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Complaint Darkmode readability in general

Merrok

Magic Tomato
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Jun 18, 2009
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Looking around in just the past 5 threads in Feedback shows how messed up and out of date the design of OTLand really is.
Using darkmode has become pretty common, not to say the default, in development.
Now that OTLand doesn't adjust colors on voting or links or even worse text is simply bad design and has been like this for years.

There are so many threads with people changing the textcolor to black or any other dark color and I'm sitting there thinking "god thanks OTLand, now I can't read any of it"
It's partially the users fault for not thinking about it, but really it is OTLands fault for not automating the contrast like many forums and websites do.
This is not only relevant for darkmode and lightmode with text colors, but also for colorblind people who sometimes need a strong contrast to be able to read.
So accessibility for disabled also plays a role in this.

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I mean come on... How can you ask such a question and at the same time not notice your mistake @Don Daniello

Or how can you not notice things like this, or notice them but not care about doing anything about it?
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Please don't tell me it's too hard. It's too complicated.
You are hosting this website and you have done it for a long time. Doing these kind of changes isn't hard or really shouldn't be anymore by now.
 
You could get your message forward without the negative tones. Upon request, Dan implemented the choice of having different themes on the forum.
We have them now. I use Very Dark Blue without any issues at all. Try that one out.

Or, if you want to contribute (as you always preach about), here you go: Create a XenForo demo (https://xenforo.com/demo/).
 
You could get your message forward without the negative tones. Upon request, Dan implemented the choice of having different themes on the forum.
I know, the negative undertone was on purpose though. It is unacceptable having such an issue for 1.5 years without a fix.
Implementing a new theme is not a fix, it is a try to avoid the problem.
And the reason I am so aggressive towards Don is actually that I stepped towards him 2 times and just got shut down being nice and wanting to help out.
Once pointing out a big security issue with one of the scripts he published for new users to build their OT. But instead of thanking me and fixing it, he actually told me that if I wanted something changed, I could submit a pull request.
I understand contributing is a huge part of this community and it should be. But I didn't know the language and he was extremely rude and seemed to care more about himself than the script causing issues for others. So yeah...

We have them now. I use Very Dark Blue without any issues at all. Try that one out.

Or, if you want to contribute (as you always preach about), here you go: Create a XenForo demo (https://xenforo.com/demo/).
But why if I like the dark mode offered?

Quite simple - I asked the question using Default Style.
I actually knew that was the answer. But it also means you didn't test it ;)

Anyways... things like that can be changed and don't need to be avoided. It can be fixed instead of trying to find a workaround.
I simply don't like this half done job things :)
I'd rather have something done right, or not at all.
I mean right now you again are trying to talk yourself out of it..
 
I know I was rude, and I apologize for that. Especially @Kaspar and other moderators.
But do I understand it correctly that you are not willing to work on those issues? :(
 
I know OP and he's a high quality user vouch for him GL HF

Oh yea I'm here to post this beatiful banana and refer tomato to use this addon



w3lMRMum_400x400.jpeg
 
That's what I thought.
If there is no template or script doing it for you, you won't do it.

I want to make this clear.
I am talking to the admins.
I am thankful for every voluntary moderator and support team member and their work.
 
The problem here lay it in the freedom afforded users by the color selector.

If you quote this post and toggle your view to raw bbcode, you will quickly notice that despite my selections coming from the presented default block of colors, they are in fact CSS3 RGB triads. Therefore one would expect that a user typically choses colorings based on their own theme and translating what that should look like had they used another theme is absolutely non-deterministic and has no algorithm. Also, some users, like me, may have actually used colors not in the defaults.

Your options as a forum admin:

Option A: Truncate user choices to predetermined palette, and generate a suitable palette for each theme. I suppose a good example of a similar concept would be Bootswatch.
Cost: Some users unhappy and bitching about the change, downtime, a SQL backup in case the next step goes wrong, several enormous SQL queries that have to have surgical precision, and a lot of time to develop these suitable palettes.

Option B: Present posts making using of colors in the theme the user was using at the time of post creation, or at least whether it was dark or light theme, and use whatever light or dark theme the forum currently uses just for those posts.
Cost: A lot of CSS surgery work. SQL surgery that can only go back so far, older posts not convertable. Oh, and lots of users bitching that forum presentation is no longer consistent.

Option C: Alter just the background of paragraphs making use of colors to make whether the using was using light or dark at the time, or using an algorithm to try and guess based on the colors used
Cost: Users will still be unhappy, and this algorithm is likely to have lots of wrong answers.

Option D: Do nothing.
Cost: Just a few users are unhappy, most are content with the status quo.

Seems like their choice here was pretty easy for them to make.
 
Seems like their choice here was pretty easy for them to make.
Yeah sadly.
My issue and why I was so offensive is that I have had issues with Don in the past.
Him being lazy, not caring or for whatever reason, it doesn't really matter.
But I already stated that above.

In my opinion, there isn't really a compromise for this. Many services offer solutions to this and for example use your Option A but have it optional so you can turn it on and off.
And it bugs me that he isn't even willing to talk about it. Since he isn't answering at all that he is considering it or thinking about it, I also doubt he even wastes one second on figuring out a solution.
I don't really have words for someone who behaves that way but owns the biggest forum in a community.
But maybe I am completely wrong and just too critical of him because of my past experiences. Who knows. Only the future will tell.

Edit: Option A is doable without downtimes as well or heavy downsides. But of course it is work. It always is if you change something and not use pre-made templates or scripts... It's life.
 
I'm not afraid of sending him a PM and doing some leg work to make accepting such improvements easy for him. This is why the language selection drop down for code blocks is different now.

But I'm not just another user. I actually work in webdev and so I know exactly what the numerous caveats of bespoke deployments are. The further you fork, and by that word I'm including adding plugins and the time consumed creating the appropriate configuration, the harder life is later when you have to upgrade or redeploy. Core integration of a change like this is way way outside the realm of a few different lines in an Ansible.

A better question is: How could you optionally facilitate this with as few changes as possible? How you do you minimize the pain in the ass factor as much as possible?

My answer to that question would be simply this: Tooling to allow public exposure of whether a user uses the dark or light theme should be relatively unintrusive. Could be as simple as an added class to each post <article> wrapper that the forum CSS itself doesn't target. Then do everything else in userscript, for which these classes were specifically added, and go with answer C with no change tracking. Users using the light theme have post bodies rendered as the light theme, users using the dark theme have post bodies rendered as the dark theme. If the user changes what they use, their old posts may look strange. Oh well. That's the price of working within limits and being pseudo-stateless.

When the time comes that the forum needs updated, if you aren't around to keep the script updated, the changes get dropped without hesitation. And the interference in the admins timetable remains negligible. Like all userscripts, there was never any promise that it would remain working .
 
There are so many threads with people changing the textcolor to black or any other dark color and I'm sitting there thinking "god thanks OTLand, now I can't read any of it"
It's partially the users fault for not thinking about it

As far as I know these themes we have installed are not self built, and any modification we do to it will deviate from our xenforo source, thus making it harder to update. We avoid modifying the source code of the forum, and we avoid installing too many mods. For security reasons, for ease of update when new versions come along. We don't have the time to micro-manage every little detail of our installed theme designs. Our admins are not web designers and I'm thankful we even have dark themes. (I use the "Very Dark Blue" theme).

When a user post content on our forum, and explicitly configures that text to be black, I don't think it is up to us to say "no, due to contrast conflicts in our other themes, you may not have black text". I'm more inclined to blame the user here, not the website. Its their choice, and the color picker is not enabled by default when writing text. wubba lubba dub dub! :D

A quick trick if you want to read text that blends in with your theme: Press CTRL + A. :)
 
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I agree with most of what you 2 said. And Lessaire definitely knows a lot more about web development than me. I never liked doing it tbh, my expertise lies mostly in other areas.
So does Znote, for obvious reasons.

I'm more inclined to blame the user here
This is actually very unprofessional to say. You cannot blame the user. Especially with the current userbase of OTLand, you have to expect people not to know better. It is NOT their fault. You can NOT, actually NEVER, blame the user.

Of course you shouldn't say no to the user, but it is possible to change the contrast depending on the theme used.
And as I said, it is actually important due to accessibility for disabled to keep a high contrast. Though of course you can argue that this will be the case MOST of the times using the light theme.

I never said it was a quick fix though ;)
That was actually a big part of my point. And I would have accepted a good explanation from Don and an apology but that it isn't really in the scopes.
But I wasn't surprised that it didn't happen. Instead it comes from a Moderator. So yeah... (nothing against you ofc Znote)

A quick trick if you want to read text that blends in with your theme: Press CTRL + A. :)
Yeah that's actually what I always do lol. It's still stupid though ^^
 
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