[ignitionmonkey]

> No. Let the website owners give their users options. It's not that hard.

If it's not hard, shouldn't that ideal be towards the handful of browser vendors rather than the thousands/millions of website owners? I agree, if you're going out of your way to provide different stylesheets, provide a toggle, otherwise it's kind of a wasted effort anyway. However, my point of argument is the ideals. The idea someone SHOULD provide something. That SHOULD should be towards browser vendors, not website owners.

>And that's totally fine! If you don't have separate color schemes, it would make no sense to include a toggle. But if you have separate color schemes, add a toggle.

I don't think it's fine in your scenario, and the current state of things. If we require websites to individually provide their own toggles, how will the user know a toggle is even available or not? It creates an inconsistent UX where some websites have toggles and others don't. How many Hacker News visitors wasted time looking for a dark mode toggle that doesn't exist?

Which is why having it at the browser-level is necessary. Not to mention storing state, one of my pet peeves is using Incognito and losing my preferences.

It's kind of funny to me because Alternative Stylesheets solved this problem decades ago. Just like how Firefox used to have an RSS icon so we knew a website had RSS without needing to look for it. All of this stuff has been delegated to web extensions, which is barely supported on mobile. So we all need to plaster our websites with what we do and don't support and hope users find them.

[Timon3]

> If it's not hard, shouldn't that ideal be towards the handful of browser vendors rather than the thousands/millions of website owners? I agree, if you're going out of your way to provide different stylesheets, provide a toggle, otherwise it's kind of a wasted effort anyway. However, my point of argument is the ideals. The idea someone SHOULD provide something. That SHOULD should be towards browser vendors, not website owners.

I want browser vendors to include a scheme toggle. Until this is present, I want website owners to include a scheme toggle. I don't care about the ideals while they degrade user experience for no good reason. Your website won't break once the browser toggle is implemented.

> I don't think it's fine in your scenario, and the current state of things.

I have no idea what you're trying to say. What I said in your quoted example is: you don't have to include multiple color schemes. Why do you think it's not fine? Why do you expect website owners to include multiple color schemes?

> If we require websites to individually provide their own toggles, how will the user know a toggle is even available or not? It creates an inconsistent UX where some websites have toggles and others don't.

Inconsistent UX is better than non-existent UX. You're asking for website owners not to include a toggle. How is that better than having inconsistent toggles which force me to change my whole OS color scheme just to change the scheme of your website? You're not explaining any advantages this has for the UX. Because it's pretty freaking terrible UX to do so.

[ignitionmonkey]

>You're asking for website owners not to include a toggle.

I'm not. I'm saying they don't have to include a toggle if they don't see the need to. The decision is on them. No different from their decision to use specific colours, typefaces, text sizes, etc.

If the user has a preference, that toggle should be provided by the browser (the user agent) and the user should seek to get the browser to implement it rather than expect every website owner which has light/dark modes to provide a toggle.

In the current state of things, the browser is telling websites the user prefers a certain colour scheme, which may not even be true. That is really the core issue here if we focus in on dark/light toggles rather than the broader area of alternative stylesheets and ideal UX.

It feels in general that we are in agreement and may be misunderstanding specifics due to a lack of each other's contexts.

[Timon3]

> It feels in general that we are in agreement here and may be misunderstanding specifics due to a lack of each other's contexts.

No, we're in fundamental disagreement. My position is very simple: you don't have to include multiple color schemes. If you do, you have to provide a toggle if you want your UX to not be shitty.

> I'm saying they don't have to include a toggle if they don't see the need to. The decision is on them. No different from their decision to use specific colours, typefaces, text sizes, etc.

But it's not like those other decisions. If a website owner decided to serve European customers double the font size that American customers are served, would you say "yeah, no reason to provide a toggle"? Because that's what you're suggesting - serving people different versions of the website without giving them a way to change it without changing their whole OS color scheme. Just for your website. What if I want to use two websites at the same time that follow your idea and want different color schemes? I can't.

> If the user has a preference, that toggle should be provided by the browser (the user agent) and the user should seek to get the browser to implement it rather than expect every website owner which has light/dark modes to provide a toggle.

But until that is implemented, you shouldn't force shitty UX on users. Don't decide for them or force them to switch up their whole OS color scheme just for your website. Don't make software harder to use than it needs to be just for ideological reasons.

> In the current state of things, the browser is telling websites the user prefers a certain colour scheme, which may not even be true.

Yes, so we should provide a toggle to change it. Don't force the user to change their whole OS color scheme.

[ignitionmonkey]

It sounds like we're in agreement, you're arguing about things I didn't even say.

I just had a look, and Firefox already has the toggle. The only thing left is for them to provide a per-site toggle and it's sorted.

There are extensions which provide it: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/dark-mode-web...

Might be a matter of time before it becomes the norm.

[Timon3]

Unless you walk back your initial statements I don't see why you'd think we agree, but you do you.