@bugsysha In reference to letting the top 10 users decide, absolutely not.

@bugsysha lol as if the top 10 users represent others. That's horrible.

When did the senate ever represent the people

xd

@JeffreyWay as Adam Wathan would say:

The wild part about working on something used by millions of people is that 100,000 people asking you for a feature still doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to add it — there are still millions of quiet, perfectly happy people who would rather you don’t do it.

@bugsysha But this contradicts to what you wrote before.

You know all of this is subjective right.

There is no right answer here.

The right answer is to have both.

Obviously everyone from both sides will have different preferences.

You quoted 100k people, but its a 50-50 here it seems.

So its either one or the other.

It won't matter at the end, you're always going to have 50% of people unhappy - unless you keep both.

Saying that the top 10 people on laracast, for whatever reason you want to give them authority on this... to vote like a senate... on a new "law" is like a lottery.

The outcome is the same regardless. 50% will be unhappy, weather dark theme stays or doesn't.

Reading what Jeffrey replied:

Negative emotion is much stronger than positive. Those who love or don't mind the dark theme are far less likely to participate in this thread. So I doubt it's 50/50.

Sooo, that's also a good point.

@aurelianspodarec

lol as if the top 10 users represent others. That's horrible.

Not just top 10 users but I would rather say that top 40 users means the forum. Without these people, the forum would most likely have disappeared years ago.

Try to spend thousands of hours here on the forum with helping to others people with their issues and not just waiting for the answer of your questions, where most of them you can find in the documentation...

So I think there is a good reason to ask the top users on the forum about their opinion.

I like to help other people, it also helps me to improve my skills but if it hurts I'll stop doing it.

I'm not an Apple user, maybe it looks ok on the retina display, but that's not my case.

The irony is that I use a dark theme in my editor and I don't have problem with it, but it's not pleasant for me here.

Even the highlinthing of the code also changes a few weeks ago, I don't know, maybe it was caused by the font, the font size or whatever, but it's also not pleasant to read.

@MichalOravec you have to at least come to forum to answer ox*** questions.

@MichalOravec

Not just top 10 users but I would rather say that top 40 users means the forum. Without these people, the forum would most likely have disappeared years ago.

I agree on that 100%. Most Best Answer replies are given to a common people that were active here since years. And that answers helped me personally in my job.

I like the dark theme but I preferer the light theme here, however I use dark theme for my editor and sometimes I turn on the night light mode, navigating in Laracasts gives me this hit in my eyes if I visit any page with white background or even a different website.

That's why I would really like to have a switcher and even I will contribute on it if it's open sourced. If it's just dark, so the whole website should turn into the dark theme or my eyes are going to suffer :).

@MohamedTammam

There are 65 288 solved threads.

29 786 of them was solved by top 50 users.

Even 26 570 threads was solved by top 25 users what represents 40,7 % of all solved threads.

And only top 10 users 19572 threads -> 30,4 %. That's a huge number.

The opinion of top users really matters.

@MichalOravec Wow, good analysis. I might put that into a chart :D

@MichalOravec 10users or 40users will say either dark or light - that does not say they will all say light theme.

A lot of these users are inactive (I checked), and the other ones have lots of experience point just by watching video it seems. Some people in top 10 do like the dark theme.

Do you have a good point however, that the majority of questions answered are by people at the top, so in a way they do run the forum indeed. Although, if you guys wouldn't answer, since you do overtake every question quickly, I wonder if there would be other people that would join instead.

I'm not saying you're wrong, I agree on that, but I think its fun to think about variations.

I don't use apple, I use a low resolution 15.5inch computer that the brightness level is weak, so I had issues with this theme, and the contrast is still off here and there, I can see my eeys getting a strain but I hope it could be fixed a bit more.

Yeah, I do agree with you. I think the recent changes are good, but even the text I'm reading that you wrote is kinda hard to read on large paragraphs, as other mentioned but I feel like that's also rare.

When I saw your comment you saying "You going to live", I was a bit like, ufff, you're one person that helped me a ton as well, so in a way, there is this dynamic where the person who asked the question, me, would rather get the light theme, if that means it retains more users that "help" right.

When people help me out outside here, once a while... and its bed time, and I was on an issue for a few days, I don't tell them I'm going to sleep lol I'm going to sit there till morning lol

But you do have a good point of course, and I do agree that the contrast still and the text its a bit odd and the contrast makes it harder for my eyes to see certain things which means my eyes going to hurt.

Plus, I read a bit from this forum, and re-write some of my question a few times, so I'm looking at this long time as well.

I do however have a relief while being on the site of not having white that burns my eyes, especially from going dark theme sites to this.

I think majority of sites are literally dark so its nice. And the site I'm doing is light theme, but I mostly spend in the code editor or laravel docs lol

But yeah, in a way I can see the "senate" example being useful, assuming no corruption exists, which it doesn't in this case ofc lol as you are the one helping right.

If the dark theme means that you won't be helping then sure, revert it to light theme lol ofc that makes sense right, for me and for whoever that asks for help often - you don't get luxury moping the floors lol

@MichalOravec What job do you do? Very analytical in general.

Its also interesting how you caught Oxbir a few times. I just looked at the level, the avatar, and my brain just picked on a similar name, and I knew that was him, but yeah.

Interesting.

30% of threads solved by the top 10users. Very interesting.

I bet it would jump a lot if it was 15 users as well, since there's not big of a difference between #10 and #11 or #12 I don't think.

There are 65 288 solved threads.

29 786 of them was solved by top 50 users.

Even 26 570 threads was solved by top 25 users what represents 40,7 % of all solved threads.

And only top 10 users 19572 threads -> 30,4 %. That's a huge number.

The opinion of top users really matters.

@MichalOravec as always, thanks for putting a very detailed answer to my short answer. That is precisely the point I was going for. I disagree that if those top 10 people didn't put in the work the forum wouldn't exist. But it would definitely be a way different experience. I'm pretty sure that in those top 10 we will get distributed opinions that represent the majority of people visiting this forum. So, hashtag top10vote :D

Saying that the top 10 people on laracast, for whatever reason you want to give them authority on this... to vote like a senate... on a new "law" is like a lottery.

@aurelianspodarec I want to give them authority to vote because they are the best. As it says on the Leaderboard page, COMMUNITY PILLARS are the top 10, and @michaloravec explained the reasoning behind it.

@MichalOravec do you maybe know what is the number of users on the forum? I have a feeling that 0,0001% of users solved those 30,4% of threads. That is even more impressive I guess.

@bugsysha 243 502 users I guess and around 800k replies.

So 0,0041 % of users solved 30,4 % threads.

@bugsysha But they do not represent the community in what the community wants.

Do you read what I read or just cherry pick..

Michal made a good point, but its based on the contribution, not what people want.

The majority want dark theme - there might be side effects that those people might reconsider, such as having fewer people from the top help.

You can make a pool: light or dark theme

and another pool: light theme dark theme - where a few top contributors will live

Light theme will "suit" everyone, dark wont.

But that should be left to people to decide still, not centralize everything...

Maybe majority will be fine with the top people living and not receiving as much help, for the dark theme.

@MichalOravec How many of them are real people out of them 243,502 users? 20%? : P

@aurelianspodarec Ask Jeffrey not me.

@aurelianspodarec Ask Elon Musk how many bots in Laracasts xD

@MohamedTammam xD

We should be counting only paying customers or those who paid :D

Anything else is a bot xD

@MichalOravec I think you are missing a couple of zeros. So 0,000041% provided solutions for 30,4% threads. All I can say is a great job top 10 guys. 🫡

But they do not represent the community in what the community wants.

@aurelianspodarec why would you assume that? Also, please don't say that I don't read and I cherry-pick. It is not polite and definitely not constructive. I can twist the words and trivialize what you are saying and derail this conversation also, but it is not something I would like to do.

How many of them are real people out of them 243,502 users? 20%?

Exactly that should make a stronger argument for the TOP 10 to vote because they are verified and we know they are "real people".

@bugsysha No, 0,0041 % is correct.

@MichalOravec are you doing 10/243502?

@bugsysha No I used cross-multiplication and with that I got 0,0041 %.

To convert your number to percentage you have to multiply it with 100.

So the result is still 0,0041 %.

@MichalOravec correct. % was wrong from my side.

EDIT: Which doesn't make sense based on my question :D

@MichalOravec Don't forget to county only maybe like 10% of the user base, as the other 90% are probably bots xd

@bugsysha So you don't cherry pick? "Exactly that should make a stronger argument for the TOP 10 to vote because they are verified and we know they are "real people"." - did you read what I wrote about in regards this? My argument still stands.

As far as I'm aware bots don't write on this thread... and its easy for Jeffery to check if someone has paid, so its not an issue to verify people.

My argument still stands.

@RonB1985 I feel like a bit more want light theme, from my judgment on the likes as well.

A pool would be great, or just open a go fund me page for Jeffrey to hire someone to maintain this, Id gladly donate lol

@aurelianspodarec Negative emotion is much stronger than positive. Those who love or don't mind the dark theme are far less likely to participate in this thread. So I doubt it's 50/50.

@JeffreyWay That's also a good point.

@JeffreyWay Revert to light and make them participate :D

@migsAV I don't think that color looks good against the dark blue background.

I agree that the white was a little too harsh yesterday. Since then, we've reduced the opacity. I personally think it looks good now.

@JeffreyWay ok cool. Otherwise, the dark theme does look good

@JeffreyWay Yeah, I like the improvements, I think the cards have been also changed, the contrast seems to be improved, and stuff is more visible and the text color isn't burning my eyes.

I quite like it now.

@JeffreyWay I think there's small contrast issue here https://i.imgur.com/uWmNrnz.png

@aurelianspodarec Yep, we've changed the background color into something lighter and added some small tweaks so overall there should be no eye burning haha. I'll look into that contrast issue as well.

@_adrian Awesome. I wonder, what do you think of the text? I feel like something just off with the text here, maybe the font family. But I think the the is better than when it first launched but something still quite not right to me.

I think, like others have mentioned, especially @michaloravec for those who read a lot it might hurt the eyes, not because the theme is bad, just the text is still a bit off, I don't know, for example for my eyes, this docs https://laravel.com/docs/9.x are much easier to read than on laravel.

So I think while dark theme might be "better" or if not most might like it, what about people that do in fact use the form for an extensive period of times, to help others - in that case, if people like Michal would be here less, than changing the theme to dark would be a negative, since to me, at least now, getting help with more important than say have my eyes burn a bit. Even though it might sound like counter what I said, it also varies on people circumstances, I can either learn and maybe have the eyes burn a lil, or go to warehouse and just get entire health down, which would be worse right.

So I think the side effects would also need to be considered too I feel like. Especially when the top 10 of those who do help, answered like 1/3 of the site questions. And the top 25, answered 40% of the site questions. So if you lose say 50% of these people, I think dark theme would be a negative right.

If people get a job sooner, because they are getting helped, that means they won't need go to warehouse or jobs like that, where they will for sure lose health xd

So while I do prefer dark theme and its easier on my eyes, than looking at this white comment box, what are the side effects.

I think the text is the main issue I believe. If you read it here and there it'll be probably fine, but for people like Michal the dark theme might start being an issue over the long period of time - unless ofc the text was fixed.

I think the Laracast changes seems to be fine like you said you've done them, but I feel like the major focus should be on the text now for the reason stated above : P

@aurelianspodarec Tackled the font issue in the next update that's going to be pushed whenever Jeffrey can.

@manojo123 the white text is still too bright, try greying it up some or something. Just make it less "loud" somehow. On mobile it doesn't look as loud.

@jlrdw I kinda agree. But how many comments do you get like these? Usually its a paragraph or two, followed by code block followed by a paragraph.

I think what you gave is a bit of an edge case. Never that long, not even when people explain stuff to me, its max three paragraphs if anything, with code, and never that long - except maybe on very rare circumstances perhaps.

@aurelianspodarec I’m probably an outlier here, but I am fairly active on the forums, so not (I would hope) irrelevant. And I post quite a few longer comments/answers – probably more longish than shortish comments on average. If you look at my profile, you’ll see that about one in four of my most recent 20-ish comments are four or more paragraphs long, and generally relatively long paragraphs. One of them is 15 paragraphs, though that’s long even for me. Mostly, I think the problem with the dark theme is that big chunks of text are hard to read – that is, long paragraphs, especially if there are several of them in a row, but even if it’s just a couple as well. If there are ten paragraphs, but they’re all only two lines, there’s not much of a problem, but this paragraph here (which I’ve deliberately let become quite long) will be a strain on the eyes, even though there’s only one paragraph in the post.

@kokoshneta Yeah, I 100% agree with you on this - I experience this as well.

For whatever reason I don't have this issue on other sites - something is still off on Laracast IMO.

The contrasts aren't properly fixed still.

@kokoshneta I think this reading issue is subjective. First off, in the light theme, all the white surrounding large paragraphs is most definitely more attacking on the eye. That bright intense flash behind the text hurts it more than the other way around.

And now especially since the font has been reduced to 90% brightness, the boxes are more intense (and even more so if you hover over cards) and the background color has been increased in brightness.

It is better to structure paragraphs with more space in between to increase readability and perhaps the forum font should be a little bit increased but I tested this and if we go too much from here it just looks bad the way huge boxes of text appear.

I might consider increasing the weight of the text from what it is now, this should help on monitors who aren't high resolution/dpi.

Even large boxes of text have a far reduced luminosity right now. But if any other suggestions arise, that's why I'm here for.

@_adrian Oh I see you just wrote that, but yeah, it is subjective, but for example https://laravel.com/docs/9.x I have no issues with that. I feel like that's why there might be some issue on the font on Laracast.

Because even the text you wrote now, with lots of space between paragraphs, its still harder on the eyes to read. But Laravel docs reading wise, to me are fine at least.

@aurelianspodarec Line-height spacing is part of the next batch of updates along stronger weight. I've already published my changes and waiting on Jeffrey to update them whenever he can =]

@_adrian Awesome, maybe that's all we need :)

Its also interesting how you do the changes like this in real life, can learn a lot from it ^^

Maybe you guys could make one video going over this - could be a good learning experience of "real life website updates" or something.

Have Jeffrey pull up the fist version of the site, then the latest, on the video and compare what was off and what they learned on dark themes.

I'm not a designer, but I can create something decent enough id say and IMO dark themes are harder to pull of for me, requires different model of thinking and different colors that match and such.

But yeah. I feel creating light and dark theme are kinda different skills etc maybe - or at least to someone like me, maybe not so much to a pro designer like yourself.

@aurelianspodarec I created a design system that's linked to what Jeffrey has on his code side 1:1 so whenever we need to tweak something, I already have a working prototype with everything I need and I just select the new values and update Zeplin and let Jeffrey know to update them in code, so it makes it much snappier for us to make changes like these happen in near realtime, haha.

Colors will always be more subjective than black & white. This is one of the reasons why when discussing concepts and wireframes, it's best to leave out all color and design and focus on the task at hand, because the moment people see something flashy, they'll lose their attention span just like that haha. Which of course makes it even extra hard to build a dark mode theme based on a shade of a color instead of grey. But in the end, it can be more rewarding and much more on brand.

@jred_lewis not just you, it's really happening haha. But if you do have any suggestions or preference, you can leave it around and I can give it a test and see if it works for the better =D

@Sherif_Tarek I think that is just the default browser theme. I believe that hasn't be styled at all so it's picking up your settings.

@_adrian yes, and not all browsers allow changing dropdowns' background colors.

For example, Firefox doesn't. Chrome allow to change the background color, but not to style it, which becomes a bit weird. So I usually do not bother, as it usually does more bad than good to users.

@johnDoe220 The filters have no styling applied to them, I believe. So it is picking up your browser and OS settings.

@_adrian This change was great Congratulations Mig

@van1310 Not a chance.

@superbeaver thanks for the consideration =) It is my pleasure to help

@sidneygijzen I always preferred light themes for spending long periods working.

Only place I keep a dark theme is on terminal. When I need to spend long periods working on it I change to solarized light, but on day-to-day usage a light terminal feels wrong =/

I knew about Brent's article, and sent several time to peers who inferred that my preference of light theme would hurt my eyes on the long run.

Just to make it clear, I don't care if someone prefers to use a dark or light theme, nor I evangelize over light theme usage. I sent that article to some peers who actively suggested my light theme usage would be prejudicial to my health or to my work performance.

My participation here is due to the feedback request. Originally when I asked Jeffrey on Twitter (before I learned about this thread, and later I deleted the tweet) I asked about a theme switcher availability.

I already found a solution for my use case by using an extension to invert the colors back to light. So whichever decision Jeffrey end up making I am fine with it. I know at the end his goal is to provide the best for Laracast's users.

@rodrigo.pedra I'm still puzzled why is not possible to maintain two themes and then allow 'night mode' to be an option via the user.

Reading around this, it seems its too much effort to maintain both themes, but with that argument, how come it wasnt too much effort to change the current theme?

@automica

Agree, same remark here https://laracasts.com/discuss/channels/general-discussion/testing-a-forum-dark-theme?page=1&replyId=798435

but did not get any answer ...

@automica I get your feeling.

But if we try to look with @jeffreyway 's eyes, and the fact they are always trying to improve user experience in Laracasts we might get a glimpse on why he has that stance.

Maybe this theme change was proposed by @_adrian as part of his design work, or maybe @jeffreyway himself suggested to give it a go.

But fortunately, they decided to make a somewhat collaborative decision with the community, instead of dropping this change without allowing comments, which is awesome.

From a business perspective, maintaining two style sheets is painful, specially with such a slim team. And also in a public facing site such as Laracasts, with such a large user base, which is prone to receive many requests for changes, and some will make sense while others not. This could quickly slow down other improvements or planned features.

As Laracasts is always improving, adding new features, making user life improvement changes, accounting for both styles while being a so active product, would slow things down.

In contrast, the SaaS products I mentioned I built and my wife runs are business oriented, with a much smaller user base. After six years in the run it is very stable design-wise, and as it is not my main job, it is hers, we went for out of the shelf solutions.

For example both products are bootstrap based, so I started with a dark mode implementation I found from someone else.

By the time she convinced me to take sometime to work on this, as she got so many user requests, I spent about 5 full days tweaking, testing, integrating third-party plugins, such as chart.js, tempus-dominus and filepond, so they look good and feel integrated to the products.

Although we use bootstrap, we have a lot of custom SASS variables to give them each an essence on their own. And till the date we still receive small suggestions/requests such as: "this screen, on mobile, with these filters, does not look good". And when adding a new feature testing on both style sheets is always somewhat painful and prone to introduce new errors.

This is for a 700-hundredish user base on product that barely changes over time design-wise.

I can imagine how it would be with a much, much, much larger audience and with an ever evolving product such as Laracats. Specially as @jeffreyway allows non-subscribing users to participate and I never saw him, or anyone on Laracasts' team, to make any differences between subscribers and non-subscribers requests or suggestions.

So I totally understand them not willing to maintain both style sheets. And that is why I looked after for an alternative solution for myself.

Just to be clear new design looks very beautiful, and well thought. It is just not my preference to spend the amount of time I usually do.

@rodrigo.pedra Thoughtful input. I am working on some improvements, even text based that ought to improve things a little bit more. There's still one more bigger thing we're considering but we'll see how it goes.

Fun fact: The dark mode was actually kind of accidental as I was redesigning the homepage banner and thought maybe I should go dark on it since it's been the blue color since forever and I needed a breath of fresh air in terms of some design language elements so one thing lead to the other and now almost everything has fallen to the dark side here haha.

@_adrian thanks for sharing, it might be a bliss having this room for making decisions. It seems that besides being a great teacher, Jeffrey is also a great boss.

If you allow me to add a suggestion, maybe for the future, instead of maintaining two full featured style sheets, you could consider having a simplified “reader mode” with very raw design. Much like how GMail and Yahoo mail offer a simplified inbox for older browsers, and make it clear when a user opts in that “reader mode” is prone to not have every bells and whistles.

I never saw this implemented in a forum, from large content sites I think I saw something similar once in CNN a while ago, but this could be a middle ground.

Just loud thinking here, for the future if you like the suggestion.

But other than that the improvements on the contrast ratio are much welcome. Right now I am on mobile, where I don’t have the extension to invert the colors, and the experience is much improved. Congrats on the good work.

@rodrigo.pedra thanks for that observation about amount of time spent working vs dark / light theme. My terminal might also be the only place with a dark(er) theme. I have no clue why (yet), but this thread provides food for thought :-)

I will look into the extension you mentioned earlier in the thread. Thanks.

@rodrigo.pedra If you use Safari there's actually a Reader mode embedded right into it that makes reading a breeze. It's really useful I use it it on my phone a lot. As for other browsers like chrome (I use Brave but it's still chromium based and Chrome extensions work) there are reader extensions like this here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reader-view/ecabifbgmdmgdllomnfinbmaellmclnh or these https://fossbytes.com/best-chrome-reader-extension/ - I've not tested them personally but they look promising.

@_adrian I am on Linux, so no Safari for me.

GNOME Web, which shares the WebKit backend with Safari, has a reader mode, but it is not good on the forums. Firefox one also doesn't work well. I will look into these extensions, thanks!

On CNN's site, I was suggesting something very raw, like this:

https://lite.cnn.com/en/article/h_0649a0df01dadc67888d068459228bcc

But I think at the end it won't have many adoption as a styled version.

@sidneygijzen I ended up setting on a different one, but also an open-source one:

https://midnight-lizard.org/

As both this and Dark Reader are meant to be used to provide or enhance dark mode where it is not available, or nor available properly, using them for getting light mode instead is unintended use, and might be why I get some buggy results, for example when a modal is open its backdrop gets opaque...

To get it to provide light mode, you'll need to use the simplified filter, which basically, from my understanding, don't try to be smart and just kind of inverts the colors, thus resulting on a somewhat light mode. Below you can see a screenshot of how it looks on Laracasts' forums, and with the settings I use opened:

Also, both extensions have it, disable the checkbox to "Run on all websites by default" under global settings, so this becomes an opt-in feature on a per site basis.

Have fun =)

@rodrigo.pedra Awesome. Thanks for the detailed write-up!

@MohamedTammam Noted. Thanks.

@MohamedTammam Fixed!

@_adrian Awesome, thanks for fixing that. :-)

@piljac1 Right, text wise, I agree. Laravel docs seems to be fine reading long paragraphs for me, in dark mode.

@piljac1 If there are so many studies agreeing to white backgrounds being best then why do Facebook and Twitter have dark modes, more-so even, Twitter uses a pitch black background and full brightness white text - which if you think about it is a nightmare for LED/Low IPS and low-to-mid end monitors with light bleeds. Which is, essentially, a lot of the users who use these platforms. I think there are some exaggerations going on here and these "blocks" of text are by far not that bright. I'm using an HDR enabled screen right now and I read it just fine and i'm a glasses guy since forever.

Anyway, some text updates coming up soon.

@_adrian

why do Facebook and Twitter have dark modes

User requests? Their revenue model being based on users spending time on their platform, so if it is used by more than 3% of them (I believe it is way more) it is already worth for them to have both?

If they find out more then 3% of their users want a yellow text on purple background mode I bet they would provide it.

If I use the same thought line the other way around, one could argue, if dark theme is way better, and way preferred, why do they keep their light themes, and more importantly as the default one?

I can't remember of any content-based platform which defaults to a dark theme. There might be a reason for it, doesn't it?

Can you name one content platform, a slightly large or known one, that dropped light mode altogether and went full dark mode?

Not ranting here. It is just this kind of argument that implies one side doesn't have a valid point based on a rhetoric without any evidence, specially when most of the people are sharing their personal experience or are providing sources to base their claims, doesn't seem, to me at least, to contribute to the discussion. It seemed to me so far no decision was yet taken.

To be fair, my wife remembered me Tumblr used to default to a dark mode.

But it seems they changed to a mixed mode, with dark empty-space (or in design jargon white-space, but it didn't seem right to me to say dark white-space =/) and black text on white background content boxes.

There might be a reason for this, specially as they almost went broke and, as far as I remember, were bought for a fraction of the value analysts once projected for them.

@rodrigo.pedra Yes they may have a small percentage that may have asked for dark but imagine the insane amount of work needed to maintain both. For example if they switch something that is perceivably minor, it can have catastrophic consequences for a lot of ad companies and businesses. As perception changes, some ads can go down just because you switched a color. So for them, it will be a massive task to test things in both dark and light when they want to switch even smaller things.

I guess at the end of the day, it becomes subjective even faster the more you scale up. I've had issues like this all through-out my career.

@_adrian I might not be the best person with words, specially on a language I am not native.

I thought it was clear from my previous comments that I totally agree the burden it would be to maintain both style sheets. I stated this to other users' comments and shared my own experience to support this.

I also said that I believe way more users wanted dark mode on Facebook and Twitter. The 3% figure is a measure on which business use to target niche groups that is worth to offer niche services if the revenue is worth it. This niche analysis was started by WalMart, at least they shared the first studies talking about it, several years ago when “Big Data” or “Data Mining” was not even jargon, to increase profit over niche user/customer preferences.

Regarding dark mode user preference I clearer stated "I believe it is way more". Perhaps my word choosing, or my lack of proper knowledge on how to discuss non-technical subjects in English didn't help.

My issue with your comment I replied to, was actually this argument:

if ("there are so many studies agreeing to white backgrounds being best") {
    echo "why do Facebook and Twitter have dark modes?";
}

In my opinion, this kind of argument seems to diminish all previous shared experiences, and shared links to research articles, blog posts, not only by me, but by others too, by using an authoritative rhetoric argument like: "if the big boys do like that, they might know better then us, don't they?".

Well I tried to rephrase the same bad and fallacious argument, both in my opinion, as:

if ("dark mode is super dupe, best for every one, blessing from skies") {
    echo "why do big boys keep their light modes – and mainly – as their default?";
}

To show how naive introducing such argument based on authority was.

I personally don't believe neither in your first argument, neither in this example I presented by then.

I believe it is result from an analysis to increase user engagement, based on group preference, which at the end would benefit both companies by increased revenue, as I tried to exemplify with the yellow-on-purple argument.

For these companies, increased user engagement equals increased revenue – it is their core business – so it makes sense for them to invest resources and effort on maintaining both style sheets. As I acknowledged, many times, that it wouldn’t for a small teams such as yours.

Also, there were many times, in our field of work, people including @JeffreyWay, say to newcomers stuff like this: "99.9% of the time you won't be building the next Facebook or Netflix. So adopting an architecture just for the sake they adopted for their large-scale operation, early on your project, is non-sense."

Using an argument like yours, which again, in my opinion, diminishes all the previous discussion from those who prefer light themes, based on such authority argument in my opinion, is a disservice. Specially when the request for comments was issued by Laracasts, thus this is not an unsolicited discussion.

One could argue that the two major, documented and researched with evidences not preferences, benefits of using dark-mode are not in use with the current implementation. The first would be battery-saving from non light-up pixels on OLED or mini-LED screens, the second would be less exposure to blue-light at night time, which indeed is known to cause sleep issues. The choice to use a blueish dark background invalidates both benefits. This might be the reason why Twitter chose to go with a full black background on their implementation.

• That you heavily prefer switching for dark theme, is now clear, at least for me.
• That all the arguments for the benefits of the light theme was seen as gibberish and as unsolicited comments, is now very clear, at least for me.
• That light mode is not coming back, due to the first comment where @JeffreyWay said “if everyone hates it, we'll revert back”, and it is clear not everyone hates it, it is clear.

Again, what bothered me was the kind of argument that shows that every previous argument for light theme preference, weren't even considered, and were directly thrown in the trash, based solely on your own convictions. At least this is what it seems to me, based on the comment I replied to, and from this last comment I am replying to now.

I defended not being feasible to maintain both styles on every comment. Since the beginning I said I believed most people would prefer the dark mode, so I searched for an alternative. And when you asked me to assess some changes you made to the styling, I did and replied with my opinion in good faith.

If something I wrote let you down, or if you are expecting me to drop all my personal struggles with reading long period of time with dark mode, or dropping my personal work experience for 27 years on expending most of my days looking into using the most optimal setup for increasing my own productivity while minimizing any health and eye tiredness issues, to support team dark mode, based solely on the effort to make it better suitable, I am sorry to disappoint you.

I really hope you don’t find this “my whole career”/“my own life-long experience” argument silly, as I didn’t find yours.

You can believe my light mode preference is silly. I don’t. And I didn’t diminish anyone’s dark mode preference, nor suggested it is a blind preference in any of my comments. On the opposite, I searched for a solution to myself as I believed most people would prefer to keep the dark mode.

You can search my comment history here on Laracasts, for the 7 years I've been a member, and you will see I rarely engage in such non-technical arguments and prefer to stick on technical threads or discussions. This time I actually thought you were open to receive any feedback, as you requested it, and not just tips for improving an already taken decision. It seems learning some people have preference for light themes, based on real arguments let you down somehow and was an unexpected and unwanted outcome.

I was wrong on believing this time there was no harm on sharing my experience and personal research, on a non-technical subject, and I apologize. I will try to not repeat the same mistake, at least not opinions when the “wrong/unexpected/unwanted direction” are not welcome.

Thanks for all the good work, and keep up with all the hard word. You won’t here from me anymore on this thread. I really hope you can find the best solution to please your wills, and maybe most of the users. Good luck.

Postscript

I initially drafted to share this, but while writing this long response I forgot, sorry to add it later. This is related to the "big boys cannot be wrong" argument.

• Facebook developer documentation, targeted to developers and not to their general audience, who are welcome to improve their general audience experience to increase their revenue, does not offer a dark mode (https://developers.facebook.com/)
• Twitter developer documentation, also targeted to developers and not to their general audience, who are welcome to improve their general audience experience to increase their revenue, also does not offer a dark mode (https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-api)

Maybe they didn't think it was worth to maintain both style sheets for this particular audience, was not worth the hassle. But as not being a design professional myself, I am probably wrong to think like this. There might be a more thought out decision I can't see from my experience or education.

Just to make it clear, I am not trying to revert an already taken decision, I already found a solution to myself. I am just trying to point out how that kind of argument, in my sole opinion, does not sustain itself and does not contribute to this kind of discussion.

@rodrigo.pedra I did not diminish any other light-mode argument or experience. Not sure where you got that from to be honest... We would not have invested in gathering the opinion of so many people if we simply didn't care. Nor do I think less of those who prefer light mode, I wasn't even remotely thinking that. It's strange to see such a conclusion.

People are free to express opinion and it IS taken into consideration - this is the reason for this thread - to express it so we can gather valuable information and implement it so that we're all (or most) as close to something better as possible. There are even more changes in the works as we speak to included an ever larger opinion base.

@_adrian

Not sure where you got that from to be honest...

From here:

if ("there are so many studies agreeing to white backgrounds being best") {
    echo "why do Facebook and Twitter have dark modes?";
}

reference: https://laracasts.com/discuss/channels/general-discussion/testing-a-forum-dark-theme?page=2&replyId=798951

@rodrigo.pedra I was referring to something else... Was mostly trying to make a very short point around and regarding the choices of the "big guys". What Facebook and Twitter and others do is entirely up to them and I really don't look up to their choices nor was I trying to say that what they do applies to what we have here. I guess it was a misunderstanding.

I respect your experience (and others') but to conclude all of the above that all opinions went into the bin and that they are not being considered based on a couple of sentences is just extreme and surprising. If the decision had already been made, this thread wouldn't even have existed in the first place, I'm least of all authoritative on the matter as I've changed quite a few things since the original version came up and I have no issue with changing more if it ends up improving things. But I do have to make some design choices.

Even if I personally like dark mode apps, it doesn't mean that as a designer I want to enforce that on unwilling users. I'm rather neutral from this perspective and I like designing for both variants and if an overwhelming majority had pushed to white immediately, it would've happened. This also does not mean that a decision has been made nor does it mean that those who prefer light mode are left with no voice - it means that I will find a solution for them as well soon. But only so much can be done within a specific time frame.

@rodrigo.pedra Late note: There is now a Light Mode toggle in the main thread view. Users can choose between the two now. I couldn't say anything in the weekend when we were discussing this but it had already been designed and pushed out. Hope it covers all the others who prefer the white mode! =]

@_adrian

If there are so many studies agreeing to white backgrounds being best then why do Facebook and Twitter have dark modes

Keyword: have (not "are")

Glad to see that Laracast now has a dark theme (instead of "is" dark themed)!

Thanks a lot and keep up the good work!

@_adrian I missed this message from you, but I saw it and am using. Thanks a lot for the consideration and the hard work.

P.S.: One reason I miss these kinds of mentions is due to my account never receives any notification at all. I reported it already by e-mail and on a thread where @jeffreyway asked for improvements suggestions, but I never got a response about. My guess is due to my username having a dot.

I never seen anything different than this empty screen:

Link to the uploaded image: https://i.ibb.co/b3bHXpm/Screenshot-2022-06-06-at-10-52-10-Testing-a-Dark-Forum-Theme.png

So I usually skim through updated threads on the "My Participation" filter, but on heavily commented threads like this one, it is easy to miss.

@rodrigo.pedra I had that issue when I had a space in my name.

@MohamedTammam yeah... I was afraid of something like that... I didn't want to change my username after 7 years and so many forum responses =(

But thanks for sharing =)

@rodrigo.pedra The problem is, if you change it, you your old tags aren't going to point to your profile :(

@rodrigo.pedra @mohamedtammam Hey, no worries. I'll make a ticket in our workspace and push it to Jeffrey whenever he can look into it on his end. =]

If there are ever any design woes or issues like this, you guys can always open a new thread with the Design tag and maybe tag me in them and I'll see what can be done. I'm looking to further improve the forum experience so I'm open.

@_adrian Much appreciated.

@rodrigo.pedra Very sorry about that. It looks like there was a bug in the regular expression I'm using to detect mentioned usernames. I'm pushing a fix right now.

You should now see an alarm bell above your avatar whenever you're mentioned.

@JeffreyWay Sometimes the mentions are super late and then I get a bunch of them if I've been part of different convos.

But also, when I reply to a comment, I get a notification saying "@aurelianspodarec" commented on X threat, but it was my own comment, so not sure why I'm receiving the notification telling me I commented etc...

I think in general there are few issues with that, but maybe its just UX.

@JeffreyWay Also, when you create a new threat/questoin, in dark mode, and 'select a category', the select dropdown - you can't see the text because its white and the background is also white on dark theme.

When you select the category e.g. Laravel, Design, Vue etc..

@JeffreyWay thanks a lot!

And look from who I got my first alert from =)

@aurelianspodarec I reported the self-mentioning thing a while back (before the dark theme). I don’t think it was always like that, but maybe I’m misremembering.

@jeffreyway There’s another bug, if you can call it that, regarding mentions: when you mention someone who has a space in their username, it seems to mention them just fine, but only the first word in their username is part of the link on the page, which makes it look like the rest of the username is your words. That looks very odd. If the system correctly identifies the user, it should also be able to include the whole user name in the link on the page.

@aurelianspodarec Yes, I've noticed that. It's a UX thing and it has been pushed for resolve. As is the issue with the notifications for when you comment/like/etc. Likely you will still get the notification element in the feed but won't get the push bubble (won't see it in the left panel).

The dropdown background issue was logged a while back and is still in the works.

@kokoshneta Noted the issue and logged it for resolve soon. Thank you.

@rodrigo.pedra haha, have fun =]

@_adrian Oh, another UX issue I believe, is when you have long threats that make it hard to follow or read them for whatever reason.

I mean there's really many issues on Laracast, some public Trello board would be nice but yeah.

A cool thing would be to see if you click a threat, the new notifications are highlighted, and the one where you're mentioned is differently highlighted or something along that way...

And of course the ability to right click the notification to open them etc...

I mean, people do write these things on the laracast forum and its not just me but not sure if they ever get to seem or not, but in some way Laracast seems to have bad UX here and there or bug or whatever. Small things but to me it kinda seems a bit incomplete, it has beautiful design but there are just small issues here and there that just adds up that can be noticed after you've used the site for a while I guess but yeah.

@aurelianspodarec

but in some way Laracast seems to have bad UX here and there or bug or whatever

Totally disagree. Remember that, Laracasts is webcast learning website that has a forum, not a forum that has webcasts.

@MohamedTammam That doesn't change the fact that Laracast as a whole has UI and UX issues.

I'm not talking specifically about the forum either. One thing that is annoying when you watch a video and go to other pages the video keeps appearing at the bottom and auto starts, like f me. Annoying. You try to close it and that damn thingy repons.

You can't separate the forum, Laracast community is on the forum, you can't exclude it and say "Laracast is webcast learning website" - and forum is part of it where people ask for help.

You can't divide this, Laracast is one entity as a whole lol

Forum is a significant part of Laracast, therefore not sure why you would not look twice at it. I think there's a reason why they have the forum a dark theme and a switcher - because forum is that important. Its the community. Strong community means more people will also join and keep the user retention.

Call that marketing, not to mention the SEO they get from google.

Its probably more important than the videos tbh.

People come for the good quality videos and stay because of the forum.

Laracast is like StackOverflow, but better.

@aurelianspodarec I agree that the forum is important, but not more than videos for sure. Plus, if you look to all requested changes on that thread an other ones, you will know that is a lot of work for just small team to provide. Would you pay more for them to cover all requests features including yours?

@MohamedTammam Its subjective.

", but not more than videos for sure" - its more important than the videos for me.

Would I pay more? I already bough life time membership. Which is more than what they will spent on me most likely anyway lol

Some of the stuff they done is basic UI and UX. Such as now being able to right click a notification, since this is a SPA application they should just include the slug, easy fix.

I disagree with the approach you've taken here. I'm not having "requests" for them to do, but for them to improve. If their forum has black background and black text, and I need to highlight it to see what's written, should I pay for my request to be able to see the text? No.

Its a small team but the entire Laracast was just re-build. So not sure why minor improvements and bug fixes would be an issue and soooo time consuming, when Jeffrey is cleary fixing them here and there.

If anything that's part of maintaining the site, its literally their job to fix stuff on Laracast and improve the UI and UX, which is what they are doing now, otherwise they wouldn't add a dark theme and a switcher either.

Also, if they can't afford to fix such small thing then I'm scared that this site will go bankrupt. They already have the slug for each post, why not include the slug in the notification and enable right click? I don't think that's hard. Actually, they already have the slug when you click the notification ofc, but you just can't right click it - why not enable the right click? Its super annoying as well to have 3 notifications or more from one posts, and then needing to opn new tabs and then notification just to open all threats where you've been mentioned, instead of right click and open in a new tab. Just such poor UX on that part.

I just disagree with you here in general for the issues they have. Which they are fixing anyway, at least some from what Adrian wrote but yeah, which also disproves what you wrote and builds more confidence in me they will not go bankrupt xd

Also, I did mention before I would pay for the theme switcher if that was £5 a year or 1£ a year to maintain the dark theme just because IMO dark theme is so valuable but yeah. And ofc if you have many people that £1 adds up. I don't even have a job now lol but id still pay : d eyes over some £5 which is also like 30min on minimum wage worst case scenario : p But that's not to be confused on stuff they should fix. Such as even contrast, for accessibility reasons - companies get sued over this, so would I pay for them to change it? No, they'll just pay a fine in a lawsuit. So better fix that stuff.

But that's just what I think...

@aurelianspodarec

One thing that is annoying when you watch a video and go to other pages the video keeps appearing at the bottom and auto starts, like f me. Annoying.

Go to the settings a disable Float Video Player (Picture in Picture)

@MichalOravec But it still doesn't fix the issue that its bugged - but thanks for telling me as well ^^

@tykus Thanks. I've updated the color to match what Nova uses on their home page.

@JeffreyWay All is looking better, but the white text is still a little "loud". But the blues are not bad.

@jlrdw I agree that the white text can be a little fuzzy, especially when seeing many paragraphs at once. We'll keep making small adjustments this week.

@JeffreyWay The slightly heavier text has helped (as well as the toned-down darks in the background), but now that the regular body text is at 500, the contrast to bold text at 600 is too subtle. It’s now hard to tell at a glance that the words ‘bold text’ in the previous sentence are in fact in bold – bold should be bumped up to 700 to match.

@JeffreyWay Also, <em> and <i> tags are lumped in with a whole slew of other tags that have font-weight: 400 applied in the style sheet, so italic text is now lighter than regular text. Tags for italic shouldn’t have any font weight declared; they should always inherit from their parent element.

@kokoshneta @jeffreyway Yep. Agreed that the bold needs to be a little heavier now. The font should be more readable after this update.

@jeffreyway @_adrian The like-box seems to have gone haywire in the new theme.

Previously, its behaviour was split in two:

• Hovering over the heart, the cursor would become the pointer cursor. The tooltip shown depended on whether you’d liked the post: on an unliked the post, it said, “Like this Comment”; on a liked post, it presumably said, “Undo like” or something like that (I don’t recall exactly).
• Hovering over the number, the cursor would become the help cursor and a tooltip would show who’d liked the post.

That two-way split is now gone. The cursor always becomes the pointer cursor, over both heart and number, and the tooltip is the same as well:

• On an unliked post, it says, “Like this Comment”;
• On a liked post, it shows the list of who’s liked it.

@rodrigo.pedra This makes me very happy!

@jeffreyway As others have mentioned, I love the dark mode, and mostly everything I use I have in dark mode. With that said, having the ability to switch between them is huge in my opinion, and I even find myself doing so depending which device I am using at the time. Keep up the great work!

@jeffreyway @_adrian

Just to let you know, empty state screen on "My Questions" section has white text over light blue background on light mode.

Also the paginator previous/next pills are with white text over light gray background when disabled, e.g. when on first or last page. Not sure this last one is intended, as when they have a white text they are disabled, but thought on sharing.