Topic on Talk:Reading/Web/Advanced mobile contributions/Flow

I know this is explicitly outside the stated scope of AMC, but note there is a lot of buzz currently about dark modes at the OS and browser levels.

Probably user demand for websites and apps to support these will soon increase dramatically.

The colour themes look great in the iOS app. I hope soon there will be two separate preferences, e.g. a user might want to read with Sepia at day and Black at night, with the OS changing from light to dark on a schedule or via ambient light sensor. Anyway, there seems to have been a lot of work done and solutions found for issues like branding and legibility.

Isarra and others have done some work on colour themes for various skins. I believe they use Extension:Theme? Is that extension ready for prime time on Wikimedia sites? And how hard would it be to make colour themes work with mobile/Minerva?

Im not expecting anybody to roll this into AMC, but is there high-level discussion happening somewhere about dark mode in general?

Some relevant links:

• https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/view/4006/
• https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T206094
• https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T26070

Thanks for the links, Jdlr. I'll have a look at those. I also found T122924 – Merge Extension:Theme into core.

Like I've said on phabricator, that night mode looks really bad. It should use multiple dark colors.

I'm using this page right now in a dark room with the Invert accessibility setting (iOS). It's much less strain on the eyes, but I find it distracting. Not sure if it's the heavy blacks or the hue shift (bluelinks are orange or yellow). I think it's that subtle light shades become indistinguishable when inverted to near-blacks.

In comparison, I feel Dark (not Black) mode in the app is a pleasure to read. Do you have access to the Android or iOS Wikipedia apps, @Masum Reza? If so, what do you think of those colours?

It would be a shame if they did all that good work to create a high-quality dark mode and then didn't bring those lessons across to other platforms.

I've downloaded Wikimedia Commons app. And true the night mode in the app is good. IMO, pure black (#000000) doesn't look good. Replace bright colors with dark ones. We'll have to change CSS styles a lot to accomplish a perfect dark mode.

Would it be bad form for me to place a backlink from a Phab task to this thread topic?

No, as long as it is on topic, go ahead.

Dark blue vector theme is an example of a less-dark colour scheme. But it's not for mobile.

Have cross-posted that at Phab rather than sending people here.

With respect, T26070 has been open since 2010; and in 2014 Andre (Aklapper (WMF), for some reason I can't find him in the Mention search here) wrote "it's not a priority for the WMF". Is there any chance that there is more appetite now at WMF for an officially branded night mode on Wikimedia sites? Is Meta a better place to ask about the non-technical and Wikimedia-specific aspects?

@Pelagic @Masumrezarock100 "night mode" was the #2 vote on the community tech wishlist, however due to some technical complications their effort has been paused for now. I was actually working on the CSS with a developer on their team, and last week @Volker E. (WMF) created a user script with that CSS which works quite well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Volker_E._(WMF)/dark-mode. In regards to your question "is there high-level discussion happening somewhere about dark mode in general" — yes we (the readers web team) have been discussing it along with other reading preferences (font-size, article width), and hopefully it will become part of the Desktop improvement project, though it's too early to know.

In my opinion, the black background on @Volker E. (WMF)'s CSS looks perfect. Maybe there could be a lesser black version, like what Twitter offers with their dark blue and black themes.

@LissanX Thanks, that'd be a possible further option. For the moment I'd like to get one mostly bug-free, the amendment of the colors is of different, a bit simpler complexity.

@Volker E. (WMF): Why not make it a gadget?