Not a lot of evidence behind f.lux either, but everyone just took it on which is interesting.
Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?
271–280 of 552 posts
Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?
#272Wait. So. "Multiple studies show that light mode is better" trumps my actual experience, with my eyeballs, in my office environment? No. No it doesn't. 1. I don't have that much faith in scientists. Someone trying to p-hack their way to a publishable result that's sensational enough to advance their career is not going to produce good advice for me. 2. Even if they were perfect scientists, they're not using my eyebal…
Science is not a faith based system. If you doubt about the rigor of some study, by all means point the errors you find. In the meantime, I will trust those scientific studies more than subjective opinions in hackernews comments.
Science is faith based for the non-scientific. As you put it yourself, it is about trusting studies and the institutions that produced it (including whatever in them creates the incentives for p-hacking).
Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. Photos are still photons. You can adjust the brightness of the monitor to be the same of a newspaper that reflects you…
Every night? Progressively as it gets darker? Manually? Plus, I'd need to re-adjust the contrast as well. I'm sure there's software that does that, but Dark mode seems like the easy-no-extra-work solution to this problem.
Apple's computers already do that, they have a sensor and adjust the backlight, some can even adjust the color tone to match the ambient light. I know, sounds like the future, but they had it for a while.
Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?
#274"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 am old enough to have written programs when "dark mode" was the default (black background and green or amber text, 40 columns, 80 columns if you were lucky), and I can tell you that light mode is much easier on my eyes.
Black text (real black, not this fancy grey web designers seem to prefer) and white background on a properly adjusted monitor where the white doesn't blind you is my go-to since monitors became good enough to make it possible.
YMMV, of course.
Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?
#275"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…
How photos look on e-ink depends on how the SW is implemented. If dithering is used, then yes, random photos look like crap. But it can also use shades of gray (8, or 16), which is slower to update, but looks much better.
Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?
#276Apparently 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…
I’m 34. Had 20/20 vision all my life. Until around April this year from being in lockdown and stuck at home working more due to not going out and such.
I felt like I’m getting eye strain. And difficulty focusing. I ended up with glasses 3 weeks ago for “computer vision” I can’t wear them walking around the house as it makes me feel dizzy. But in front of the computer it makes a difference.
Think I’m gonna try find a good theme and try light mode for a while.
Edit: Except the iPhone 11, cos I get better battery life based on my usage. It's 7pm now, and phone has been unplugged since 8am, based on my usage its at 79%.
Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?
#277> 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.
> How can a study tell me what is comfortable for me? Unless you are an emigre from Betelgeuse or a particularly intelligent octopus, you have eyes that work in the same way as everyone else's eyes. The biology and physiology of the human eye are well understood. Chocolate is an excellent comparison. Whether you like chocolate is a matter of taste. But you don't get to claim that eating chocolate for breakfast, lunch…
Despite that most of our bodies function more or less the same way, everybody has completely different tastes and preferences in many different things.
Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?
#278Earlier 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…
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. Scrol…
> As you say, every app and website would need to be completely redesigned to work with e-paper.
Are you sure? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xqkWga0PFo
Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?
#279Wait. So. "Multiple studies show that light mode is better" trumps my actual experience, with my eyeballs, in my office environment? No. No it doesn't. 1. I don't have that much faith in scientists. Someone trying to p-hack their way to a publishable result that's sensational enough to advance their career is not going to produce good advice for me. 2. Even if they were perfect scientists, they're not using my eyebal…
Science is not a faith based system. If you doubt about the rigor of some study, by all means point the errors you find. In the meantime, I will trust those scientific studies more than subjective opinions in hackernews comments.
You seem to have a lot of faith in scientists.
Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Well, it's very dogmatic. The article is also quite dogmatic though.
The article is based on practical research, which I don't believe can be called "dogma".
Well, it says that reading on light background is better because of X. It's dogmatic in that X is important, and therefore, it's better to do so.