading medium.

If I look at my laptop on full brightness in a nearly pitch black room, it is far less comfortable to read than if I turned on a lamp.

So there are two solutions to this. Turn on a lamp if you're using a screen at night time, and lower your brightness to have roughly the same level as the ambient light.

Or, use night mode if you don't want to turn a lamp on.

If I'm doing something like programming, I prefer the former. If I'm just in bed and feeling lazy and want to read twitter, I go for the latter so I don't have to turn a lamp on.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#215

Post by emberfiend »

aasasd wrote: post #114
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…

Emitted light isn't a problem per se, because reflected photons aren't somehow radically different from emitted ones. Color and brightness profile is the problem. On a display, you have to have high contrast and brightness for images (that have lots of darker areas), so the system interface is in turn tuned for this high brightness—and then you have to deal with bright white under text. Note how text on e-ink is exce…

The other emitted-photon difference is flashing. If your monitor uses pulse width modulation to dim, any brightness under 100% is going to flash high-frequency lights at your eyes.

Supposedly if this is done fast enough it's not unhealthy, but it's a case of "no solid evidence it's bad for you" plus anecdotal links to headaches. I have personally had drastically fewer screen headaches since leaving my hardware brightness on 100% and lowering brightness via the driver.

I'm a believer in the spectrum thing, too. I find halogens way easier on the eyes than ultra-power-saving diodes.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#216

Post by mahathu »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #8

No one seems to be mentioning the lighting of the room you're in, inside/outside, or the time of day. Ambient light is one of the primary factors that make light or dark mode better at a particular moment. See redshift to make light mode more tolerable at night.

Exactly! When I started using dark mode, it felt so much more pleasant for my eyes. After a while I realized this was because I was in generally dark environments a lot, so I started to switch up my environment instead: I.e. light up the room with a large ceiling lamp instead of just a small reading lamp on a desk etc.

I noticed when I'm working in the morning or generally when it's bright outside, it's sooo much more relaxing with black on white text. With night mode, I'd need to up the brightness way more to be able to comfortably read and type. It was sort of a revelation to me because the "night mode is better" mindset was so engrained into my mind at that point.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#217

Post by BossingAround »

stared wrote: post #212
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…

> Yes, it is. Well, it's very dogmatic. Sure, for you it may be better, and if you "would never read a white text on black paper newspaper", it is fine. At the same time, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs. If you have a research paper that Dark Mode is better for everyone, please share.

> Well, it's very dogmatic.

The article is also quite dogmatic though.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#218

Post by feanaro »

m12k wrote: post #168
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…

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 (…

One of the more obvious differences is that paper is very close to a Lambertian reflector while LCD pixels are more directed. Hence the LCD viewing angle problem, though that gap is closing.

Apart from that, I think it mostly comes down to the fact that an LCD pixel doesn't actually change it's reflected colour when it starts emitting light of a different colour. This means that incident light falling upon the pixel and being reflected will necessarily become noise -- it won't contribute to the image. For instance, if the colour of the LCD surface is some kind of grey and the LCD is emitting green, the resulting colour will be

    incident * r_reflected + emitted
Where `incident` is the incident light from the environment, `r_reflected` is some factor (On the other hand, if you had a green coloured paper, then there is no emitted component so it becomes just

    incident * r_reflected
Where `r_reflected` now represents the proportion of green light that is reflected. The end result is a more pure green.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#219

Post by CathedralBorrow »

dnr wrote: post #165

These articles are so bizarre to me: he's writing about dark mode and light mode as if you can just... _choose_ one or the other and be roughly equally happy either way? I would never even think to look at "studies" when it's blindingly obvious: light mode makes my eyes hurt a lot, dark mode is very comfortable. The only time I can even consider using light mode is mid-day with plenty of natural light around. At nigh…

I think this disclaimer at the bottom might explain some of it:

> This post is day 04 of my #100DaysToOffload challenge. If you want to get involved, you can get more info from https://100daystooffload.com.

I find that the intent behind publishing any piece of content is an incredibly accurate predictor for its usefulness in my experience. When you can ascertain that of course. But essentially, my rule of thumb is that if the chain of events looks like this:

1. I really want to write a blog post

2. What should it be about?

then I won't find much useful in it, regardless of the topic. But if it's the other way around:

1. I really want to share this idea of mine

2. What medium should I use to deliver it?

then I often find it useful to me, again regardless of the topic.

Funnily enough, the title of the author's next blog post in this series captures this idea well: "Writing With SEO In Mind"

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#220

Post by BossingAround »

sildur wrote: post #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.

It's kind of common for people to think that they like something while getting objectively worse results. For example, people learning sequentially feel like they've learned the materials but are outperformed by people who were forced to learn the topic out of sequence.

So I think conclusion such as "people think they prefer it, but actually, information retention is much higher with white background" is quite applicable despite you thinking that's not true.

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