Website dark theme

How to implement a dark theme for your website, plus a small discussion on the recent redesign that aims at simplifying the experience

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5 minute read

If you are like me and you like your user interfaces to be as dark as possible, you have the dark mode preference of your browser enabled. You may have noted that this site has now a dark mode which is activated by default. This is done by querying the prefers-color-scheme setting in the browser. This post describes how this is done, and it discusses a few tweaks I have implemented design-wise to simplify things and remove useless visual elements.

All major browsers nowadays support dark themes by default. I’m not talking about the interface of the browser itself, but the setting where the browser informs the website that the user prefers dark themes. This has the upside of being totally seamless for the user. Just set the flag in the browser configuration and websites that do support a dark mode should honor it. Additionally, we may want to provide a visual control to override the default behavior in the form of a button or a checkbox.

How is this implemented practically?

Usually, we just need to use the @media query checking for the dark or light theme preference, like this:

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@media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
    // Dark styling example
    body {
        color: white;
        background-color: black;
    }
}
@media (prefers-color-scheme: light) {
    // Dark styling example
    body {
        color: black;
        background-color: white;
    }
}

The browser should be able to pick up the right theme depending on the user-set preference.

However, this is fully automatic, and I want the user to be able to override the browser setting by clicking on a button (/). To that purpose, I have written a very small javascript file (Edit: the contents of the file are now served inline to reduce the amount of requests) which checks whether the browser setting is available and enabled. If so, then the dark mode CSS class "dark-mode" is added to a few DOM elements (namely the <body>, the <header> and #menu). The following snippet contains the main CSS setup for the default (light) and dark modes. The values of the colors themselves are defined in the theme CSS file.

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body {
    color: var(--fg-color);
    background-color: var(--bg-color);
}
.dark-mode{
    color: var(--fg-color-dark);
    background-color: var(--bg-color-dark);
}

If the setting is not set or not available, we fall back to checking the sessionStorage.1

Session storage

The sessionStorage is a privacy-respecting alternative to the localStorage or the browser cookies that expires when the page session ends (i.e. the page is closed). So, if a named setting for the current domain (I call it "dark-mode") is set to true, then we apply the dark theme. If it is unset, or it is set to false, we don’t.

The last piece of the puzzle is the theme switcher button / which lets the user set the sessionStorage "dark-mode" property, and we’ve got it all covered. Note that the button must be updated, as it shows a sun in dark mode and a moon in light mode.

The darkmode.js file

By default, the browser preference is queried and honored. If the user chooses to override the default behavior via the UI button, then the sessionStorage is used. Below is the darkmode.js file I’m using.

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if(sessionStorage.getItem("dark-mode") == "true") {
    // Toggle dark-mode class if "dark-mode" property of sessionStorage is true
    darkModeAdd();
} else if (window.matchMedia && 
    window.matchMedia('(prefers-color-scheme: dark)').matches && 
    sessionStorage.getItem("dark-mode") == null) {
    // Otherwise, check browser setting "prefers-color-scheme" is set to "dark"
    darkModeAdd();
}

function darkModeAdd() {
    document.body.classList.add("dark-mode");
    document.getElementsByTagName('header')[0].classList.add("dark-mode");
    document.getElementById('menu').classList.add("dark-mode");
    updateLightsButton(true);
}
function darkModeToggle() {
    var is_dark = document.body.classList.contains("dark-mode");
    // Add classes
    document.body.classList.toggle("dark-mode");
    document.getElementsByTagName('header')[0].classList.toggle("dark-mode");
    document.getElementById('menu').classList.toggle("dark-mode");
    hasDark = document.body.classList.contains("dark-mode");
    sessionStorage.setItem("dark-mode", hasDark);
    updateLightsButton(!is_dark);
}
function updateLightsButton(is_dark) {
    var lights = document.getElementById('lights');
    lights.classList.remove("fa-sun", "fa-moon");
    if(is_dark) {
       lights.classList.add("fa-sun"); 
    } else {
       lights.classList.add("fa-moon"); 
    }
}

It contains two functions and an initial setup. The second function, darkModeToggle(), is run whenever the user clicks on the dark mode UI control (the little moon/sun / to the top-right of the page). It sets the "dark-mode" property in the sessionStorage.

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<li class="menu">
    <a href="javascript:darkModeToggle()" style="border: none;" title="Toggle dark mode">
        <i class="fa fa-lightbulb-o" aria-hidden="true"></i>
    </a>
</li>

All that’s left is actually implementing the dark mode style in your CSS files. In my case, it is very minimal. I just change the background and text color defaults and call it a day.

Dark mode in qutebrowser

Qutebrowser really makes things easy. You just need to add the line

c.colors.webpage.prefers_color_scheme_dark = True

to your config.py, or look for the setting prefers_color_scheme_dark in :set and set it to true.

Dark mode in firefox

The setting in Firefox is a bit more obscure. I found many places which pointed to settings to be set in about:config, but none of these worked for me. What worked, however, is the extension Dark Website Forcer. I don’t use Firefox very often, and I’m not too fond of filling it up with extensions/add-ons, so there’s that.

Website redesign

On another note, I have also been making some tweaks to the website to make it more usable.

I have removed the sidebar, which contained superfluous information, I have made the default font size larger, I have adjusted the fonts, the margins, and the paddings, and I have added a small “Latest posts” at the bottom of the welcome page. I have also removed all font files (except for fork awesome) in favor of the default font families (monospace, serif, etc.) and I have moved the social items to the footer. All of this on top of the already discussed new dark mode.

The result is, in my opinion, a much cleaner and less cluttered site, which is easier to read, more gentle to the eyes, and weighs less.

  1. The Window.sessionStorage property: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/sessionStorage ↩︎

Website design by myself. See the privacy policy.
Content licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 .