We have a dark mode now. That’s the news. You can click the link in the sidebar to switch between dark mode and the regular version of the site. You can thank our webmaster Adam for OSAlert no longer burning your retinas at night.
We have a dark mode now. That’s the news. You can click the link in the sidebar to switch between dark mode and the regular version of the site. You can thank our webmaster Adam for OSAlert no longer burning your retinas at night.
About to leave a comment saying it didn’t work. Once I logged in to comment then it started working.
Now I see no switch to turn it back. This is safari on iPhone.
There is “Revert to Light Mode” on the page.
Nice, but I’m a fan of dark themes so probably not unbiased enough to comment.
and no longer burning our batteries. Thank you Adam.
Maybe in in the 1980’s. Modern monitors render black the same way they render white, rendering a dark colour is no more or less battery consuming than rendering a light colour.
It’s worse: obscuring the backlight costs _extra_ energy. Only OLED displays are (a lot) more energy efficient when displaying a dark mode.
Erez,
If we’re talking LCD, the LCD backlight always consumes power, but the LCD cells themselves let light through by default (unenergized LCD panel state) and it takes a current to block the light.
https://www.explainthatstuff.com/lcdtv.html
I ran crude test using the power monitoring functions of my ups taking a sample every second for 6 minutes with all white pixels and again with all black pixels.
On my screen all white pixels consumes ~0.72W less than all black ones.
Well, thank you for the insight. I took a measurement of my desktop monitor’s power draw, and it draws 12.6 watts on dark mode, and 12.2 watts on light mode.
Always fun to learn new things.
While I’m all for choice, it’s yet another example of cargo-culture.
The reason monitors were using green on black was because terminals and computers were insanely resources limited and this was the most resources effective way, other than not using display, which is, for example, why a server can run on lesser hardware than your laptop and still be more efficient.
Once we moved to full coloured fully rendered guis, there’s no real need to use this scheme. There is no actual benefit of “dark mode” over “light mode”, resources wise, reader wise, or anything. Modern guis all come with a “night shift” or “night-light” setting that prevents screens glare once the sun goes down (and if you’re sitting in the dark illuminated only by a computer screen, you’re screwed anyway, dark mode or not). Another issue is that unless your entire environment is “dark”, meaning your documents and windows and all the websites and each program you use and so on, everytime you switch from dark to light your eyes need to adjust, and in the night moreso, making a light-mode less cumbersome and actually, less glaring.
Don’t believe the hype.
I remember Opera 6-12 (Presto era) that had a few integrated CSS, like Commodore 64 emulation. I don’t remember having seen a ‘Dark mode’ at that time since it wasn’t the current trend. However Opera permited (still permit?) to select user defined CSS if the web site provide some. Maybe it’s just a matter of declaring an alternative CSS in your HTML page and the browser allowing you to switch for it.
A part of my evening routine to get calm before bed is turning off all lights, turning my laptop/ipad to dark mode, and turning on “limit white light” thing. Esp. on the laptop where I already have a plugin for my browser which forces all websites to be dark I find this quite calming in the evening.
Of course, this is quite subjective, and I don’t really believe that this has some kind of amazing health benefit or anything it’s just kinda nice. Sometimes that’s all the reason you need.
I’ve been a fan of darkmode for a looooong time. Now that ios has officially implemented it there’s a lot of renewed attention for it. Good.
Welcome to the dark side!!
Cheers.
“You can thank our webmaster Adam for OSAlert no longer burning your retinas at night.”
There are a lot of bright white squares in darkmode. The Reply button is also pretty bright. From the Archives Select Month is also pretty bright.
Seems it could be improved. Maybe a grey mode and a dark mode? The current one is more grey than black.
I dont care about the politics or technics, but for a guy that ha s diabetic retinopathy, it’s easy on the eyes
Personally I really don’t like dark themes because they cause the brighter lines of text to burn into my retinas making me suffer from a horizontal grid effect that lingers for a few minutes after I stop reading.
On the other hand, if people experience burned retinas while using light themes, maybe they should just turn down the brightness on their screens? I.e. a light coloured theme shouldn’t be any brighter than a sheet of white paper you hold out in front of you. Some people seem to like to turn their monitors into neon signs, but that’s really not necessary at all. Brightness should only be up to the level to match ambient brightness.
There’s a CSS selector you can use to apply this based on a user’s system preference:
https://css-tricks.com/dark-modes-with-css/
@media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {}
Very nice.. thank you !!!
Thanks, it`s much better now.
Energy only where it is needed to transfer information.
btw., I think OSAlert missed a trick, we only get Dark Mode when logged in, it should be the default with the planet busting Bright Mode requiring a login!