Just make it configurable. It's not that hard. The only thing I want to hear less about than light vs dark, tabs vs spaces, is the dripping condescension of morning people.
Why even limit ourselves to a binary choice? Back in the Windows 9x and earlier days, you could individually color every class of thing on the screen. Window backgrounds, title bars, scroll bars, buttons, text for this, text for that, everything could be a different color if the end user wanted it. How far we have backslid where offering just "dark" and "light" is now seen as some sort of favor to the user!
We should return to those great days of end user control. "Sensible defaults, but easy to override." Why can't I easily (without writing code) configure HN's background and text color, just through my browser's configuration UI?
My current problem in Windows is there’s at least 3 system functions, PowerToys and screensaver places vying for control somewhere that I have to manually turn on the Dark theme on when signing in every morning.
Seems like a self-inflicted problem. You can turn off Light Switch in PowerToys. I don't know what screensaver software you're using, but if it's hijacking the setting maybe consider uninstalling it.
exactly, people have preferences, i don't get how this turned into white vs dark mode supremacy war with people seething and attacking each other over what should be a boolean config setting
Wiki already has the functionality for dark mode, but loads the light mode as default. They even have the Automatic option, but the user has to select it, so, it's like semi-automatic. They really are just single line modification away from true automatic light/dark mode.
I don't think you know what you're talking about. That looks like the setting you would change specifically on the Wikipedia site. There would be additional code and CSS behind the scenes to enable that functionality. For example, where is the color palette defined?
The discussion is about site owners making light/dark mode configurable. Your first reply reads like you're saying that Wikipedia has an article for how to implement configurable light/dark mode on a site. I now think maybe you just meant "Here's how to change the setting on Wikipedia, it's so easy!" which still misses the point and is not easy for most people.
Maybe if you link to the Wikipedia page you're talking about that would help. I can only find variables like the above in documentation about templates and themes. That wouldn't be helpful anywhere outside of Wikipedia.
> For example, where is the color palette defined?
There's literally an option for "auto", "light", and "dark" on each page. If changing the default value from "light" to "auto" is not a single variable change then honestly I believe there are bigger issues. There's a master template in their code where they set the default option...
I'm saying it's silly to have an "auto" option and not making it the default. I'm not sure how this is anything but laughable. But again, if I'm being naïve here, I'm happy to hear the reasoning. If I'm naïve then it means I'm in need of being informed.
> That wouldn't be helpful anywhere outside of Wikipedia.
Well that specific complaint was about Wikipedia. I'll stand by that Wikipedia should change from a default value of "light" to "auto". Unless you have a compelling argument against this?
There are other websites that have a toggle and don't read the browser or os theme. That might require an additional few lines to do so but let's also not pretend that's hard.
If your website doesn't have both a light and dark theme, that's out of scope of my complaint. My complaint for those is: if using a template site that you didn't create, use one with this feature, there's millions. Else (you didn't use a template), please add this feature, the fact that these fights exist is irrefutable evidence that people value both options. It's evidence that there's very strong preferences and the work isn't useless (though may be hard to measure its effectiveness)
> Maybe if you link to the Wikipedia page you're talking about that would help.
You can visit any article on Wikipedia and you will see the options for this on the right side.
> There's literally an option for "auto", "light", and "dark" on each page.
That's not defining a color palette, which would probably go in CSS. You're describing a UI selector. It doesn't "define" anything related to implementing the functionality.
You're still missing the point of this entire thread. Go back and look at the top-level comment. I think there might be a language barrier here or something, so I'm going to bow out. Good luck.
> That's not defining a color palette, which would probably go in CSS.
Yes?
The css is already defined. Dark mode works!
The problem is which theme is loaded by default.
Please, tell me how I'm being dumb. I don't want to be. But you've given me nothing to change my mind. I'm a native English speaker, but I don't think it's English that's the problem here. I don't think you understand what I'm saying, though if you feel the same then I hope you can recognize I'm trying my best to establish an understanding. I have no idea why you're making a big fuss about the CSS definition as we're strictly talking about Wikipedia where that definition is already defined and I honestly do not know how to be any more clear that my complaint is to which template is loaded by default.
Make it configurable and let people be.