[ryandrake]

I feel like every company's (different/contrasting) "design language" and their insistence on using it, ends up being yet another weird looking thing on my computer. I'd rather decide for myself the fonts, color scheme, look and feel, etc. for applications on my computer, and have applications be consistent and respect those preferences. Rather than have some artist I don't know 2,000 miles away from me simply decide what a dialog should look like (and it's always totally different than what some other artist decided a dialog should look like).

[xp84]

I think most of us here who aren't self-important "UX designers" (or branding consultants) would agree with you, but the decision makers responsible for most of the sites on the Web disagree/don't care what we'd like. They want their site to look identical on all platforms and browsers, and to have their "signature" design language, to heck with what users might expect. It's why you see stupid things like pixel-perfect clones of the iOS "switch" control brought to the Web.

So, anyway, if the `<dialog>` is ever to have a chance at adoption, instead of the "div soup and 1000 lines of JS and CSS modal" we've had everywhere since 2008 or so, it really should be blank slate for the "UX Designer" who fancies themself a real artist can vomit their personal brand of "elegant but bold, minimalist, flat design" onto the DOM.

If it's not completely skinnable, they'll just keep insisting on building div soup modals forever.

[mardifoufs]

Idk, personally I completely disagree. I don't want to theme every single app. I want them to be distinctive and I don't actually care about native look. What I care about is that they have a nice design (which is as subjective as it gets, I know) but more importantly that they are distinctive enough in terms of design. Now I don't want every app to have different shortcuts or whatever, but I don't want slack to look like discord for example. And I don't want to theme anything ideally.

[DaiPlusPlus]

"But we don't want to look like everyone else"

[spatley]

and/or making the website using the most modern design trends sets us apart and reinforces that we are a cutting edge company.

[DaiPlusPlus]

Right down to the Stablediffusion-generated corporate-memphis artwork

[IgorPartola]

These are the same people who insist on having PDF copies of everything and sometimes PDF forms. Nobody ever designs custom PDF form styling to be different. I wonder why? /s