Please add a "dark" theme for Hacker News
news.ycombinator.com
news.ycombinator.com
One question this is contingent on: does there exist a well-defined secure subset of CSS such that we don't have to worry about weird vulnerabilities?
* actually I think this was originally kogir's idea
[1] https://www.accessibilitychecker.org/audit/?website=https%3A...
That's more or less what I'm using as I write this.
Myself and others with astigmatism literally cannot use "dark mode", tastefully done it's fine tho, talking stuff like Nord theme, monkeytype.com etc as long as it's not straight black and white.
It'd also be helpful to request rationales for why different modes are requested.
My own major gripes about HN:
- Default font is too small. Screen sizes, resolutions, and dot pitches have evolved dramatically since 2007, in multiple ways. One Size Does Not Fit All. (FIMS -- fixed in my style)
- Default colour scheme is just plain hard to read, all the more so on e-ink (which I use for much of my reading). (FIMS)
- Voting controls are too hard to hit, and easy to confuse. (FIMS)
- For those who want that sort of thing: no dark mode. (Fixed in my other style.)
- Text dialogue too small. (FIMS)
- Various navigation / mode elements hard to distinguish. (FIMS)
- Embuttoning action links ("reply", "more"). (FIMS)
- Providing additional colour context to additional screen elements. (Fixed in my personal style, not on the shared style.)
Going back to the default HN style always feels exceptionally jarring.
Outside CSS tweaks, I'd prefer at least a proper quoting/blockquote style. HN doesn't need to go full Markdown (though That Would Be Nice), but this is one key lacking feature.
I don’t know the answer, but if it is “no,” would it be feasible to add a few more user settings ala topcolor to achieve a more basic version of this?
These are absolutely basic things, and fixing them should not require individual users to fiddle with CSS – even on a website called "Hacker" News.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/stylish/
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/stylish-custom-them...
1: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/pref...
I'd prefer HN adopted my styling, obviously. But a dark-mode toggle would be pretty straightforward.
There are sites which have permitted customising CSS for ages, with Old Reddit being among the m better-known cases. The use-case differs there in that a subreddit's moderator(s) specify the style used by other members, which isn't how you're suggesting HN be modified. People footgunning themselves is lower risk, though it might result in more support.
Another option would be to offer a closed set of vetted styles, or to parameterise some of the CSS values (e.g., font properties, colours, etc.)
There are a few S/E / S/O posts addressing your question, with few deep concerns, though both are 10+ years old.
"security issues with user-supplied CSS?"
<https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23502302/security-issues...>
"How dangerous is it to use CSS styles from an untrusted source?"
<https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/24163/how-dange...>
edit I see you just answered another similar comment, but I'm still going to obstinately argue for it because it's the simplest and safest solution. There's nothing wrong with adding UI elements when you're adding new functionality. And that extra complexity is still less complex than something more superficially "elegant" like an internal CSS parser.
That leads to settings hell and I don't want that complexity curve.
Or extra fields. Then all you're dealing with is a few more color values on the backend for a stylesheet that's already being generated by code. It's a lot easier to validate a color (the code for which is already there) than an entire nearly Turing complete language.
You could even split the difference and have themes generated from one or two user supplied colors, instead of fields for each css value.
Now, with dark mode able to being controlled by CSS media queries and also able to be done automatically according to system preferences, the complexity argument doesn't hold. It's less complex than the later-added comment collapsing behavior and navigation.
As things stand, some browsers (and, good news, those used by the overwhelming majority of desktop visitors) support CSS-management extensions such as Stylus.
But those don't work for all browsers, and aren't available in particular on Google Chrome/Android.
Firefox/Android does support Stylus, with some limitations: <https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/qgsqob/stylus_for_...>.
Apparently not for Safari / iOS: <https://github.com/openstyles/stylus/issues/299>
I've tweaked my own browser's default stylesheet in the past, and currently use a customised Reader View style for Firefox. Both are problematic, and changing the browser's default styling is probably best avoided these days. My Reader Mode view breaks somewhat and sometimes, but when it hits right, it's much better than stock.
I'm all for improvements to the theme, which have been overdue for a decade, but adding a dark variant is not the most pressing issue, to put it mildly.
[1] https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/contrast-minimum...
[2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234578707_Optimal_L...
I also can't find a single ARIA attribute in the HTML code. Between that and the absence of semantic elements, I wonder whether screen reader users can navigate HN at all.
can add it as a custom filter.
It's very little work and has lots of benefits.
In many cases, you can probably get by with your browser's default Reader Mode.
I'll use uBlock Origin's element zapper on a whole heck of a lot of sites, and you can write default rules for common annoyances as well.
If you get fancy, you can write generalised styles which address specific annoyances, and toggle those on or off on specific websites.
Otherwise, I'd found I'd written a thousand or so custom styles over a couple of years at one point. Most were quite elementary (usually font tweaks or removing headers / social link-litter). A few ... somewhat less elementary. Taught myself a lot about CSS in the process.
To quote Thom Yorke, "You do it to yourself, you do; and that's why it really hurts"
The free download buttons are in the middle of the page. There are also multiple links to the source code at the bottom.
Just use the links in the middle of the page and it will install it for free like every other normal browser extension people use all the time.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/darkreader/
The firefox extension alone has 1 million installs just from this page, we all installed it for free and have been using it for years. I think asserting that there are only paid options is disingenuous to say the least.
I mainly read HN from an RSS reader, whose web view always shows light mode.
Modifying CSS on my machine for my viewing isn’t comparable to hacking a bank.
View the most recent 500 Hacker News articles in chronological order with all their first-order comments in view. Do not click to flip the page, do not click to see the comments.
Dark mode can come after that (some may want dark mode all the time, some may want it to obey system settings, some may want a simple toggle on every screen).
The reasons, well, could be added as comments here in the thread. Though, as you may imagine, it's mostly because of my eyes when I visit you guys without daylight.
And low contrast can also cause eye strain.