GUI designers. WHY?

Edward78 · December 25, 2023

Remember back when Windows had the metal looking gray prog. windows/dialog boxe, with black fonts the white seemed better to. I have vision issues so maybe it is just me? Snyway why dp they not make it easy to read anymore? The fonts are grsy mpe. thhat just seems like a obvious don't do it. I mtam really, I feel so bad I can't read unless it is in dark mode. Linux/Unix/Mac have it right. Dark mode, that is copied sys wide (well Linux/Unix if the same GUI tool is used on the app.) The thing is Windows, why. Why do the 3rd party apps. not copy dark mode? That is how apps should be written, to copy the OS theme/ Who decided to make font gray? I mean it would be easy right? High contrast in Windows forces globel dark mode, why doesn't this happen in normal Drk mode? Now for browsers, why are bookmarks not white in Dark mode? Plus, OMG, the little bell drop down replies to posts is white here with Dark reader, why? With Dark background hite text it is all good, but that just randomly breaks on me. It is like programmers actively don't care.

mariushm · December 25, 2023

It's complicated.

On CRT monitors white consumes more power. Gray was more pleasing to the eye, less eye strain, especially at low refresh rates (under 85 Hz)

Also, back then on Windows 95 and Windows 98 computers were less powerful and video cards only provided minimal 2D hardware acceleration (draw rectangles, flood fill regions etc etc)

Pixels on CRT monitors are not perfectly square and they're not a fixed size, the size of individual pixels varies with size, and they can blend in with the other dots to make text relatively easy to read. On modern LCD screens, the pixel size is fixed, so if you scale fonts to various sizes you would get ugly fonts without tricks like antialiasing, cleartype and other methods that change the color of some pixels in letters or even add pixels around the characters to make the characters more visually pleasing or easier to see.

As for why some applications don't copy stuff... laziness, multiple standards for it, sometimes it's just consequence of what developers use to make the program (for example they may use a cross platform library or something to draw GUIs writing code once for multiple operating systems (Linux, Mac, Windows) and that library may not have implemented support for dark mode or high contrast themes.

kirashi · December 25, 2023

58 minutes ago, Edward78 said:

The thing is Windows, why. Why do the 3rd party apps. not copy dark mode? That is how apps should be written, to copy the OS theme/ Who decided to make font gray? I mean it would be easy right? High contrast in Windows forces globel dark mode, why doesn't this happen in normal Drk mode?

If you're referring to certain legacy / older applications, there's a very real possibility that it's got less to do with Windows and more to do with how those applications were written and compiled. Developers also have to ensure their applications comply with modern Windows Operating Systems.