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Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

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Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#121

Post by aasasd »

dehrmann wrote: post #115
wildrhythms wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, this explains so much. I use a light color scheme (think default Eclipse theme) in my editor, even during late night coding binges, because I can see the text more clearly. I also have an astigmatism. Maybe related, text rendering affects me tremendously as well, like Windows/Linux text rendering forces me to squint even when the text is normal sized; but I don't have to squint on Mac OS.

> I also have an astigmatism Even without one, the brighter background will constrict your pupils more, giving you a wider field of view and better focus.

...additionally helped by squinting from looking at a bright screen in the darkness.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#124

Post by 6AA4FD »

redisman wrote: post #81
floatrock wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...buried 2 or 3 menu layers deep, using a magic sequence of three buttons to handle all the up-down/left-right multi-level hierarchical menu navigation complexities. One of Apple's biggest innovations imho was to make brightness +/- two of the default keyboard buttons. Every keyboard should replace their F-keys with brightness by default (seriously, who uses F-keys? It's wasted real estate.) TV's should do this too.…

It's insane how monitor software hasn't developed an inch from the 90s. How hard can it be to have an open API for the basic controls at least so the OS can adjust them? Everything about my monitor is great - 144hz refresh rate, great viewing angle and colors - except if I want to change any of the physical properties (brightness, contrast) I'm clicking around on a variety of buttons that I can't see like I'm trying…

I can control laptop brightness with `/sys/class/backlight/foo`, and my asus external monitor advertises capabilities over hdmi with `modprobe i2c-dev` and then `ddcutil capabilities`. Apparently this is governed by something called MCCS. You can find more info on the arch wiki.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#125

Post by castorp »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #84

>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.

I'll test it as well:

- stupid dark mode: makes me cranky, gives me a headache - light mode: relaxed reading, makes me feel comfortable. - different results ever? No.

the above is from the undisputed, worldwide export on what I feel.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#126

Post by c3534l »

A great deal of people prefer dark mode. The number of people with this strong preference seems like it should be enough. I don't trust the studies cited here one bit: I remember when everyone was citing studies that said sans serif fonts were hard to read. Yeah, people find it hard to read when you change how they're used to reading. As if using a modern website consists of attentively reading large volumes of text serially. Even if it were true, who cares? People like it, let them enjoy it.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#127

Post by jeffbee »

Izkata wrote: post #64
lkesteloot wrote: post #19

"Unless you’re using an OLED or AMOLED screen and your dark mode is truly black – not dark grey, not dark blue, BLACK. There is no difference in power consumption." I thought this was a myth. I looked into it last year and found that power consumption was (roughly) proportional to brightness. At a meta-level, I'm surprised that something with so factual (and testable) an answer can still not be settled.

Things have flip-flopped over the years: CRT - Black didn't light up the pixels (I don't remember the details as to how), so it did reduce power usage some. LCD - Had a constant backlight (see sibling comment for details), so there was little to no difference between black and anything else. OLED/AMOLED - Black LEDs are actually turned off, instead of displaying a dark color, so we're back to it saving power - more e…

> no difference between black and anything else.

Just a detail that isn't quite right in the article: black is actually the highest power state for LCDs. The backlight draws the same power all the time (for a given brightness setting) but the pixels draw more power when they are black.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#128

Post by MayorMonty »

The most important part is preference IMO. People have the right to choose which is right for them, and if they determine that dark mode is better for them (even if they just think it looks better), having a setting in the OS that cascades down to all applications and websites is just a nice feature to have.

This is why prefers-color-scheme is the perfect mechanism for this. Simply swap out your CSS variables and automatically your site is immediately more accessible to people who prefer dark mode.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#129

Post by floatrock »

shakna wrote: post #69
floatrock wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...buried 2 or 3 menu layers deep, using a magic sequence of three buttons to handle all the up-down/left-right multi-level hierarchical menu navigation complexities. One of Apple's biggest innovations imho was to make brightness +/- two of the default keyboard buttons. Every keyboard should replace their F-keys with brightness by default (seriously, who uses F-keys? It's wasted real estate.) TV's should do this too.…

> Every keyboard should replace their F-keys with brightness by default (seriously, who uses F-keys? It's wasted real estate.) If the keyboard has media keys, then, generally speaking, F2 and F3 will be linked to brightness by default.

I have an external keyboard that's a common split-ergo design, probably one of the top 3 workhorses on amazon for "ergo keyboard" (Apple hardware is pretty, but it's not ergonomic).

By dumb luck I just found that it's ScrLk and Pause/Break that do brightness controls on my external monitor on os-x.

I wish apple made it as easy to remap these kinds of global shortcut keys as IDE's do.

Re: Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

#130

Post by tartoran »

danielrpa wrote: post #78

If you have eye floaters, dark mode is a life saver. The dark spots from floaters can be maddening against a white background

If you see the floaters then your screen is way to bright. I see my floaters only when looking at the sky during the day and I have lots of them. I think this is because the pupil contracts and the depth of field grows and the floaters project onto the retina
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