Need better dark theme
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I use dark or "dark-ish" themes not because I want my applications to look "spoooky and kewl", but because blinding white backgrounds hurt my eyes.
The default dark theme that comes with Vivaldi these days (for Windows, I haven't tried on other desktop platforms yet) strikes me as something designed to look more "kewl" than practical.
For example: just now I was looking for something in history, and opened an expanded history window. This window is chock full of buttons, legends, scrollbars, pie charts, misc controls, etc etc.
But many of these UI elements are either invisible or nearly invisible because they are so dark that their edges "fade into the background". I don't just need a button, I need the button to have a border, so I can see where it stops and the neighboring UI element starts, or else I keep clicking on the wrong thing. Same thing for a scrollbar. I kept having to poke all over the place trying to figure out where the scrollbar is because it literally disappears one second after you release it. (It does this same "disappearing act" even in all the settings menus!)
Is there a place to download themes? If so, does anyone have a suggestion for a dark or dark-ish theme that doesn't suffer from these horrible ergonomic problems? The only other dark theme that seems to ship with the browser ("Blueprint") is ultra-gaudy to me.
TIA
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@ImaginaryFreedom There is a topic on Post Your Color Scheme at Vivaldi
I hate dark themes, they make the UI unreadable for me.
I read somewhere that monitors are usually set with their brightness at 100% . Turn it down using the monitor's control buttons to reduce the vivid white.
The Reader View is also a great way to make distracting sites much more pleasant to read. You can set it to use your current theme, which will allow you to adjust the background page colour, etc.
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I would go even further. More choice of dark themes that also applied to the webpages. It really isn't pleasant browsing the web late at night when you load a bright page. I would also like to see the web panel icons blend in with the style of the native icons (bookmarks, notes, history).
The 'Filter Invert'* only applies to the current page so useless when you have to load a bright page before you can manually apply this.
*Page Actions > Filter Invert
I find the Dracula Theme rather pleasant as it reduces the brightness without the harshly looking inverted colour scheme. I duplicated the theme and changed the Foreground Colour to my liking.
The Dark Reader extension takes care of the webpages and content by changing all webpages to dark mode, and for any new tabs, you open.
https://draculatheme.com/vivaldi
https://darkreader.org/help/en/ -
@ImaginaryFreedom Hi, you can
-discuss/look at themes in the design section:
https://forum.vivaldi.net/category/6/design
-search/ask for relevant modifications according to your needs in:
https://forum.vivaldi.net/category/52/modifications
-request button borders in the feature request forum:
https://forum.vivaldi.net/category/113/feature-requests-for-desktop -
@otto said in Need better dark theme:
I would go even further. More choice of dark themes that also applied to the webpages. It really isn't pleasant browsing the web late at night when you load a bright page. I would also like to see the web panel icons blend in with the style of the native icons (bookmarks, notes, history).
What I have been doing for some years now in Firefox-based browsers is use an extension called "Dark background and light text", which uses one of several optional methods to modify the html/css/etc on a page to force (usually) your preferred foreground/background/font/link colors.
I don't use that extension's default colors (because I think a nearly black background with light text is almost as bad as a blinding white background and dark text), what I generally do is use a medium gray for the background.
I don't think this kind of extension is possible using the Web Extensions API (Pre-Quantum FF extensions have a lot more functionality) but I haven't looked recently for a equivalent, I will put that on my mental shortlist. (EDIT: Well if Dark Reader can do it then that suggests others can as well. Good news.
)The 'Filter Invert'* only applies to the current page so useless when you have to load a bright page before you can manually apply this.
Yeah, I think I need something a little more subtly designed than just a color inversion. (I tried that once upon a time on an iPhone before Apple finally added a dark theme option and the results were not pretty.
)I find the Dracula Theme rather pleasant as it reduces the brightness without the harshly looking inverted colour scheme. I duplicated the theme and changed the Foreground Colour to my liking.
The Dark Reader extension takes care of the webpages and content by changing all webpages to dark mode, and for any new tabs, you open.
https://draculatheme.com/vivaldi
https://darkreader.org/help/en/Thanks for those suggestions, I'll check them out.
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@npro said in Need better dark theme:
@ImaginaryFreedom Hi, you can
-discuss/look at themes in the design section:
https://forum.vivaldi.net/category/6/design
-search/ask for relevant modifications according to your needs in:
https://forum.vivaldi.net/category/52/modifications
-request button borders in the feature request forum:
https://forum.vivaldi.net/category/113/feature-requests-for-desktopThanks for the helpful links.
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@ImaginaryFreedom said in Need better dark theme:
@npro said in Need better dark theme:
@ImaginaryFreedom Hi, you can
-discuss/look at themes in the design section:
https://forum.vivaldi.net/category/6/design
-search/ask for relevant modifications according to your needs in:
https://forum.vivaldi.net/category/52/modifications
-request button borders in the feature request forum:
https://forum.vivaldi.net/category/113/feature-requests-for-desktopThanks for the helpful links.
No problem. Just a quick search in that modification link shows it contains many things that you've asked for like:
https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/34441/border-buttons-with-highlight-theme-color
https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/36315/vivaldi-ui-scrolls-with-highlight-color
https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/26798/webpages-scrollbars-with-var-color-mod-extension-hybridI have no reason to believe that they shouldn't work but you 'd better test them by yourself following the instructions about modding there.
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@ImaginaryFreedom I know, right! The black background and white text is a crime against night owls with dilated pupils
Dark Reader offers an experimental theme engine for solarized and various subtly different dark modes. I quite like the following themes:
Dark Reader > More > Static
Dark Reader > More > DynamicThere's also an option to apply a degree of grayscale,
Dark Reader > Filter > Grayscale {bump up percentage}
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@otto said in Need better dark theme:
@ImaginaryFreedom I know, right! The black background and white text is a crime against night owls with dilated pupils
Dark Reader offers an experimental theme engine for solarized and various subtly different dark modes. I quite like the following themes:
Dark Reader > More > Static
Dark Reader > More > DynamicThere's also an option to apply a degree of grayscale,
Dark Reader > Filter > Grayscale {bump up percentage}
I've got Dark Reader bookmarked for when I feel like doodling around with the settings for a while. (Not a big fan of their default theme)
Hopefully I won't forget about it like all the other things on my physical and mental shortlist (actually very long list
:smiling_face_with_open_mouth_smiling_eyes: ) -
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