> GitHub, do better. Give us the dark mode experience we deserve.
Does anyone else find this to be unnecessarily abrasive? It's a really harsh note to end the post on when describing a product that many people use for free. It seems to imply that Github has some sort of moral failing for their color choices and additionally that the author is entitled to command them to change their work.
Edit: I doubt the author intended it as such. The tone is just unfortunate.
"when describing a product that many people use for free." There are no free services. Github is a product, the free features are there to onboard paying customers for their commercial repos.
However, yes, that kind of language over a dark theme is ridiculous and not persuading.
Maybe it's just my observation, but I find it quite interesting that only finds such tone-policing comments as yours when the author is a woman. Daily, I see much more abrasive blogs on HN: instead of lampooning them for asking GitHub to be better, they are not rarely lauded for their "brutal honesty" while often straight-up insulting the blog's target.
This is not meant to criticize you, OP, personally. Rather, I just want to point out a structural double standard.
No. On the other hand, why is it that some people seem to have become overly sensitive? I wish most people were as direct about their thoughts as they used to be.
Yes, GH is free, but being free does not mean they are above criticism.
Given this is the top voted comment, any other sentence that people find abrasive?
I reread the article a few times and i dont see that at all. It isn't even ranting. She put out some criticism, with some evidence and possible theory. And "hope", Github could change its mind. I quote
This is still a beta feature so I have hope.
This isn't GitHub! Do Better! with double exclamation market. Simply a call to action for something ( hopefully ) better.
The we deserve part is a figure of speech.
Minor nitpick: The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are precisely that - guidelines. You should follow them until you have a good reason not to. And contrast ratios arent everything.
I hadn't realized that dark mode came out for Github, so I went and enabled it, and wow, even as a fan of "darker" dark modes (rather than the medium gray that so many apps and sites seem to prefer), I can see what OP meant! The main issue for me is that the text colors are all fairly dark as well; I'm sure that my tastes are too gaudy for most people, but I find higher contrast much easier to read, and on the off-chance that anyone else is like me and prefers much brighter text, I threw this CSS together:
```
.link-gray-dark, .news li blockquote, .link-gray, .text-gray, .text-gray-light, .UnderlineNav-item, .blob-code-inner {
color: white !important;
}
/* code comments are a dark gray by default, so I made them something brighter */
.pl-c {
color: orange !important;
}
```
As a bonus, if you also can't stand the sidebar on the right of the main page, you can hide it and reclaim the space for more useful content with this:
Hi, newbie to programming/web in general here - how do I use this CSS to change the colours in GitHub? Is there a section within GitHub I can paste this in?
I predict that dark mode, like the open office, is a hyped up fad that will eventually be proven to be largely detrimental.
Except in the cases of saving battery on OLED displays or viewing a screen in very low ambient light environments, dark mode is the wrong answer to a problem of an overbright display.
If content on a screen seems too bright, the solution is the turn down the display brightness. This is a choice you can make as your circumstance dictates. Dark mode is a nice option for a few cases, but it should not be forced upon anyone.
There are two cases where dark mode is a really bad thing:
1. You're presenting your content via a projector in a room full of people (and a room full of people will have some ambient light, because safety rules generally prohibit trapping a lot of people in pitch darkness). No matter how many lumens the projector can put out, they will not make your low contrast content as visible as light mode would have been. Most often, the ambient light of the room will completely wash out the low contrast projected image.
2. You're making a screen recording of your content to demo or educate others (Youtube, etc.). The low contrast, colorful text will not compress as accurately as light mode, so the resulting text will be blurrier than if it were in light mode. So it will be harder to read compared to light mode content. Plus, if your viewer happens to be in a bright room or outside, your content will be unreadable. You've just wasted your good effort by limiting your audience.
Dark mode is not a fad, it's simply a good option to have in the valid cases you describe[1], and has been available in many products for decades.
The reasons we're seeing more of it are that developers are switching their bad hard-coded UIs to more flexible systems which allow it, and now that even MacOS/iOS supports it, there's an expectation for more and more apps to conform.
[1]: another valid case is apps with a strong emphasis on graphics: Photoshop, YouTube, Instagram, etc. A dark UI mitigates visual interference with the content.
> 2. You're making a screen recording of your content to demo or educate others (Youtube, etc.).
I very much prefer using light themes but I also record screencasts (400+ of them at this point).
Every time I run a poll asking folks if they prefer light or dark there's been a majority requesting dark mode in the recordings.
Personally I find the colorization of most dark themes having more contrast between the colors. A lot of light themes will make certain keywords dark colors which kind of looks the same on compressed video. I'm not sold on that being the reason most folks prefer dark themes, but I'm also not convinced light mode is better for video recorded content. I think with the right themes, maybe both are equal.
Different people have different eyes. I have strong visual noise and floaters, and having choices for colorscheme helps me select the one which reduces these visual distractions.
There are benefits to dark UI for dim environments. The fad that I too am sure will pass is using a jarring UI for the environment just because it is cool.
There are fundamental differences when designing for bright/day vs dim/night that benefits humans. In-car GPS was a specialised UI that paid attention to this earlier than our computers. The night UI maximised clarity in a low-light environment without being distracting. The day UI met the daylight with similar clarity. Never jarring.
Triggering a system-wide change across devices when the sun dips below the horizon is a nice start. The fact that it trickles even as far as webpage and VS Code theme is just awesome stuff.
Speaking to your detrimental cases, maybe the auto-change could be based on ambient light level rather than sunset time. It is certainly possible. Excluding the Nordics, the better solution is likely to move humans closer to natural light. Dim the room or build for natural light, rather than our screens able to be brighter to meet an artificial environment.
> Except in the cases of saving battery on OLED displays or viewing a screen in very low ambient light environments, dark mode is the wrong answer to a problem of an overbright display.
Both OLED and browsing in random low light environments often happen in the context of mobile devices. We do more and more on our phones. Because of that I wouldn’t treat OLED and low light as an edge case.
> The low contrast, colorful text will not compress as accurately as light mode
Kind of off topic, but I've always wondered why this is an issue. If I invert the colors, will those parts of the image suddenly compress just fine? Is it something to do with human perception of dark colors (like how many compression algorithms use more detail in various characteristics we're more sensitive to, such as brightness, as opposed to color)? That wouldn't make sense to me, as it seems to be a pretty obvious visual flaw.
Dark mode is easier on the eyes. Think about it: your monitor is not a piece of paper, no matter how hard you try to make it one. Staring at a white background while you read is like staring at a light bulb (don't believe me? Try turning off the lights next time you use a word processor). Would you stare at a light bulb for hours at a time? Not if you want to keep your vision.
> I predict that dark mode, like the open office, is a hyped up fad that will eventually be proven to be largely detrimental.
Bold statement. I insist on dark mode everywhere and love it. Besides what compelling reason is there to give the user fewer UI knobs? We all have our own preferences.
Dark mode is useful because its always usable regardless of screen brightness. Who wants to be chaining their brightness all day? Also for high contrast, white text on black is always readable while the reverse is not true, limiting the contrast.
And the points you mention are not a problem with dark mode but with low contrast. These can be fixed by increasing contrast.
I like it for the most part but some apps take it such an extreme that I can't even tell where the window edges are when they are overlapping each other and buttons are indistinguishable from the window background color. The skin I am using on JRiver Media Center is that way and the other choices aren't really much better.
There is literally nothing wrong with dark mode. It is a _choice_ which makes your analogy invalid. You can not choose to have or not have an open office as an employee, and no picking a new place of work is not the same thing.
What you're saying is akin to saying: "You like dark mode? Well you're wrong its bad for you." No thanks, not interested in your opinion.
I really dislike the trend of pushing dark mode as a default on everything. There's at least some evidence that reading retention is higher with dark characters on a light background, and I think the preference for dark mode often comes from people sitting in badly lit environments, or having their monitor turned up to bright.
Personally I love the Guthub dark mode settings. I really like the background to be near total black, and they got a nice balance from my perspective of what I find really enjoyable.
I say kudos to GitHub. I wonder how much they may have gleaned from telemetry with VSCode and user settings there. That’s a wealth of information for this type of decision.
I completely agree, and it’s one of my favorite dark modes ever. In my editors, I also use #000 backgrounds. I think this is the sort of “can’t please everyone” type situation which warrants even more options. If there are accessibility concerns, they should absolutely add a more accessible option with better contrast (and it should probably be the default if so - I really do wonder if it’s actually inaccessible). IIRC, more color options are on the roadmap? Perhaps I misremember.
FWIW, I'm red-green colour blind (quite badly), and often prefer more contrast to see colour delineations clearly - and I think GitHub's new dark mode is perfect.
I’m with you. I honestly don’t understand this vehement opposition. I guarantee you if something like the Dark Reader extension applied this same exact theme nobody would think twice about it.
It's a shame user stylesheets never took off. It'd be nice if we didn't just have prefers-color-scheme but also a set of standard css variables for colors we could set and get a consistent dark/light mode on websites. I know designers would hate that, but from a pragmatic viewpoint I really like the idea.
My bad for having a potentially misleading/clickbaity title that was inconsistent with the post title!!! It used to be "GitHub Dark Mode is too Dark. Here's the mathematical proof"
It didn't take me long to disable GitHub dark mode. It is not made for quick reading. They should talk to the people who did dark mode for VS Code. After all it's all MS.
I agree, but from an entirely different point of view. Tell me I'm doing my eyes in if you will, but I find dark mode to be easy on the eyes, especially when - but not exclusively because - I can't always control how poorly lit my environment is. Dark mode, however, is also a curse, because when the contrast is too high I find that I get this "negative space effect" where in my vision the letters on screen go really dim and I get a series of fuzzy white lines appearing between the lines, making it almost impossible to read any text without immediately losing my place and skipping to the line of text above or below.
The trend towards AMOLED dark mode has made life hard for me, especially when using websites or phones (looking at you, Android 10 and above) that I can't really customise the way I can the rest of my computer. Give me Gruvbox's #ebdbb2 on #282828 any day of the week, I want to get off the AMOLED #ffffff on #000000 train.
If only there existed some sort of collection of settings regarding the user's personal preferences for fonts and colors that could be set an an OS level and respected by all programs. Alas, it is impossible for computers to do this... unless you count the 90s, when computers did this.
I love dark mode on websites and software, but after about two days of using it on Github I had to revert back to light mode. I was developing a headache trying to read their 14px gray text. There's also too many gray lines everywhere. It works with a white background with black lines, but with a dark background it feels really messy.
Let me switch instantly between light mode during the day, and dark mode at night, using one simple toggle, or following changes in browser settings. Then the issues with how dark or how light become nearly moot.
Counterpoint: preferences are subjective. How about an article about how github uses the wrong colors in their syntax highlighting? According to color theory, a method is blue, not purple.
I like dark mode on Github with the notable exception of the diff view, and unfortunately that's the thing I use in the web UI most often. In light mode additions are green and deletes are red - they're obviously different. In dark mode additions are dark greenish grey and deletes are dark reddish grey - they're really similar. That, for me, means I've lost a huge amount of information. It's bad enough to keep me in light mode.
[+] [-] bihla|5 years ago|reply
Does anyone else find this to be unnecessarily abrasive? It's a really harsh note to end the post on when describing a product that many people use for free. It seems to imply that Github has some sort of moral failing for their color choices and additionally that the author is entitled to command them to change their work.
Edit: I doubt the author intended it as such. The tone is just unfortunate.
[+] [-] ziftface|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devwastaken|5 years ago|reply
However, yes, that kind of language over a dark theme is ridiculous and not persuading.
[+] [-] Quanttek|5 years ago|reply
This is not meant to criticize you, OP, personally. Rather, I just want to point out a structural double standard.
[+] [-] userbinator|5 years ago|reply
Yes, GH is free, but being free does not mean they are above criticism.
[+] [-] ksec|5 years ago|reply
I reread the article a few times and i dont see that at all. It isn't even ranting. She put out some criticism, with some evidence and possible theory. And "hope", Github could change its mind. I quote
This is still a beta feature so I have hope.
This isn't GitHub! Do Better! with double exclamation market. Simply a call to action for something ( hopefully ) better. The we deserve part is a figure of speech.
[+] [-] OrwellianChild|5 years ago|reply
[1] https://darkreader.org/
[+] [-] dkdk8283|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nautilus12|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] madeofpalk|5 years ago|reply
Minor nitpick: The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are precisely that - guidelines. You should follow them until you have a good reason not to. And contrast ratios arent everything.
This article https://www.bounteous.com/insights/2019/03/22/orange-you-acc... is a good example of how the "most accessible" colour pairing, by the "mathematical proof", is the least accessible and preferred by users.
[+] [-] saghm|5 years ago|reply
``` .link-gray-dark, .news li blockquote, .link-gray, .text-gray, .text-gray-light, .UnderlineNav-item, .blob-code-inner { color: white !important; }
/* code comments are a dark gray by default, so I made them something brighter */ .pl-c { color: orange !important; } ```
As a bonus, if you also can't stand the sidebar on the right of the main page, you can hide it and reclaim the space for more useful content with this:
``` [aria-label="Explore"] { display: none !important; } ```
[+] [-] oars|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blunte|5 years ago|reply
Except in the cases of saving battery on OLED displays or viewing a screen in very low ambient light environments, dark mode is the wrong answer to a problem of an overbright display.
If content on a screen seems too bright, the solution is the turn down the display brightness. This is a choice you can make as your circumstance dictates. Dark mode is a nice option for a few cases, but it should not be forced upon anyone.
There are two cases where dark mode is a really bad thing:
1. You're presenting your content via a projector in a room full of people (and a room full of people will have some ambient light, because safety rules generally prohibit trapping a lot of people in pitch darkness). No matter how many lumens the projector can put out, they will not make your low contrast content as visible as light mode would have been. Most often, the ambient light of the room will completely wash out the low contrast projected image.
2. You're making a screen recording of your content to demo or educate others (Youtube, etc.). The low contrast, colorful text will not compress as accurately as light mode, so the resulting text will be blurrier than if it were in light mode. So it will be harder to read compared to light mode content. Plus, if your viewer happens to be in a bright room or outside, your content will be unreadable. You've just wasted your good effort by limiting your audience.
Edited typos :(
[+] [-] leppr|5 years ago|reply
The reasons we're seeing more of it are that developers are switching their bad hard-coded UIs to more flexible systems which allow it, and now that even MacOS/iOS supports it, there's an expectation for more and more apps to conform.
[1]: another valid case is apps with a strong emphasis on graphics: Photoshop, YouTube, Instagram, etc. A dark UI mitigates visual interference with the content.
[+] [-] city41|5 years ago|reply
Edit: but to be fair, I agree dark mode can be bad in some contexts like the examples you gave.
[+] [-] nickjj|5 years ago|reply
I very much prefer using light themes but I also record screencasts (400+ of them at this point).
Every time I run a poll asking folks if they prefer light or dark there's been a majority requesting dark mode in the recordings.
Personally I find the colorization of most dark themes having more contrast between the colors. A lot of light themes will make certain keywords dark colors which kind of looks the same on compressed video. I'm not sold on that being the reason most folks prefer dark themes, but I'm also not convinced light mode is better for video recorded content. I think with the right themes, maybe both are equal.
I've gone as far as writing a shell script to easily toggle dark and light mode for my terminal, tmux, Vim theme, FZF and other tools: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/live-coding-a-shell-script-to...
All I end up doing is running `toggle-dark-mode` to seamlessly switch between the 2.
[+] [-] davesque|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dharmab|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danfo|5 years ago|reply
There are fundamental differences when designing for bright/day vs dim/night that benefits humans. In-car GPS was a specialised UI that paid attention to this earlier than our computers. The night UI maximised clarity in a low-light environment without being distracting. The day UI met the daylight with similar clarity. Never jarring.
Triggering a system-wide change across devices when the sun dips below the horizon is a nice start. The fact that it trickles even as far as webpage and VS Code theme is just awesome stuff.
Speaking to your detrimental cases, maybe the auto-change could be based on ambient light level rather than sunset time. It is certainly possible. Excluding the Nordics, the better solution is likely to move humans closer to natural light. Dim the room or build for natural light, rather than our screens able to be brighter to meet an artificial environment.
[+] [-] thih9|5 years ago|reply
Both OLED and browsing in random low light environments often happen in the context of mobile devices. We do more and more on our phones. Because of that I wouldn’t treat OLED and low light as an edge case.
[+] [-] Jap2-0|5 years ago|reply
Kind of off topic, but I've always wondered why this is an issue. If I invert the colors, will those parts of the image suddenly compress just fine? Is it something to do with human perception of dark colors (like how many compression algorithms use more detail in various characteristics we're more sensitive to, such as brightness, as opposed to color)? That wouldn't make sense to me, as it seems to be a pretty obvious visual flaw.
[+] [-] ThePowerOfDirge|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nultxt|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dkdk8283|5 years ago|reply
Bold statement. I insist on dark mode everywhere and love it. Besides what compelling reason is there to give the user fewer UI knobs? We all have our own preferences.
[+] [-] accelbred|5 years ago|reply
And the points you mention are not a problem with dark mode but with low contrast. These can be fixed by increasing contrast.
[+] [-] macjohnmcc|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] voxl|5 years ago|reply
What you're saying is akin to saying: "You like dark mode? Well you're wrong its bad for you." No thanks, not interested in your opinion.
[+] [-] nitrix|5 years ago|reply
Article: "While there is no mathematical proof [...]"
Can we stop with the clickbait titles?
You don't arrive at a mathematical proof just by saying the words mathematical proof.
[+] [-] tome|5 years ago|reply
I don't see that. Was it edited in the last ten minutes?
[EDIT: Oh, maybe you're paraphrasing. It does say "proof" but not "mathematical proof" near the title.]
[+] [-] Barrin92|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] francislavoie|5 years ago|reply
I love that they're doing it, but yeah, the colours aren't right yet. There's a lot of complaints here: https://github.community/c/github-help/dark-mode-beta/65
[+] [-] bluejekyll|5 years ago|reply
I say kudos to GitHub. I wonder how much they may have gleaned from telemetry with VSCode and user settings there. That’s a wealth of information for this type of decision.
[+] [-] noahtallen|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GordonS|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] corytheboyd|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] city41|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] karenying7|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] satya71|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dafoex|5 years ago|reply
The trend towards AMOLED dark mode has made life hard for me, especially when using websites or phones (looking at you, Android 10 and above) that I can't really customise the way I can the rest of my computer. Give me Gruvbox's #ebdbb2 on #282828 any day of the week, I want to get off the AMOLED #ffffff on #000000 train.
[+] [-] AnIdiotOnTheNet|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Xevi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Fellshard|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ckolkey|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] shadykiller|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ravenstine|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blululu|5 years ago|reply
https://github.com/ScFix/DarkHacker
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dark-hacker-news/i...
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] onion2k|5 years ago|reply