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Solarized

ethanschoonover.com

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Re: Solarized

#141

Post by Adaptive »

Adaptive wrote: post #135

Developer of Solarized here. Glad that it continues to be a popular design. I've let the github languish and regret that. Luckily since it's just a color scheme the website and info on github has been enough for it to continue to propagate. There have been plenty of other color schemes that I think it's safe to say have been inspired by Solarized and this is very satisfying to see. Many of them have done a better job…

Two things I want to add (better as a comment than edit):

1) I don't use Solarized everywhere religiously. I use it a LOT, no surprise. Still my preferred color scheme in most editing, terminal, code situations. But I am happy to use other well designed colorschemes in various contexts (writing, task management apps, etc.). Even when Solarized is available, sometimes variety is what's called for.

2) Solarized was designed to enable the colors to be used in high contrast modes as well. As my eyes age I sometimes will apply the colorscheme in a higher contrast mode. This adaptability is sometimes overlooked but it is inherent and intentional to the design.

Re: Solarized

#142

Post by tasuki »

djha-skin wrote: post #106

I use solarized light everywhere. It sounds silly because everyone likes using a dark theme but I do it on purpose because I'm often coding from a bus stop or somewhere else outside. With a light theme it's much easier to see the screen even with full sun and glare on the screen. This is not possible with the dark theme. I also have glare coming through a window at work that is in a new office and so there's no windo…

I too use Solarized Light. Apart from better readability outside, another reason for me to use the light theme is that many other things I look at use a light theme (eg HN), and switching between my terminal/ide with a dark theme and a browser with (usually) light websites was jarring.

Re: Solarized

#143

Post by pw201 »

Adaptive wrote: post #135

Developer of Solarized here. Glad that it continues to be a popular design. I've let the github languish and regret that. Luckily since it's just a color scheme the website and info on github has been enough for it to continue to propagate. There have been plenty of other color schemes that I think it's safe to say have been inspired by Solarized and this is very satisfying to see. Many of them have done a better job…

Thanks. Vim links on your page appear to be broken, btw.

Re: Solarized

#144

Post by comfypotato »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #117
comfypotato wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dark Reader is an extension available on most browsers. It has a nice community that supports conversion to dark mode for most web pages. It has worked fine for me. I use Tampermonkey to pick up the slack where Dark Reader is inadequate. Like you, switching is worse even than light mode. I migrated to completely dark.

Does it work "directly", meaning without the flash of light while it figures it should apply dark mode? I use Stylus to apply a dark skin to some sites, like HN, and sometimes, I get a flash of brightness which is very jarring in the dark.

There is still a brief flash occasionally. It doesn’t bother me in the same way that looking at a white background does (meaning I don’t get headaches), but it definitely happens.

Re: Solarized

#145

Post by comfypotato »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #120
comfypotato wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting comment. I have to note that light themes give me migraines, so I’m stuck with dark. Can’t help but feel that it is fear mongering, though. This can’t be that difficult to research. Where is the hard evidence to back this up? Your comment sent me down a rabbit hole looking for anything scientific that suggests what you’re saying, and I find nothing that implies long term damage. The quoted post is drawing…

> I have to note that light themes give me migraines, so I’m stuck with dark. Isn't the fact you get migraines the issue to solve, rather than the color scheme? Most monitors these days are way too bright, especially for the amount of ambient light coming into the room. I try to get a bunch of light into my office and it is still barely close enough for this monitor. Combine that with displays getting bigger and bigg…

Dark mode fixes my problem, and I prefer dark mode aesthetically. I have no reason to do anything differently (unless there is meat to the parent reply, which is why I’m asking for a legitimate source).

Re: Solarized

#146

Post by Adaptive »

teucris wrote: post #140
Adaptive wrote: post #135

Developer of Solarized here. Glad that it continues to be a popular design. I've let the github languish and regret that. Luckily since it's just a color scheme the website and info on github has been enough for it to continue to propagate. There have been plenty of other color schemes that I think it's safe to say have been inspired by Solarized and this is very satisfying to see. Many of them have done a better job…

Thanks so much for Solarized. Really changed the way I think about syntax highlighting and UI! Have you run common color/font configurations from Solarized through WCAG’s contrast checking tools? As I create more and more UIs I’ve become increasingly aware of contrast for accessibility and I was wondering what your thoughts were in this regard.

I didn't run Solarized through WCAG when designing it (I don't believe that was around when I was designing it, though I could be wrong) but I did design it to enable high contrast use (this is mentioned on the site but sometimes overlooked in implementations). The highest contrast base tones as background / foreground colors (base03+base3) do pass with a 13.91:1 ratio. In "low contrast" mode, Solarized passes all but WCAG AAA with a value of 4.74:1.

As my eyes age I often use Solarized in higher contrast configuration, so I'm sensitive to this issue.

Re: Solarized

#147

Post by vidarh »

tasuki wrote: post #142
djha-skin wrote: post #106

I use solarized light everywhere. It sounds silly because everyone likes using a dark theme but I do it on purpose because I'm often coding from a bus stop or somewhere else outside. With a light theme it's much easier to see the screen even with full sun and glare on the screen. This is not possible with the dark theme. I also have glare coming through a window at work that is in a new office and so there's no windo…

I too use Solarized Light. Apart from better readability outside, another reason for me to use the light theme is that many other things I look at use a light theme (eg HN), and switching between my terminal/ide with a dark theme and a browser with (usually) light websites was jarring.

Almost everything has a dark theme for me, including HN - sites I use regularly which don't have their own dark themes will get overridden with Minimalist.

Re: Solarized

#148

Post by comfypotato »

mh-cx wrote: post #49
dngray wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A while back, Eliot Miranda posted a detailed message for dark theme users on the squeak-dev mailing list. This is what he wrote: Hi Dark Themers, in an earlier life I worked in optics, designing holographic cameras for bubble chamber physics, so I know a little about focussing systems and depth of field. The iris in the eye expands or contracts to allow or restrict the amount of light entering the eye, attempting to…

This was very insightful, thanks. I'm 49 and can literally watch (pun intended) how my capability to focus in the near field gets worse and worse. I've been using dark themes in the terminal for 25 years and for a couple of years tried to use dark mode also in other software as much as possible. After reading this I really wonder if I did myself a disservice and if I shouldn't change to light mode again. Does anyone…

Thanks for digging a bit. Interestingly, your source actually points towards dark mode being safer long term. My gripe with the parent is that it implies dark mode use risks damage (the lens becoming less scrunchable). I am unable to find any literature that alludes to this.

Re: Solarized

#149

Post by onli »

ziml77 wrote: post #32
jes5199 wrote: post #17

I’ve always felt like the contrast was too low, feels harder to read

I have the same issue with Solarized. I need something with just a little more contrast. One Dark is more like what I want. But even that's not perfect. The color for comments (as with many dark themes) is too dim. Comments shouldn't stand out, but they should also be easy to read when needed. I think that Visual Studio's dark color scheme actually does great there. The green comments separate themselves well from th…

I think that comments should stand out and modified solarized accordingly in my editors. I made it a bright lightish green (in dark mode) in my main editor. If you haven't yet, I can only recommend to give that a try.

Justification: A comment that exists should only exist if it is important, if it is helpful documentation for a function or for some specific code section. If that's the case then a comment should absolutely be the first thing you see, thus it should stand out.

That sound a bit like I would advocate to comment less, but that hasn't been the effect of that change. To the contrary, I'd say it was a factor in my placing more (in my eyes important) comments in code bases than many other developers I work with.

Re: Solarized

#150

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

Can anyone speak to the origin of the name? I had heard that the color scheme resembled the color choices on Solaris workstation terminals, but that origin seems to be erroneous.
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