Do you prefer the light or dark style?

Do you prefer the light or dark style?

  • Light

    Votes: 52 45.2%
  • Dark

    Votes: 61 53.0%
  • I don't care

    Votes: 2 1.7%

  • Total voters
    115
light, no brainer after all a full simple light page made google what it is today...:)
 
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Gotta be dark man. Light version is like being in an interrogation room.
 
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In for dark! My PC is setup on a 65" OLED and when a screen is all white I receive a tan.
 
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Come on you people, it's obviously Dark. You light folks are just wrong. You were raised better. Get with the program. Don't see the light and

a rolling stone gathers no moss.
 
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FYI, the XenForo dark/light style actually respects your system and browser settings. So you have three options:

1. pick the light style (sun icon at the top or Lapis Light at the bottom).
2. pick the dark style (moon icon at the top or Lapis Dark at the bottom)
3. pick the "default style" at the bottom. This uses your browser setting for Dark/Light:

Firefox:
1658181534492.png
Windows
1658181583888.png
There are apps in the windows store that change the current mode based on the current time, so it would change to dark after sunset and to light after sunrise.
 
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After more than 15 years of using the light theme, I decided to give the dark theme a try starting about a week ago. I'm still getting used to it, but I think I'm going to stick with the dark.
 
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I've added the option for people to change their votes. I see that newer votes seem to be more in favour of the dark style, so anyone who's changed their mind can change their vote now as well.
 
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Definitely dark, though I used light for the longest time. But I use dark themes everywhere these days - not least because I sit in a very darkened room and my eyes seem to have grown sensitive to the light in recent years.
 
Prefer light but either or
 
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In light of the changed preference of the majority of the users, I've changed the default forum style to "Dark Blue -- Fluid". If you prefer a narrower style in the same colour scheme, you can select "Dark Blue -- Fixed Width". If you still prefer the lighter styles, you can continue using those as well, of course, you'll just need to manually choose them.

To change styles, scroll to the bottom left of any forum page and click the link next to the paintbrush icon to select between the available Light and Dark styles.

@Arhu can you please change the default on the site pages to Dark as well, I'm not sure if there's an admin setting for that as I couldn't find it?
 
Last edited:
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In light of the changed preference of the majority of the users, I've changed the default forum style to "Dark Blue -- Fluid". If you prefer a narrower style in the same colour scheme, you can select "Dark Blue -- Fixed Width". If you still prefer the lighter styles, you can continue using those as well, of course, you'll just need to manually choose them.
Clarification: The "Default" style automatically switches to light or dark depending on browser and/or system settings. See post #45. It sticks only if selected manually via the top right bottom or the bottom left selection menu.

I don't think there ever was a poll for fluid vs fixed, was there? ;)

@Arhu can you please change the default on the site pages to Dark as well, I'm not sure if there's an admin setting for that as I couldn't find it?
Can do tomorrow, although with a the small caveat that the dark preference was probably for the new forum colors, not for the front page. ... Well, that one really needs to be updated, doesn't it? Well, I guess I should at least update the colors to make them match with the forum. That shouldn't be too hard.
 
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Clarification: The "Default" style automatically switches to light or dark depending on browser and/or system settings. See post #45. It sticks only if selected manually via the top right bottom or the bottom left selection menu.
While that sounds interesting on paper, in practice I don't see changing the style to match the time of day as something that would be very welcome. If you prefer dark like me, you're not going to prefer light during daytime just because the sun's still out. So can you please disable that as I'd like to go for a consistent user experience as far as the style goes? We've already got a lot of styles to choose from so this will be confusing for a good number of users, but automatically switching styles for them based on the time of day is even more so as this is not the norm on forums.

Can do tomorrow, although with a the small caveat that the dark preference was probably for the new forum colors, not for the front page. ... Well, that one really needs to be updated, doesn't it? ;)

I should probably at least update the dark colors...
Well, the site pages are close enough to the dark on the forums for now, but updating the style there to match the forums would be welcome, when you have the time, sure.
 
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While that sounds interesting on paper, in practice I don't see changing the style to match the time of day as something that would be very welcome. If you prefer dark like me, you're not going to prefer light during daytime just because the sun's still out. So can you please disable that as I'd like to go for a consistent user experience as far as the style goes? We've already got a lot of styles to choose from so this will be confusing for a good number of users, but automatically switching styles for them based on the time of day is even more so as this is not the norm on forums.
You misunderstood. It doesn't match the time of the day, it only matches your browser or system setting. If your browser is set to dark because you prefer dark, unregistered visitors and users that haven't customized their style get a dark style on the forum. If the browser setting is set to "system", the website uses the dark/light setting from the OS, which is normally fixed too. I find this a lot more consistent and preferable to making a fixed default for everyone, because when all is said and done, the user split is still about 50%.

The "based on the time of day" thing is just my personal preference and I had to specifically download an app that automatically changes my Windows setting accordingly. That's independent of how the website works, however.
 
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There were a few members who liked the idea of light/dark changing with the system (possibly time of day) if I remember well.

I was surprised the other day, I was watching a live video of a programming course, and the author switched all his browser windows to dark, apparently after popular demand in the previous videos. Sounds like many people are living in a relatively dark environment and so it burns their eyes if they suddenly look at a light theme. Probably not the best for their eyes in the long term.
 
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You misunderstood. It doesn't match the time of the day, it only matches your browser or system setting. If your browser is set to dark because you prefer dark, unregistered visitors and users that haven't customized their style get a dark style on the forum. If the browser setting is set to "system", the website uses the dark/light setting from the OS, which is normally fixed too. I find this a lot more consistent and preferable to making a fixed default for everyone, because when all is said and done, the user split is still about 50%.
The system/browser setting for light/dark is relatively new, so I expect that the majority of less advanced users haven't switched from the default light, so I wouldn't rely on that. The general preference on the Watch used to be light as well, but that started shifting considerably and very fast once users were made aware of the choice between light and dark via the poll and the explicit explanation on how to change styles (along with the changes to the dark style, of course). Consequently, I'm pretty sure that the previous "preference" for light was largely due to people not knowing that there even was a dark style that they could use and so never trying it out.

As I mentioned, I'm going for a consistent user experience here and I'm really not keen on the idea of making the site appear in the light style to everyone who hasn't changed their default OS setting, which is usually the majority of less advanced users. Plus, the difference in favour of the dark style is 6% at this point already and it's been growing every month.

I was surprised the other day, I was watching a live video of a programming course, and the author switched all his browser windows to dark, apparently after popular demand in the previous videos. Sounds like many people are living in a relatively dark environment and so it burns their eyes if they suddenly look at a light theme. Probably not the best for their eyes in the long term.
For me working with dark backgrounds is much easier on the eyes than light, especially if you're used to working into the night. Hasn't been in any way detrimental to my vision, which has been more or less consistent for years, so I think that that's a myth that your vision will deteriorate if you use a dark background.
 
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