Hacker News Reader

Comment by xnx | Hacker News Reader

Dark mode is great, but better to leave the site with low or no style and to apply personal styling preference in the browser via Dark Reader or Stylus extension.

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It would be extremely simple to add dark mode. We're talking about CSS changes here. Instead of having to rely on random extensions being installed everywhere you browse, it could just do what you want from your preferences.

True, but Dark Reader and Stylus are great extensions that can improve any site.

Being self sufficient is a superpower that should be encouraged on the web. Change colors, fix formatting, remove ads! Power to the user!

In that case give me the JSON data, I’ll do the rest.

https://github.com/HackerNews/API

How many sites offer this?

I was chuffed a ways back to find a JSON endpoint at the NYTimes.

It was, unfortunately, rather stale.

(It's also since vanished and/or I cannot recall the correct URL. The obvious ones, <https://www.nytimes.com/JSON> and <https://www.nytimes.com/json> don't work. There is a dev portal however: <https://developer.nytimes.com/docs/archive-product/1/overvie...> FAQ: <https://developer.nytimes.com/faq>.)

I agree with self-sufficiency but installing a plugin is not always possible, it's not something you make for yourself anyway, why should I trust the plugin guy, etc. Browsers should really come with dark mode features already but I appreciate the option to install a plugin sometimes.

Some sites (and something I did while refactoring my portfolio) is levarage that to CSS. You can set is as to read the light/dark mode setting from the OS and provide a "toggle" to let the user choose between light and dark. This doesn't even need JS, just a couple hidden `<input type="radio">`s and some bits of CSS.

Although as I've said in another comment, things like this, "go to the top" buttons, cookie banners and the like should be task of the web browser, not of the website.

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