Duplicate Dark Mode support at the OS Level

[RenegadeMonster]

Media queries now support detecting whether or not the operating system is in dark mode.

Many sites and services such as twitter now support this and serve up a dark theme to users who have their OS set to dark mode.

I would like to see support added to XenForo for this. I'm not talking about a dark mode / theme template that users can select.

But rather one template that can be displayed two different ways based on the users operating systems settings.

I would imagine you would need to define two color pallets for the same theme to make this work.

I would imagine a feature like this would also need a user preference setting where users could manually select dark mode or standard theme or default to the os preference.

With Edge Chromium being released earlier this month all major browsers now support this.

 

[Ozzy47]

This has been suggested before,

Implemented - a dark theme option

it would be great if by default a dark theme shipped with xenforo. sure, many people will say 'just use the style editor', and i have. but there are issues that i have encountered that have made this such an annoying task; gradients that look terrible on a dark theme hidden everywhere, shadow...

xenforo.com

 

[RenegadeMonster]

This has been suggested before,

Implemented - a dark theme option

it would be great if by default a dark theme shipped with xenforo. sure, many people will say 'just use the style editor', and i have. but there are issues that i have encountered that have made this such an annoying task; gradients that look terrible on a dark theme hidden everywhere, shadow...

xenforo.com

That is different. That is for a dark theme to ship with XenForo.

My suggestion is different, in that the same theme can support 2 different modes and display light or dark based on the operating system.

Sure you can easily make your own dark theme. But that is a seperate theme.

I would like to see the ability to make one theme, and when selecting the color pallets be able to pick the color options you want for light and dark.

 

[Chris D]

Can't have one without the other though so add your support for OS-level switching in the existing dark style suggestion.

 

[RenegadeMonster]

Can't have one without the other though so add your support for OS-level switching in the existing dark style suggestion.

Already working on this. And yes, currently as you mentioned you can't have one without the other which is why I put in the suggestion =)

 

[Chris D]

Rather than fragmenting things, let's keep all dark theme related stuff (including the style, switching and different approaches) in that same thread.

 

[arn]

Can't have one without the other though so add your support for OS-level switching in the existing dark style suggestion.

It's not the same though. Having a separate dark style and light style introduces issues and a lot of duplication.

Having a single style that supports both through media queries is what should be done. What that looks like is in Xenforo Style Properties, you provide settings for both Light and Dark color styles. You'd probably have to duplicate all color fields. And then introduce them using CSS media queries in the final css.

What you are suggesting -- having a distinct dark style -- and trying to switch between those doesn't work as smoothly. Because you can't switch a Xenforo style directly based on a CSS Media query. You have to detect it in Javascript, and then load the alternative Style after the entire page is loaded. This causes a "flash" of the wrong style due to the time it takes to parse the Javascript.

arn

 

[Chris D]

What you are suggesting

I'm merely suggesting that discussion of a dark style/automatic switching/dark mode should all be discussed in the existing thread that discusses a dark style because it is relevant and the more support it gets, the more likely the other things will happen and be taken into consideration.

We're well aware of the technical considerations that you mention. We don't see a suggestion like "dark style" and blindly implement a dark style without considering every single alternative solution, nuance or other technical detail, but there is benefit of closely related concepts, even if they are variations of the main suggestion, being discussed in the same place.