Dark mode’s bright future: How dark mode will transform Wikipedia’s accessibility

Comments

• hsdkfr734r@feddit.nl ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Dark Reader Plugin already solved that issue.

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  • deranger@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Native dark modes are better and have much less of a performance impact. It’s good as a stop gap though.

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    • tal@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Native dark modes are better

      Agreed. Well, I don’t know if it’d deal with random images as well, as users can upload those.

      and have much less of a performance impact.

      For a number of sites, you can just get away with running Dark Reader in static mode and it works well enough. Considerably faster.

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    • MonkderDritte@feddit.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      “Native”. That every webpage has to implement it themselves is sad. Could be a browser feature that overrides some colors on dark.

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    • hsdkfr734r@feddit.nl ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Maybe. Does it make a big performance difference which css (dark reader or delivered by wiki) is used?

      Is it known how the default to dark mode setting is persisted if let’s say a plugin removes all the Wikipedia cookies on window close? A get or post parameter?

      Either way it’s a good thing that wiki offers a dark mode.

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  • Monomate@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yeah, Dark Reader is a godsend. I just got tired of all the light mode webpages and took matters into my own hands.

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    • tal@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I’m really surprised that it works as well as it does, given the insane amount of stuff that it interacts with. I’d think that it’d be way more fragile than it is.

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  • pineapplelover@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Not a fan of dark reader. It has a weird blue tint to things. I much prefer Dark Background and Light Text. That extensions has a true black background.

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    • ParetoOptimalDev@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      You can change the color.

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  • muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Is ot jyst me or does dark reader do formulas wrong on wikepedia for u as well?

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• dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  So, if I’m reading this right it’s basically just a 17 paragraph essay that boils down to, “Sorry we suck at CSS and it took us a decade to finally get around to rooting out all the random shit from 2014 that was hard-coded to display as rgb(0,0,0) or whatever, which was a capability that in retrospect we really shouldn’t have handed out like candy?”

  The TV Tropes wiki has managed to have a built in dark mode for at least the last 7 years. TV Tropes. Come on, guys.

  I’m baffled by the section about “making a shortcut that darkens all the colors on the page.” I’m positive that’s the intent of that entire blurb, to dazzle people with bullshit in the hopes that they won’t ask Hard Questions, because no competent designer would ever try such a thing. It is a self-evidently moronic idea. You don’t fuck with elements you didn’t create and don’t control, like images and color swatches.

  There are only really two viable possibilities, here:

  1. If arbitrary user definable, hard-coded colors in content are permissible, you’ll have to accept the fact that the cards will fall where they may and some instances will inherently be suboptimal in either light or dark modes, or…
  2. Accept that you won’t allow users to hard-code colors into anything outside of specific elements where that usage is valid, so users will just have to suck it up and pick from a list of preapproved color combinations with light and dark mode renditions.

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  • tal@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The TV Tropes wiki has managed to have a built in dark mode for at least the last 7 years. TV Tropes. Come on, guys.

    It’d be kind of interesting to have a “dark mode spider” that crawls the Web and checks to see what percentage of websites support the browser-requested dark mode. I’d be kind of curious to see how far along we are.

    I mean, people have done it for stuff like IPv6 support for a while.

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    • kippinitreal@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Didn’t Google’s lighthouse have a metric for that? “Colour Contrast ratio” or something?

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  • ozymandias117@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Isn’t #2 the only option?

    Websites specifying color for foreground (or background) and assuming browsers will use whatever color they’re expecting for the other has always existed, and still exists

    If you’re getting fancy and specifying colors, you can’t cheap out and not specify all colors

    If the browser ignores all your colors at that point, then it’s displaying as the user intended If you only specified some of the colors, it’s a bug of the website

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• natecox@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  All I want is “follow system theme” for us light mode at day, dark at night fellows.

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  • Xylight@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    They added that too!

    Image

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    • natecox@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Cool

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  • AlligatorBlizzard@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    How are you doing this? My DE is KDE Plasma and Koi seems to work for this based on my limited searching but I don’t know how well, do you know of something better? (Also I’m using the tree background and I’m hoping to get that to switch too).

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    • natecox@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I don’t think KDE has a native way to do this, I’ve also heard of Koi for this but I haven’t used it. I’m mostly a Mac user where this is just a default option.

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• Agrivar@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’ve always been kind of curious: am I weird because I prefer light mode for web pages with a lot of text to read? Or is it more of an age-gated thing, like older people who grew up reading printed texts only prefer what’s familiar to them? I’m fine with YouTube (for example) having a black background and dark theme, but I even browse Lemmy via old.lemmy.world in light mode!

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  • n3cr0@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Light mode is likely just your personal preference, and there’s nothing wrong with it.

    I used dark themes/color schemes, long before there was a dark mode for everything. I was surprised when it finally became a thing and the new generation of dark themes was flawless (good bye unaddressed bright backgrounds which make everything unreadable!). So I can continue sitting in the Dark while not being blinded by a bright screen.

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  • doubletwist@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I’m an old fogey who grew up reading physical books and newspapers but I absolutely need dark mode on backlit displays. I despise light mode.

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  • dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I think dark mode for me stops me getting as many migraines as I did on light mode.

    The way I think about reading text is that on dark mode you’re looking for light (white text) in darkness (the black background), whereas with light mode you’re looking for the absence of light (black text) on a background of pure light.

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  • JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I don’t think you can make a universal statement of dark versus light. Some programs’ dark modes suck so I use their light mode. Some programs’ light modes suck so I use their dark mode. Hell, some programs’ high contrast modes are so good I use those despite not having any major (uncorrected) visual impairments. Take GitHub. Their high contrast mode is nice and not disgusting. IntelliJ IDEA’s dark mode is good. Eclipse’s light mode is good. It all just depends on the program.

    And Solarized sucks ass. There, I said it.

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    • Agrivar@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      And Solarized sucks ass. There, I said it.

      Hard agree.

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  • NikkiDimes@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    How old are you? I’m in my early 30s, definitely grew up with computers most of my life, and internet almost as long, but also read plenty of physical paper books, and I greatly prefer darker color schemes.

    That said, I’m also a software developer so I learned long ago that dark mode is much easier on the eyes when coding for hours on end, so maybe I’m just used to it.

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  • Tattorack@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Having read lots of books, I tend to prefer printed text a lot. Yet I still use dark mode as much as possible; it’s the glare. It’s irritating to read something on a white, glaring surface. Paper doesn’t have that.

    I’ll read Wikipedia on e-ink, but on LCD I’ll use dark mode.

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    • suction@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Just use what you like, you don’t have to theorize about it

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  • JimVanDeventer@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Or is it more of an age-gated thing

    Depends how old you consider old, maybe? Computers back in the day were pretty universally light text on a dark background. VIC-20 was an exception but then even Commodore backpedaled on that with the 64. But you might have had a different experience and are only remembering things like Mac OS or Amiga, or Windows, and maybe that has influenced your preference. 🤷‍♀️ To each their own, anyway.

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  • naught101@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It depends a lot on your screen, and your lifting situation. Black on white is better in day light, white on black is much better on LED screens (as opposed to backlit LCD or CRT monitors).

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  • suction@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    No. Dark mode is just a new hype that’s why it gets so much traction. None of it’s alleged benefits can be scientifically proven, it’s nothing but personal taste.

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    • JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      With OLED screens, pure black backgrounds are amazing for reading in a pitch black environment.

      None of it’s alleged benefits can be scientifically proven, it’s nothing but personal taste.

      Not to mention, they literally scientifically proved that dark mode extends battery life with OLED screens. dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3458864.3467682

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    • Tattorack@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It’s easier on my eyes. Which is anecdotal, but a large enough portion of the population use dark modes for the same reason. That is not coincidence, and it’s not something I’d write off as merely being hype.

      There’s nothing new about dark mode either. Wikipedia is just slow in the uptake. Besides Wikipedia, dark modes have existed for more than a decade.

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  • Krzd@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Look at Answer in Progress’s video on dark mode, the initial question is a different one about design, but it goes a bit in the difference and dis- versus advantages between dark and light mode.

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    • Wogi@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Light mode:
      Cons: blinds you when it’s dark, is grating on the eyes, looks terrible
      Pros: can be used as a flashlight in a pinch

      Dark mode:
      Pros: looks cool, doesn’t blind you, doesn’t hurt your eyes, easy to read.
      Cons: cannot be used as a flashlight

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  • AlecSadler@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I prefer light mode because dark mode gives me a raging headache in under 10 minutes, not enough contrast or something, I’m not sure. It’s bad enough that if I’m pairing with someone and they use dark mode I’ve gotta frequently look away or do something like a shared follow mode where I use a light theme on my end - it sucks.

    And maybe the science is old now, but in HS I did a report on eye strain and light backgrounds are typically better across the board. But who knows now.

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    • Halosheep@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I’m with you on this. I prefer a dimly lit light mode to dark mode even at night. The white text always seems fuzzy and uncomfortable for me.

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• MonkderDritte@feddit.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  But why the buttons? Just use

  media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {}
  ``` done
  

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  • FooBarrington@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Because, even though I use dark mode system-wide, I sometimes want to use websites in light mode. Until browsers implement a per-site toggle for the preferred color scheme, websites should offer one instead.

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• henfredemars@infosec.pub ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I hate the pop up about it though. If I care that much, I’ll find it. Don’t use advertising tactics.

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  • dactylotheca@suppo.fi ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I’d rather be informed with a popup than have to remember to periodically check the settings in case they’ve maybe added dark mode. Tying this to “advertising tactics” is, well, ridiculous – they’re informing users about a new feature they might not otherwise learn about, not selling literally anything

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    • henfredemars@infosec.pub ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Surely there’s a better way than creating a floating model dialogue in front of the page.

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    • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I use FF Focus (new private mode always) so EVERY TIME I GO THERE the popup is there. A bit annoying.

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  • otacon239@feddit.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I don’t mind the pop up as much as I mind it being a pop up that tells you to go to another menu to change the setting. Why not just put the setting in the pop up?

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    • Zorque@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Thats how you get spaghetti code.

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• eager_eagle@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I guess I’ll stick with dark reader for now

  Image

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• cheese_greater@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Come to the Dark Mode: we have more accessible comprehension

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• thedudeabides@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Can’t imagine a scenario in which a person avoided using Wikipedia all their life till now just because things looked a bit brighter on screen.

  Dark mode makes things easier for its existing userbase (practically anyone with an internet wanting to learn) but that’s that

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  • driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Maybe not avoid using entirely, but I can easily imagine someone that can’t use it for more that 10 minutes or so because the brightness causes them headaches.

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    • thedudeabides@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That’s true, it will make things easier for the current users. But as I said, I doubt if it will increase the overall hits for Wikipedia or be a last straw for people hesitating to use the sire

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  • DessertStorms@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Ah, well, if you can’t imagine it, then all those people with visual impairments who haven’t been able to read the content previously simply must not exist! 🙄🤦‍♀️

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  • tabular@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    light mode a bit brighter for dark mode users

    You sassy goblin.

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• DessertStorms@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Oh wow, finally!

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• jabathekek@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  💀 mfw I’m waiting for the mozilla team to do the same with their help forum.

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• tal@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It does look like you currently need to be logged in to set the setting; the default is light. It’d be kind of nice if it just used the browser “light” or “dark” preference.

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• sag@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Oh my fucking god FUCKING FINALLY

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• FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Well that sucks. My favorite Pink Pedia number is Shine On, You Crazy Wiki.

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• DarkThoughts@fedia.io ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Dark mode is here for Wikipedia (finally!)

  Finally indeed.

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• Caligvla@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  The irony of me opening the article and being immediately blinded the eyesore white page.

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  • DarkThoughts@fedia.io ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/darkreader/

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    • MonkderDritte@feddit.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Addons for darkening don’t work on addons.mozilla, the irony!

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    • Caligvla@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I’m using it, but not on by default because from experience it can break some pages.

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• TheRealCharlesEames@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Only skimmed the article: why did their initial theme color solution affect the media contents like international orange? Feels like that would be a non-starter…

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• MrSoup@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  If by trying to change just the color of text and its background, images and other containers would change color too that mean it is a css tagging issue. It is really trivial to correctly color just text and its container with dark theme leaving “custom” things hacked in html inside the page with light theme, people will contribute to make them darkable afterward.

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• Burstar@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  um, darkmode has been available for years. Just needed to sign in.

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  • tal@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Someone had a dark mode style (which I just had to disable to get the new dark mode to work), but then you have to be signed in.

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    • Burstar@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Not a 3rd party thing. It has been a wiki setting opened up with login for a long time now. Maybe it had some tweaks needed that finally got completed?

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• iThiNkCiAisTh3samEasUsO@welppp.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Nobody cares about a scammer site like Wikipedia here

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  • essteeyou@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Bold claim. checks votes

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    • DarkThoughts@fedia.io ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      What did they say?

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