I can certainly believe that lots of 'dark modes' are not well implemented and could lead to eye strain &c. I'm not sure that this demonstrates that dark mode is a bad idea in general.
Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?
501–510 of 552 posts
Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?
#502These 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…
Crank down the brightness on your monitor a good bit (more than you think you should), switch to light mode and stay there for the day. The initial dark-light switch is super jarring, I find, but light mode proper is actually fine. And it's far easier to tolerate an instance of dark mode in a lighter-themed environment than the reverse because the initial switch is so much more jarring than light->dark (which can als…
I really just don't understand this pushback. I posted a comment about eye strain. I've been using computers for almost 30 years. Do you really think I haven't tried turning down the brightness? Is it that hard to believe that there are people out there that sincerely, legitimately, prefer light-on-dark text (possibly due to physiological differences in the eyes or brain)? Why this need to "correct" people? Just let people do what works for them!
(If you meant your comment to be "I found this works for me: ..." or "Have you tried ...?", then write it that way. The imperative mood is off-putting.)
FWIW: On my laptop, which I use most of the time these days, I adjust the brightness continually, probably 20+ times a day, and keep it pretty low. (I buy Thinkpads partly because their minimum brightness is so low.) On my desktop monitor, which is more annoying to adjust, I actually keep it at 0 most of the time, and bump it to 35 when the sun is out.
Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?
#503I think there were studies that black text on yellow background is the easiest to read. Yellow Mode when?
Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?
#504Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fighter-jet seat problem is pretty famous. https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-...
The article you cited is an interesting just-so explanation but it's mostly narrative, not really correct. It's based on this book https://www.harpercollins.ca/9780062358363/the-end-of-averag... which espouses some rather non-quantitative concepts (it seems like the author had a hobbyhorse and they rode it as far as they could). I don't know that it's "pretty famous", as I find only a few references to it (the book I…
My father was an instrumentation engineer for the DoD and much of what he worked on during his time at the high speed test track out at WSMR did involve ejection seat testing.
They had an assortment of very expensive mannequins rigged up with a multitude of sensors to determine strain or torsional effects that were used to determine whether the ejection was "survivable." I believe the certification process included the smallest possible dummy that could survive the seat ejection, and the largest that would fit.
Too small and the seat couldn't be rigged with enough ballast to prevent the acceleration of the ejection motor from crushing the pilot's spine. Too large and the seat wouldn't clear the tail or other aircraft structures. If I understand it correctly, the seats are configured to the pilot for this reason.
It's absolutely true that designing around averages is not how ejection seats are constructed or, for that matter, tested.
Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?
#505It. Ant yours
Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?
#506Were you mommy arron
Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?
#507Dark 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 fu…
> Dark modes are a choice. Light modes are a choice. Everyone is free to choose what they like In the Windows 95 era, we really could just flip a few settings in our OS and everything[0] would conform to our color and font preferences. Unfortunately we have no regressed to the point that only two options are offered, and even then only sometimes. Hooray for progress. [0] very nearly everything.
Precisely. And then people defend slow bloated software and systems by claiming this software is "doing much more today". Yeah, not really. Google Docs does nothing WordPerfect couldn't do (and much better) back in the '90s. If you take away collaborative editing (which is janky at best, and surely could have been done in the '90s if anyone cared) then Google Docs is doing much much less. Slack is IRC with pictures (which I'm positive existed well before Slack), and yet consumes gigs of RAM. What the fuck are we doing. IRC offered way more customization.
Dark mode really gets me though. I've been doing themes on X11 since 1995 at least. You could even do themes on Windows 3.x. Why is everyone killing so much time and energy discussing this binary mode "feature" in 2020? It makes no goddamn sense.
Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?
#508Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel more productive when using dark mode. Better?
Some people feel more productive when they get their auras adjusted or take homeopathic medicine. The placebo effect is fairly strong. And how productive someone feels vs how productive they actually are when it's measured often varies, of course.
I am sure if I am whipped or faced with a shock collar I could also be measurably 'productive'. It's pretty evident the reasons why feelings trump productivity then.
I value my feelings in a pleasant work environment a hell of a lot more than productivity metrics.
Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?
#509Wait. 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…
Skimming the website and referenced paper-website (didn’t make it to a particular paper) I saw only statements of results, and none of methodology. Is the p-hacking claim “a general feeling” or can you pull it from something concrete here?
By the way, in case it is “just” a feeling, I’ll say up front I share the feeling too. I think worth considering for every empirical study.
Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?
#510"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 recently got a Likebook Mars and since it's got Android 6 and Google Play store, it works perfectly out of the box for my purposes (emails, reading, writing). Not gonna replace your computer any time soon, but great for focusing on one simple task, would highly recommend:
https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/boyue-likebo....