[Posted November 10, 2022 by corbet]
We have finally added a set of dark mode defaults to the customization options for the site forthose who prefer the dark side. Thanks to all the readers who have askedfor this; apologies for taking so long to do it. The defaults seem good,but we are not dark-mode users, so please let us know if you havesuggestions for improvements.
Another new feature that has been requested for some time is the ability toreceive feature articles via email. These emails are currently availableto subscribers at the "Project Leader" level and higher; interestedsubscribers can sign up for the "Features" list on the mailing-lists page.
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Posted Nov 10, 2022 18:20 UTC (Thu) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] (8 responses) First impression is that it looks good! Except that to my (somewhat colorblind) eyes the $ on paid-article headlines is hard to see against the background. BTW, today I learned that in mobile Firefox holding the reload button does a force-reload. Posted Nov 10, 2022 18:22 UTC (Thu) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] (6 responses) Also, on my phone screen it wasn't easy to find the new theme buttons since they're not with the color settings. Posted Nov 10, 2022 18:37 UTC (Thu) by jbnd (subscriber, #160374) [Link] Yes, the color scheme buttons should be with the detailed color settings. Posted Nov 11, 2022 12:45 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (3 responses) The detailed settings are the only way to get the original LWN colour scheme back. I'd want an "original LWN" theme put in place, before any killing off of the custom settings! Posted Nov 11, 2022 16:09 UTC (Fri) by alfille (subscriber, #1631) [Link] (2 responses) Yes, I second this! I made the mistake of testing out the new schemes and now have lost my original settings (which were the original LWN settings). Specifically, the "orangeish" sidebar and separating bars that instantly take me to my happy place. Posted Nov 11, 2022 16:57 UTC (Fri) by gerdesj (subscriber, #5446) [Link] (1 responses) I don't recall ever changing my colour settings and I've been here a while. Page background color:#ffffff Posted Nov 12, 2022 13:08 UTC (Sat) by alfille (subscriber, #1631) [Link] Perfect! Thank you. Truly hard to improve. Posted Nov 18, 2022 23:42 UTC (Fri) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link] NO! I want to keep my orange LWN.net layout that I had for decades. Please don't take that ability away. Joachim (some years ago I was called a Unix gray beard; but actually I'm a Unix white beard ;-)) Posted Nov 11, 2022 1:37 UTC (Fri) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] I'm not colorblind, but the green dollar sign on red is still quite unpleasant. Please use an accessible color pair. Posted Nov 10, 2022 19:54 UTC (Thu) by 5fdb1f (subscriber, #156654) [Link] (3 responses) Posted Nov 10, 2022 20:14 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (1 responses) Posted Nov 11, 2022 0:11 UTC (Fri) by mss (subscriber, #138799) [Link] Thanks for the dark theme, would love too to have it switched automatically based on the current browser theme. Posted Nov 16, 2022 19:47 UTC (Wed) by pardo_bsso (guest, #111452) [Link] May I ask what's your setup to achieve that? (thanks) Posted Nov 10, 2022 20:51 UTC (Thu) by tobias-urdin (subscriber, #133105) [Link] First comment ever, this warrants it, thanks a lot for this feature! Posted Nov 10, 2022 20:54 UTC (Thu) by himi (subscriber, #340) [Link] I'm very much a dark mode user for the most part, but it feels weird seeing LWN in different colours - it's been so consistent for so long it doesn't quite feel right to change it... My only comment so far is that it's a bit /too/ dark - flat black as a background tends to make things feel very high contrast, which is something I find makes it a little harder to read than a more muted set of colours. I'll experiment with the colours a bit and see if I can find a lower contrast mix that works for me - there's definitely plenty of customisation available to play with... But I suspect I'll be going back to the old white background - it's an old-school appearance that fits well with the old-school approach that LWN takes to its journalism. Posted Nov 10, 2022 21:19 UTC (Thu) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link] (7 responses) Thank you for making the background full #000000 black; my OLED monitor appreciates it. Not sure if I can get used to the Very Red headings, though. I'm going to have to tone those down. (And make the sidebar full-black too.) Posted Nov 10, 2022 21:22 UTC (Thu) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link] (1 responses) Ended up making the headline background be #333333 and sidebar background #000000, which I can highly recommend. Posted Nov 10, 2022 22:33 UTC (Thu) by Kamiccolo (subscriber, #95159) [Link] Woaaa, looks way more better than my old custom dark scheme. Thanks a lot! Posted Nov 10, 2022 23:27 UTC (Thu) by tux3 (subscriber, #101245) [Link] Having a known good dark theme as a starting point makes styling changes pretty effortless... and I have to admit that W3C® Standard Brown also provides good encouragement to tweak a little =] I'm trying out a #392f1b brown for the headings, to try to keep a little bit of color. But I'm unlikely to win any awards in graphic design and color coordination. Posted Nov 11, 2022 0:23 UTC (Fri) by peniblec (subscriber, #111147) [Link] > Not sure if I can get used to the Very Red headings, though. I'm going to have to tone those down. (And make the sidebar full-black too.) Seconded; that "white-on-brown" looks somewhat bright and the contrast feels worse than "black-on-#ffcc99" from the light theme (7.08 vs 14.35 according to Firefox's inspector; still WCAG AAA compliant somehow 🤷). I don't mind the sidebar not being black, but I feel like it could indeed be toned down. Comparing menu-on-main with the light theme again, it's #eeeeee-on-white vs #333333-on-black; that makes the menu (and other #333333 blocks) seem more jarring than on the light theme. One bug, perhaps? Hovering over buttons gives them a #ccc background on both light and dark modes; the dark mode's white text becomes barely readable. (Hope that's an actual problem and not remnants of my userContent.css acting up) For all these nitpicks: thanks a lot for taking a stab at this! Posted Nov 11, 2022 19:07 UTC (Fri) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (1 responses) I agree about the red headers. I had been using Dark Reader's colors for so long that I still like its adaptation for that. #703800 if you're curious (retains the classic orange-ness :) . Posted Nov 12, 2022 2:16 UTC (Sat) by mss (subscriber, #138799) [Link] Posted Nov 17, 2022 13:17 UTC (Thu) by Karellen (subscriber, #67644) [Link] I'm generally enjoying the dark mode, but the red heading background didn't work for me either. I've gone for #006000 (dark green) instead which is a good enough improvement for now. Posted Nov 10, 2022 22:42 UTC (Thu) by unixbhaskar (guest, #44758) [Link] (1 responses) Alright! For a change and personal taste, I have changed the background color of my LWN page to solarized-dark i.e #002b36 :) Thanks to allow people to see it as per their liking without distorting or deviating. Posted Nov 11, 2022 19:31 UTC (Fri) by bauermann (subscriber, #37575) [Link] I changed some of the colors based on Solarized Dark too. These values look easier on the eyes for me, because of the lower contrast than white on black: Posted Nov 10, 2022 23:08 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] (2 responses) I'm now curious about aggregate stats on how people have arranged their settings. I'd guess that there would be a lot of small variations from sets that are or were once defaults, and that no individual setting is tweaked by a large number of people, but a large number of people have tweaked at least one setting (and probably forgot they'd done so ages ago). Posted Nov 10, 2022 23:22 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (1 responses) Posted Nov 13, 2022 23:39 UTC (Sun) by lutchann (subscriber, #8872) [Link] Fun details, thanks for posting this Posted Nov 10, 2022 23:39 UTC (Thu) by GhePeU (subscriber, #56133) [Link] (2 responses) This is off topic but did you change anything else? I’m using an iPad mini (screen width is 1536px) and in some articles there are wide empty margins on both sides of the display, while in others the text goes beyond the end of the screen and I have to zoom out to read it. Posted Nov 11, 2022 0:12 UTC (Fri) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (1 responses) Nobody else has complained, but that doesn't mean there isn't weirdness in there somewhere. Posted Nov 11, 2022 20:45 UTC (Fri) by GhePeU (subscriber, #56133) [Link] Appending “?p=pure” fixes the pages with lines wider than the screen. I also found some old screenshots where the margins are the same as now, so it’s not a real issue and I must have just noticed it when I started zooming in and out every other page, sorry for noise. Posted Nov 11, 2022 0:40 UTC (Fri) by ejr (subscriber, #51652) [Link] What ever happened to the Emacs interface? Oh, wait, that was through gmane / gwene. sigh. This is why we can't have nice things says the curmudgeon. Thank you all for the fantastic work you accomplish while gnawing on shoestrings. Posted Nov 11, 2022 14:09 UTC (Fri) by barryascott (subscriber, #80640) [Link] (2 responses) I reset to the dark mode from my customised settings and it looks good. But am now seeing the left column that i had managed to remove before. The other feature i wish for is that i can set a max width for comments. Posted Nov 11, 2022 14:39 UTC (Fri) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (1 responses) The maximum width parameter should control comments too; is that not working for you? Posted Nov 11, 2022 17:22 UTC (Fri) by barryascott (subscriber, #80640) [Link] I am user 40em for article width min ans max width. Posted Nov 11, 2022 15:14 UTC (Fri) by bluca (subscriber, #118303) [Link] Yes, dark mode! Nice, looks great here! Posted Nov 11, 2022 16:08 UTC (Fri) by khagaroth (guest, #109895) [Link] (1 responses) Any way to change the $ sign color? It's pretty much completely invisible on any reasonable dark theme. It would be fine if it was linked to the logo color, but a separate setting wouldn't hurt either. Posted Nov 12, 2022 15:53 UTC (Sat) by khagaroth (guest, #109895) [Link] This is now apparently implemented, so thank you. Posted Nov 12, 2022 11:12 UTC (Sat) by codewiz (subscriber, #63050) [Link] Thank you! The dark color scheme finally makes LWN look like a proper Linux journal! ;-) For some reason, the "brown" used in the headline background appears very red on a black background. Posted Nov 13, 2022 23:47 UTC (Sun) by lutchann (subscriber, #8872) [Link] (1 responses) I would love an option to add additional dollars to the project leader level subscription without the bling-bling that the maniacal supporter level entails. Or maybe somehow an option to just throw some cash your way tip jar-style. I feel like you run this amazing resource almost as a charity, but as a for-profit business I'm not able to support you like I would a non-profit. Posted Nov 14, 2022 21:33 UTC (Mon) by gray_-_wolf (subscriber, #131074) [Link] I think general option to be able to "over-pay" your tier would be interesting, I don't think it would have to be just for between project leader and maniacal supported. Posted Nov 19, 2022 1:03 UTC (Sat) by lonely_bear (subscriber, #2726) [Link] It would be great if we could export/import a color theme or give each user some way to save their own color theme. Currently I have made my own "dark mode" for quite some time, if I change the provided dark mode, I would lost my customized "dark mode". So far I have not try the official dark mode yet, too lazy to record down the various customization value I made. Posted Dec 7, 2022 6:10 UTC (Wed) by acolin (subscriber, #61859) [Link] Firefox addon "Dark Background and Light Text" switches the whole Internet into dark mode.A pair of new LWN site features
A pair of new LWN site features
Personally I think the detailed color settings are overkill, and just theme choices would be sufficient.A pair of new LWN site features
I am very happy though that I can set the heading background to darkgoldenrod and the text to whitesmoke.A pair of new LWN site features
A pair of new LWN site features
A pair of new LWN site features
Left column color:#ffcc99
Middle column background:#ffffff
Headline background:#ffcc99
Form/byline background:#eeeeee
Sidebar background:#ffcc99
Text color:black
Link color:DarkBlue
Visited link color:#444
Quoted text (in email) color:#990099
Old (seen) comment background color: #cccccc
Logo color:greenA pair of new LWN site features
A pair of new LWN site features
A pair of new LWN site features
Can we have automatic theme switching using prefers-color-scheme?A pair of new LWN site features
I prefer light mode in the morning and dark mode after sunset, and my devices switch between them automatically.
The problem with automatic mechanisms like that is that they all depend on media queries, which doesn't work well with our (designed in 2002) customization mechanism. Someday we'll take another look at making that work, but there's a certain amount of churn involved. Media queries
Media queries
A pair of new LWN site features
A pair of new LWN site features
Maybe too dark?
A pair of new LWN site features
A pair of new LWN site features
A pair of new LWN site features
A pair of new LWN site features
I'd be curious to try out what others come up with. The only other real changes I've made is the sidebar to #1d1d1d and the body to #111, since I don't use an OLED too often.A pair of new LWN site features
A pair of new LWN site features
The current dark mode design reminds me a bit of the classic Windows 3.1 "Hot Dog Stand" color scheme. A pair of new LWN site features
A pair of new LWN site features
A pair of new LWN site features
A pair of new LWN site features
A pair of new LWN site features
By far the most common setting to tweak is whether ads should be shown; who would have ever guessed? Second place is the start of the week for the events calendar. Then it's comment filtering, the color of visited links, and the number of items to show on the front page. Popular settings
Popular settings
A pair of new LWN site features
There were some CSS changes over the last few weeks, nothing this week. Can you do me a favor? Have a look at this view and let me know if the problem goes away?Or append "?p=pure" to the URL for any article, for that matter.Other changes
Other changes
A pair of new LWN site features
A pair of new LWN site features
I cannot see which setting will remove to again. What have i missed?
When viewed on a tablet it is nice to zoom the font size when reading.
Having wide comments works against that.
If you never want the left column, you essentially want the CSS to think that you're always on a small-screen device. That can be done by setting the "maximum width for handset presentation" option to a large value.Left column
Left column
The 40em does not apply to the comments.A pair of new LWN site features
A pair of new LWN site features
A pair of new LWN site features
A pair of new LWN site features
I changed it to #775533, a dark orange which is a bit closer to the original LWN color scheme.A pair of new LWN site features
A pair of new LWN site features
A pair of new LWN site features
A pair of new LWN site features
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