I looked at the source code for the page (preferences / interface)
There IS code there for a DARK theme.
It is just the option is not showing.
There are also a LOT of lines missing (compared the to the other site) to do with DARK THEME.
So I hope it is a simple thing for the admin people to activate the option.
This would be an awesome option. Definitely somewhat of a requirement on the modern web.
I have passed this up the chain to see if this is an easy thing for us to implement. I’m not to sure of how our forums work on the backend so I will wait eagerly with you guys to see if this toggle can be added!
I had a client who wanted a dark mode for his Magento website. Nightmare!
I remember I had to cache the colour/codes as a JS promise. Then inherit the entire Magento Render Engine, overide the constructor, pass in the promise. I discovered Magento used Jquery in 2021 so I had to convert my promise into a query and then push that query into the global scope so I could return my promise blah blah blah
Anyway… if the engineer says no way, I * completely * understand.
Im finding the forums helpful even without dark mode.
You might have noticed how damn nice this forum software is.
I used to hang out at the BoingBoing BBS, where one of the main guys who came up with this Discourse platform was a regular (cheers, Jeff!), and part of the moderation team IIRC, and the BB BBS was one of the places where this platform was trialled during its initial development.
If you’re at all familiar with the vibe of BoingBoing, you should be fairly well assured that this architecture is built right. I know stuff-all about under the hood business, but as a user, I find it just gleams with quality and thoughtfulness - you can sort of tell by the way it crams so many features into an uncluttered yet transparent interface.
So my money is on the implementation of dark mode being more or less a click of a button away.
This is what the forum looks like currently for me
Granted, I did have to force dark mode on for all webpages (I use Vivaldi).
I assume that there is an option in other browsers to do this?
Vivaldi is the name of the browser. I am a browser nerd and Vivaldi is the one I decided I liked the best.
Many cool features like ‘force dark mode’ on all websites. Another great one is ‘workspaces’.
Regarding my image. It is all one screenshot. I screenshoted your screenshot so a bit of screenception going on. I was trying to show what the forum looks like for me. I changed no forum settings, just the ones in the browser.
I prefaced my reply with such. Maybe I could have been more clear about my solution been a workaround and I apologise for that. Regardless, I presented this workaround for you in case you wanted a solution for dark mode now on a site that does not implement it. As I also said, you can probably do the same thing in other browsers. Maybe not natively, but I am sure a plug-in/extension exists for chrome/firefox/yourbrowser.
You don’t have to use it if you don’t want to. I did want to. So I have dark mode on core forum. If you would prefer to wait for the web master to implement dark mode natively, be my guest .
I didn’t interpret your comment as anything against me, so don’t worry about it. It sucks you are having a bad time at the moment and I hope it all gets better for you soon.
To force dark mode, you shouldn’t have to modify the page source at all (that would be tedious and revert every time you refreshed the page anyway) What browser do you use? If Chrome (first guess due to been most popular ), type chrome://flags into the URL bar. Once there, look for the Auto Dark Mode for Web Contents flag and make sure it is set to Enabled (or other setting of your choice). This will also work in other Chromium based browsers such as MS Edge and Brave Browser.
For Firefox (and related forks like waterfox) type in about:config into the URL bar and click I accept the risks (no idea why they add the scary warning). Search for the option browser.in-content.dark-mode and click on the pencil to the right to change the value to true.
If you don’t like the results, you can always change it back. It is worth a try I think! . Be aware this will change what EVERY website looks like though (It doesn’t change websites that already have a dark mode enabled, just the pages that don’t have one or where it is not enabled).
Also, you might have to ensure your OS settings are also on dark mode for it to work properly. I am not 100% certain on this one though, as my OS is always set to dark mode . As you said in your original post, it has much less strain on the eyes and is far less bright.
Have a good day! Feel free to ask me for clarification if you my explanation doesn’t help.
I need to make a correction on my Firefox instructions. It seems that the config method no longer works.
However there is an extension available (highly rated and works).
Simply add to your browser.
I major benefit of using an extension like this instead of the config changes is you can toggle it on/off when needed.
EDIT 2: I put the wrong extension up in the post. What a stooge! Fixed now.
Hi Kimmo,
TLDR; Probably not. Not worried to either.
Longer answer. My guess as that we hold higher value to certain features. I like Vivaldi due to it been essentially a playground. I can customise it to my hearts content (without adding plugins). It is easy to get the browser just as I like it. Plus it has cool features such as ‘force dark’ (already explained) and ‘fast forward’ (super cool and handy while browsing online shops). If anything could convince someone to switch I think it would be the ‘workspaces’ feature. It would be to long to explain here but if curious there is a lot of info on their website. This is my browser right now. I cant seem to get the same thing in other browsers.
I assume you chose brave due to the perceived increased security and privacy (maybe it is true I don’t know and have not researched it). As this is higher up your list of browser priorities.
Hope that makes sense. At the end of the day I don’t mind what browser people choose to use it is up to them. I see the ‘browser wars’ around and I find them a bit silly (yet funny at the same time).
NOW, on the flipside though. As a fan of Brave, can you entice me to switch from Vivaldi?
Probably not… Calling Brave security and privacy-focused is probably underselling it a bit, though - although that’s entirely the case, as a consequence, Brave blocks a whole bunch of potentially malicious unvetted crapware that typically loads with most web pages, not only reducing the amount of data (thus lag) you need, but also replacing all the ads with blank space, with barely any latency. Also blocks ads on YouTube. As a fork of Chrome, you can add Chrome’s extensions, although I don’t bother with those anymore; happy just to have ads blocked.
Although force dark is lacking; thanks for the tip!
I admit that it is pretty cool to get that sort of functionality from the browser, but as Andrew notes, PiHole does this too. I also use PiHole on my home network as a dedicated DNS sinkhole which has the benefit of doing that for all devices on the network.
If Brave has a mobile version that does the same thing I might look into it though for when I am out and about. I have my phone set to use adguard DNS which does a pretty good job of blocking most ads when I’m not home but I might look into this. Good info to know