My Eyes! (Light Theme)

If you have heard me talk about web dev in the past couple years, one thing you might have heard me be very excited about is the prefers-color-scheme media query, which lets your site automatically follow the user's system (or browser) dark/light theme setting. You might have also heard me complain about how few big-name apps support it (Google, please stop killing my eyes at night with your bright white everywhere). But not to be a pot calling their kettle...not black...I have also been adding prefers-color-scheme detection to some of my apps, including PaintZ, Voice Actions for Chrome, Dr. Magnethands, and I even added it to the deprecated Holo Web site.

However, there is a flipside: while dark themes are the ones most sought after to save our eyes as we work way too late into the evening (*glances nervously at the timestamp on this post*), light themes are far more readable in bright daylight, so I have, begrudgingly, talked myself into adding a light theme to my personal website. If you visit zmyaro.com from a browser that supports color scheme detection, and your system/browser is set to light theme, you will automatically get the brand new first iteration of it. It is still a bit of a work in progress, but I hope this convinces web devs around the world (or, at least, in the offices of Google and parts of Facebook), if I can find a way to take my lovingly crafted dark theme and accommodate folks who prefer to browse the Internet in direct sunlight, perhaps you could make your styles a little easier on my eyes at 2:30 in the morning?

(Also, while this was not a priority for a low-traffic personal website, it is worth noting the best user experience is to detect the prefered color scheme by default and then provide an option to override just for your app. PaintZ, for instance, supports this.)


On a side note, I want to once again thank Windows 10 Auto Dark Mode by Armin2208, which automatically switches your Windows system theme to light at sunrise and dark at sunset. I highly recommend it if you are also impatient to see that feature built into Windows by default.

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