Talk:Reading/Web/Accessibility for reading/Archive1

originally posted on Talk:Reading/Web/Desktop Improvements

Hi

Thanks a lot for your work!

Comparing vector-2022 with minerva I think vector-2022 is much more mature and better. But there are some details in minerva which I prefer. Most of all the font and font size of the text.

So: Why not to change font-size in .vector-body to 1em (or 100%)?

I think that would be a uge improvement in readability and look. Even headings would still be fine with the current size.

But I have not tested it in different devices, browsers, screens etc. so maybe there is a reason why the font size is reduced in default vector-2022? Bwana.elias (talk) 14:58, 27 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

Hello @Bwana.elias. It's interesting that you reach out to us about this now! I'd like to encourage you to read the project page this very talk page is connected to. On it, we explain why and what we would like to change. (Spoiler alert, it's not just about font size, but also information density, so for example line height!) SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 15:23, 27 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

Hi @SGrabarczuk (WMF) thanks for pointing me here. Sorry, I have just registered at wikipedia/mediawiki for the first time and thougt I start discussing immediately :)) Will have a look at the project page. BR Bwana.elias (talk) 16:03, 29 September 2023 (UTC)Reply

A question about translation: This text mentions the possibility to click the "share my preferences" button. Where is the label of this buttion translated? Amir E. Aharoni {{🌎🌍🌏}} 14:56, 6 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

Hey @Amire80, it's in the translatable, although hidden, part of Reading/Web/Accessibility for reading/Community prototype testing. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 15:01, 6 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

I just wanted to have a look at this when I saw the banner in en.Wikipedia. Now I cannot close the window, because there is no "cancel" option. A look at "Preferences" did not help either. There must be a way to cancel the survey and to close the window! Kallichore (talk) 14:34, 9 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

I have the same problem. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:25, 9 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

Me too! I was happy to try it, but I would really appreciate being able to remove it! Lajmmoore (talk) 13:49, 10 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

Hey @Kallichore, Jc3s5h, and Lajmmoore: thanks for reaching out to us 🙂 In the widget, right above the buttons, there's a sentence "Click here to remove this tool." In addition to that, soon we'll disable this tool on English Wikipedia because we have plenty of replies already. I hope this helps! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 17:00, 10 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, the button worked for me. --Kallichore (talk) 18:09, 10 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

In the text it says "In particular, we're not planning on providing sliders or individual settings for font size, line height, or spacing.", and I just can't help but wonder why? Wouldn't this benefit people who would want to customize it to their needs? Projects like wikiwand do it and it works pretty well for them, so I can't see the reason why not. But other than that Vector 2022 is awesome, thank you for the work you do. WanderingMorpheme (talk) 22:21, 12 October 2023 (UTC)Reply

Hello @WanderingMorpheme! I'm sorry for not answering earlier! At first, I wasn't 100% sure how to answer, and it took me too long to ask my colleagues. I'm embarrassed because it's a very good and a very basic question 🤦

So the answer is:

We will change the default to improve the basic state of things. We will add some customizations for people to adjust the text to their needs. But there's a limit. By introducing options, we're adding permutations, and we should be careful about those.

(Just in case anyone reading this is not familiar with the term, a permutation is a specific arrangement of options. If there are three font sizes, three font families, and three colors for each, there are "all of the sudden" 27 permutations.)

We have adjustable interface with lots of possible permutations already. Everything we do, we need to test against all the permutations we're responsible for. Adding too many options to choose between results in, for example: 1. difficulty of maintaining what already exists, 2. reluctance to add more features. So it's a matter of some balance, how many great permutations do we really want to be responsible for.

I hope this helps! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 02:08, 8 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

This was a great answer, thank you. WanderingMorpheme (talk) 02:14, 8 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

Hello,

I red this article https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/11/24/dark-mode-is-coming/ and I would just like to mention that I would like an automatic dark mode if the user’s operating system is configured on dark mode. So it would automatically follow the system’s setting.

This way, any logged-out user would have a setting that would most probably be his/her best choice. Having to log-in or even worse create an account to set a dark mode is not satisfying in my opinion.

In the article, a "toggle" is mentioned but I would prefer an automatic setting without user action. Therefore, no "white flash" would be displayed at the loading of a web page.

I think technically it would use this but I am not an expert: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/prefers-color-scheme

Thanks a lot

Sensas817 (talk) 19:03, 27 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

I saw someone say this somewhere else, and I wholeheartedly agree. I associate "night mode" with the ability to adjust the hue to warmer colors and reduce blue light (whose efficacy in reducing eye strain is disputed but which Android/macOS/iOS/Windows nonetheless provide). What you're building is a dark mode. Calling it a night mode is at best ambiguous and confusing. Nardog (talk) 00:38, 29 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

@SGrabarczuk (WMF): Where/how was the decision to use "night mode" in lieu of "dark mode" made? What is the rationale? Nardog (talk) 13:25, 30 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

Hi there,

Thanks so much for your feedback. I agree that using the label "Night mode" would create some confusion with "night shift"-style colour shifting features in other programs. The actual term "night mode" is only something that we're using in project documentation. Those words don't appear anywhere in the UI that we're working on, as you can see in this Phabricator ticket for implementing the appearance settings interface copy. We call it "Color: Night/Day" in the interface.

The reason we chose Night/Day instead of Dark/Light was primarily for translation reasons. Based on languages spoken on the team, Night/Day is more translatable and has fewer potentially problematic value connotations that we were aware of. I hope that helps to clarify the rationale behind the decision. Thanks again for your feedback! JScherer-WMF (talk) 22:30, 5 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

It's interesting to see "colour" in the new theme menu prototype. It'd be cool if it followed w:Template:Use British English or other English varieties templates. Or maybe better to just find another word that sidesteps the issue. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 17:54, 15 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Hey @Sdkb! Thanks, this spelling may indeed be confusing. I doubt it will make it on production, though. The reason why it is in the prototype in the first place is because our designer is based in Canada 🙂 But the spelling on prod seems to be AmE. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 19:29, 15 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

For years, I've been using the Chrome browser zoom feature at 150% or so, in order to comfortably read content on Wikimedia sites. Now that you've added the built-in accessibility features for text size and page width, I am able to reset Browser Zoom to 100% default, and the native tool works God's miracles! Hooray! Elizium23 (talk) 00:44, 17 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

I like the old "Cog in the bottom right" design much better, especially when logged out and unpinned, where this looks quite jarring. Is there a way to combine the two designs, like make a cog styled like the width toggle in the lower-right that brings up this menu which can be pinned, plus the width section is disabled with a relevant help message when it wouldn't do anything? Aaron Liu (talk) 22:01, 12 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

also New Vector sucks for screenreaders. However, there's a beta feature for New Vector called Accessibility for Reading. Right now it is really basic, but I really wish that an option to display all links will be available there.

— @CactiStaccingCrane, Reply to @Moxy

Aaron Liu (talk) 14:24, 14 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thank you so much for putting my comment here 🙂 CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 14:25, 14 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Very excited to see that dark mode will be coming eventually - I read about it in the enwiki Signpost today. One concern, however: Too many dark modes on websites use pure black as the background colour. This also causes eyestrain and personally causes headaches, especially with pure white text on top. One solution could be to have two different dark modes, one with pure black and one with a shade of dark gray - that then accomodates those who prefer the pure black. Suntooooth (talk) 21:32, 24 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Hey @Suntooooth, thank you for your comment. I haven't talked about this with the team, but I guess you're very right and this is a known issue. I believe the plan is to use some very dark color, most likely from an existing palette, but not   black. Anyway, I've let Justin, our designer, know that you've raised this point. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 18:50, 3 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Pure black has theoretical advantages for OLED and other emissive displays where black pixels draw little power, if any. But I agree with Suntooooth that it can look harsh. I think you should offer both. The Wikipedia iOS app has white, sepia, and two blacks. As does Reading Mode in iOS Safari. – Pelagic (talk) 22:03, 1 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for the feedback @Suntooooth! We do not intend to use #000000 as the dark background in the new Night colour palette. I agree that it's harsh and results in a poorer reading experience. JScherer-WMF (talk) 20:40, 6 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Some might want this to also be able to add section numbers to the TOC.. Aaron Liu (talk) 15:44, 23 January 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thanks @Aaron Liu. Do I understand correctly that you're pointing at the known request for a change in the TOC in Vector 2022? SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 16:50, 21 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

As a person who doesn't like TOC numbering, I'm saying that a toggle for it could be added in Accessibility for reading. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:54, 21 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Tried this feature, but found that the font size adjustment doesn't work in Chinese wikipedia. This is because the font size of Chinese wikipedia is designated as 15px, and the designation has higher priority than the font size adjustment.

I think the default 15px of Chinese wikipedia is an optimization for hanzi, so I checked Japanese wikipedia which also uses kanji (=hanzi). It turns out, the same applies to Japanese, the default font size is also 15px, and font size adjustment doesn't work as well. Tcbbd (talk) 16:08, 21 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thanks @Tcbbd for this message, I'll let my team mates know! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 16:11, 21 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

@SGrabarczuk (WMF) and Tcbbd: Hello, the reason why it is not working is because of the conflict between the default gadget "大字體 (large font)", which increase the font size, and the beta feature. You can disable this gadget in your preference. I will pass this issue to Chinese Wikipedia community. Thanks. SCP-2000 (talk) 17:14, 21 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

First thing I noticed after turning on the beta is that Larger size feels very dense on an iPad.

Haven't yet tried it on other platforms to find out if this is the general issue that Nclm posted above, or if it's more pronounced on the tablet because of V2022's lack of responsive scaling.

I agree that there should be less relative leading at larger point sizes; the current Larger needs just a little more.

Perhaps there could be a separate selection for tight / medium / loose.

– Pelagic (talk) 21:54, 1 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

On desktop Large doesn't seem tight, just really big. Also on tablet, setting the reading size to larger doesn't help with font size in the classic wikitext editor. Pelagic (talk) 09:54, 9 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for your feedback here @Pelagic! You're not the only one who has been giving feedback along these lines. As I mentioned above in the conversation with @Nclm, I've refactored the designs to have more breathing room going forward. Keep an eye on the phab tickets and please try it out again on your iPad when they've been released (should be next week or the week after). I'd love to hear what you think of the refactored designs. Thanks again! JScherer-WMF (talk) 13:32, 1 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Testing now the version on the French Wikipedia. Great feature, thanks!

For the font size option however, the line height for “standard” and “large” is far too tight. I would love to set it to “standard” for my own use, but the readability is affected by that low leading, so I switched back to “small”.

By the way, there is a major translation mistake for the “type size” label (“type” translated as if to mean “a kind”, not as “typography”). I fixed it, I think, on TranslateWiki (not sure it is the right place for that), but I don’t know when it will be updated on the live wiki? Nclm (talk) 19:50, 8 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

More specifically, I see it is set to 1.5 in “standard”. After trying out, I think values around 1.75 are much more pleasing typographically. Nclm (talk) 20:12, 8 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Thanks so much for your feedback! And thank you for catching that translation mistake! The decision to have the line-height at 1.5 was made for several reasons:

1. This is the recommended ratio that we saw in the academic literature on readability that we reviewed.
2. In the prototyping exercise we did with community members, line heights tended to get relatively denser as the font increased in size.
3. We wanted to make sure that the increased font-size wouldn't increase the height of articles too much and create a lot more scrolling for folks who are scanning for specific information.

If you're a frequent reader, any change to the typography will probably feel a bit strange at first because it's different that you're used to. That effect should also become less prominent with time.

Thanks again for your feedback and for reaching out! JScherer-WMF (talk) 22:14, 14 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Hi, thanks for your answer!

I have now been reading in “Standard” for a couple of weeks and it is still very tight, and feels more tight than most other content I am reading online.

Line height is only one factor, and the exact design of the typeface used (and its x-height, opening of lowercase letterforms, etc) also has an effect here. Since you don’t have, I think, control on the exact font (I believe you are using the default system sans-serif), it might be that text can appear tighter on some systems than others.

If you could still consider setting it a tiny bit higher, possibly 1.6, that would already make a lot of difference already.

1.6 is for instance what Medium is using. I had a look at a few newspapers and blogs, and I see ranges between 1.5 and 1.8. Again, it depends on the type family 🙂 I think 1.5 could work if you had control over the font and it was the right one for this leading size, but you’ll be a bit safer with something a little more generous.

It would also be interesting the consider different line heights depending on the column width: the longer the lines, the harder it is to “catch” the next line.

Nclm (talk) 10:25, 20 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Thank you so much for your collaboration on this. I've reviewed your feedback, as well as lots of feedback on the recent changes in Minerva along these lines. I think I over-applied the "maintain or increase density as a scanning affordance" insight from the research, and I've refactored the designs in Vector and Minerva to have more breathing room. In the case of the Large size on Vector, to your original comment, the changes are especially beneficial. So thanks again for your feedback! JScherer-WMF (talk) 13:27, 1 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Sounds great, thank you very much! 🙂 Nclm (talk) 19:10, 2 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

@SGrabarczuk (WMF) przyjąć nazwę "ciemny" czy "nocny"? wargo (talk) 09:25, 20 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

(Przeniosłem tu, bo jedną stronę dyskusji każdemu łatwiej obserwować i możemy prowadzić wielojęzyczne dyskusje.)

Dobre pytanie. Wobec angielskiej wersji jesteśmy zdecydowani, że na razie "nocny" i zmienimy to, jeśli testy wykażą, że "ciemny" jest bardziej zrozumiały. Ale w innych językach jesteśmy bardziej elastyczni, nie robimy dla nich testów i godzimy się na "ciemny", jeśli jest standardem. Moje tłumaczenie na "ciemny" jest 100% "na czuja" - bo wydaje mi się, że ta wersja jest bardziej popularna. Ale w Google'u "nocny" ma więcej wyników. Więc ostatnio trzymam się bardziej "nocnego". SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 11:44, 21 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

My user signature was recently disabled on English Wikipedia (it appears to still be working here, oddly). The preferences page indicates that there's a lint error related to night mode, but the actual documentation page says it's still undergoing testing and has a priority level of zero. I don't plan for my signature to display any differently in night mode — it'll still be white text on a dark background. It's not clear how I could fix this error, especially while staying under the 255-character length limit, so I'd appreciate it if whoever enabled this requirement could please roll it back until it's developed better. Sdkb ^talk 19:37, 21 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

I have filed task T360797 for a related nesting error. Jonesey95 (talk) 16:53, 22 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Sdkb: to fix this you need to add "color:inherit" in front of "background:linear-gradient" that should fix the issue (this won't change anything about the appearance). We are recommending that whenever background is defined, color should also be explicitly define so that night mode doesn't alter the color (in a similar way to how the notheme class has been used for apps).

I don't think this should trigger an error for signatures in the way it does so I've raised phab:T360796 to make sure this is reconsidered. Jdlrobson (talk) 16:54, 22 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

This should now be fixed. Thanks for the report!

Note: this will still be flagged by the linter and this is intentional. I have clarified this on mw:Help:Lint_errors/night-mode-unaware-background-color#How_to_fix. Jdlrobson (talk) 18:26, 22 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hello guys! We are also introducing dark mode on the Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia and I am honestly really excited about it. A colleague on our project told me that the wikilinks appear, as usual, in blue but in dark mode blue and black colour tend to blend together and make reading more tiring. Have you encountered the same problem? Is there any way to do something? Maybe, bringing the link to a shade of light blue or even pink... Cheers--Inokosni organ (talk) 22:55, 25 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thanks @Inokosni organ. You're not the first one to point at this issue. @Msz2001 noticed that, too. I'll let our designer know. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 23:55, 26 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thank you, Szymon! --Inokosni organ (talk) 00:00, 27 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Inokosni organThanks for flagging this! It's a very valid concern. The answer to your question is yes, we have considered it. The links are a different shade of blue to compensate for the dark background. We built a new colour palette to make sure that all of the colour combinations in dark mode have at least a 4.5:1 contrast ratio per Web Accessibility standards. In some cases, the dark mode version of the pages is more accessible than the light mode version. JScherer-WMF (talk) 15:39, 27 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Why doesn't the Japanese Wikipedia write "About Accessibility for Reading" in Japanese? Ghost caterpillar (talk) 22:28, 21 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hello @Ghost caterpillar, thanks for this question. I'm not sure I understand you, though. Are you asking about the Japanese translation of the page Reading/Web/Accessibility for reading? Or do you mean something on Japanese Wikipedia? SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 22:37, 21 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

I'm sorry. I'll paste the link so you can move it.[1] Ghost caterpillar (talk) 22:48, 21 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thanks @Ghost caterpillar. It would be good if this was fixed indeed 🙂

This is in English because it hasn't been translated into Japanese yet. Any Japanese speaker can add the translations here. Translatewiki is not a Wikimedia wiki, so a new account needs to be created first. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 16:33, 22 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Does translatewiki mean translation software (?)? Ghost caterpillar (talk) 23:23, 22 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Translatewiki is a wiki where the interface is translated. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 23:47, 22 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

I got off topic. sorry.

Should I ask that it be written in Japanese after all? Ghost caterpillar (talk) 23:57, 22 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

That's absolutely ok 🙂 If you are a Japanese and English speaker, you can create an account on translatewiki, and add the translations yourself. Another way would be to ask someone else to do that. These translations are done by editors. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 00:05, 23 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Who should I ask? Ghost caterpillar (talk) 00:12, 23 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

I made a mistake in the letters. sorry.

Because I'm using translation. Ghost caterpillar (talk) 00:15, 23 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Should I ask the administrator to fix it? Ghost caterpillar (talk) 00:12, 26 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hey @Ghost caterpillar. No, anyone can create an account on translatewiki, not only administrators. So anyone speaking both Japanese and English could help. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 23:57, 26 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

yes. Understood. Ghost caterpillar (talk) 09:33, 28 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

I'll fix it someday. Thank you very much. Ghost caterpillar (talk) 09:35, 28 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hello

@SGrabarczuk (WMF): moved page Recommendations for dark mode compatibility on Wikimedia wikis to Recommendations for night mode compatibility on Wikimedia wikis with the reason "change of the term", but otherwise it is called Extension:DarkMode, Manual:Dark mode, Category:Dark mode, etc.

Also the HTML class is named "skin-night-mode-1", while "light" and "dark" seem to be normalised : W3C and MDN.

This is a bit confusing, and without a good reason, it should be avoided.

Regards, Şÿℵדαχ₮ɘɼɾ๏ʁ 01:48, 27 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Please see Reading/Web/Accessibility for reading/Frequently asked questions. Jdlrobson (talk) 01:56, 27 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Ah ah ah, I was expecting that it was because some people were afraid of the term "dark". Stop cringing, "dark" is neutral and just means "lack of light". Od1n (talk) 02:02, 27 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Meanwhile, "day" and "night" sound inappropriate to me, as there is no strong relationship between the color theme and the time of the day. Most people set a theme and stay on it, whether it's day or night. And more simply, colors can be "light" and "dark", but colors are certainly not "day" or "night"… Od1n (talk) 02:23, 27 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Jdlrobson : how many people decided that? You are the author of the page you quote, and I cannot find a single mention of this alleged issue anywhere.

If W3C, Firefox, Google [2], Microsoft [3], etc. choose "Dark", it is not likely to be a problem.

Why shouldn't Wikimedia follow the norm, given the confusion it will create?

A wider consultation needs to be carried out, because I think this is the decision of only a few people.

Regards, Şÿℵדαχ₮ɘɼɾ๏ʁ 03:30, 27 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hey @SyntaxTerror and @Od1n, thanks for your curiosity! I think you're right, "dark mode" is sort of a standard. But we wanted to try the day/night option (see the updated answer to the question What is the difference between night mode and dark mode?). We're currently testing the night/dark labels' discoverability and usability. If the results are conclusive, I guess we'll just follow them. So bear with us, we'll let you know when we get them! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 22:40, 28 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

@SGrabarczuk (WMF) thanks for your patronising tone! But where is the discussion leading to this choice ?

Give a link to it instead of posting the same link as above, leading to a page that seems to have been written only by Jdlrobson.

Or prove me that a single black/brown person has already found this offensive, in good faith ? Şÿℵדαχ₮ɘɼɾ๏ʁ 23:46, 28 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

@SyntaxTerror, I didn't mean to sound patronizing, my apologies.

Taking two steps back, I know you're experienced, but I'm not sure how much you know about the Accessibility for reading project (A4R). In your first message, you pointed at an extension, so perhaps you're new to our little world (or context) of the Web team and its projects.

In general, from our perspective, the situation is as follows: this page and A4R are related because both belong to the Web team. Jon is in fact the tech lead for this team (Jon (WMF)), and when he's editing this page, he's doing his job. We update and refer to the recommendations for the purposes of the A4R project. If I'm not mistaken, the night mode built as part of A4R will marginalize the extension. (Edit: at least on the Wikimedia wikis; I'm not talking about third-party wikis using skins other than Vector 2022 and Minerva.) So the word in the page title follows the decision made for A4R.

But wondering how you may have found this page made me think: maybe the recommendations pertain to the concept of dark mode and may work just equally well with gadgets, the extension, browser plugins, and our latest feature, the only official night/dark mode for MediaWiki for desktop and mobile web. If that's true, I might move this page back.

But I wouldn't be doing that just yet because right now, we're trying to limit confusion. The team made a decision ("night" instead of "dark") solely for the purposes of A4R. We're not tied to it. We're now working on the FAQ for that project, and the (updated and corrected) direct answer to your question was given by our designer. In the FAQ, I've linked to the relevant Phabricator task, too.

Does this address your concern better? Thank you, SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 00:35, 29 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

There is no discussion taking place in that Phab link, so I doubt it. Let me ask this from me too: Where can I see the discussion that led to this decision? Nardog (talk) 04:35, 29 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

I think that accessibility implies "understandable by the broadest audience", so I would still opt for light/dark, as these terms are the most common (and even the "canonical" ones), and those that describe the most exactly (day and night being just a visual comparison). And again, there is no problem with the word dark, the fear of using is what causes the fear actually. Od1n (talk) 06:37, 2 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Also, if it's problematic in some languages, why not just let the translators for those languages choose whatever is more appropriate just in those languages? Why bend over backwards and retroactively change the English term, at the sacrifice of that which is more intuitive and easily understood? Nardog (talk) 07:59, 2 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Jdlrobson, Nardog, Od1n, SGrabarczuk (WMF), and SyntaxTerror: Note: I moved this discussion from Talk:Recommendations for night mode compatibility on Wikimedia wikis to here, since it is unrelated to "recommendations for night mode compatibility". Thanks. SCP-2000 (talk) 04:41, 6 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

FYI The relevant discussion #"Night_mode"_is_a_poor_choice. SCP-2000 (talk) 04:43, 6 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

As a native Chinese speaker, I fully agree that "night" mode is more translatable compared to "dark" mode. However, from the readers' point of view, "night" mode may cause confusion for them as it is not a common term and has other meanings, such as dim light and blue light reduction. Since "dark mode" has already been used in several browsers and even in our Wikipedia apps, which have multiple language versions, I believe there will not be excessive difficulties in translation.

Weighting up the benefit and disadvantages, I would prefer to see "dark" mode rather than "night" mode in the interface. Thanks. SCP-2000 (talk) 07:07, 6 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Agreed with @SCP-2000: "dark/light" mode seems to be standard across my OS, browser, other website preferences, and most desktop and mobile apps that I use (which is independent of how that is translated in other languages!). I realize that the mobile app has has a 'night' mode for some time, but that's definitely non-standard 🙂 . Sj (talk) 22:58, 31 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

hej @SGrabarczuk (WMF):  ! Forma void jakos dziwnie wyskakuje na stronie FR oraz inne strony tlumaczone. Mozna poprawic ? Dzieki.

..wasze pomysły wdź i podziel się z nami swoimi przemyśleniami! 2 Wprowadzenie# {{void|1= === Dlaczego nasza praca nad tym jest ważna ===}} W ciągu ostatnich kilku

--Christian 🇫🇷 FR (talk) 17:45, 17 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

There is a site called https://invertornot.com/ that could be useful in automatically adapt images. It uses a small neural network (16MB) to classify images into whether they should have their hues inverted (for graphs or images of text, for example) or instead just be slightly darkened (for photographs of people or natural landscape). The API and model are open source and can be self-hosted - see https://github.com/mattismegevand/invertornot.

Found out about it on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39821632 today, which also has other useful tips, including using the CSS `filter: hue-rotate(180deg) invert();` for inverting images instead of having the API invert them for you. Telotortium (talk) 21:48, 26 March 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for sharing! I imagine this will be useful at some later date.

For the first release we will not be altering images in the night theme and deferring to editors as our concern is that any kind of image alteration could lead to misguiding readers by changing meaningful colors. There is more on this can be found on Reading/Web/Accessibility_for_reading/Frequently_asked_questions. Jdlrobson (talk) 03:25, 2 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Another thing I noted: music written with the score extension (Lilypond) is unreadable in night mode, see e.g. en:99 Bottles of Beer. XanonymusX (talk) 07:30, 29 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

thank you for the report! Phab:T363964 Jdlrobson (talk) 03:19, 2 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Out of ideas for fixing this. Most of the colors can be inverted, except for the gold, silver and bronze colors of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place boxes that can be enabled. Is there a way to determine with Lua whether night mode is enabled? If that's possible it could be used to set bgColor.head andbgColor[4]. Snowmanonahoe (talk) 20:33, 1 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

This dark mode stuff has made me despise modules that throw all their CSS straight into the Lua. Snowmanonahoe (talk) 20:34, 1 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

thanks for flagging! I (and others) can take a look over the next few days! Jdlrobson (talk) 03:28, 2 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

With regards to detecting night theme: Associating the module with a stylesheet and adding classes to difficult to style elements will probably give a lot more control here. Jdlrobson (talk) 03:30, 2 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

@User:Snowmanonahoe I was going to suggest adding the notheme class but the template doesnt seem to be accessible in the standard theme (e.g. blue links on gold background). Is fixing this in the normal theme also a goal here? Jdlrobson (talk) 10:28, 2 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

• Where is the notheme class added, the whole template? What would that do?
• I wasn't aware of the blue-on-gold being inaccessible. It seems like fixing the problem would require making the gold quite a bit lighter so I'm unsure. Does #FFED7A still look like "first-place gold" to you?

Snowmanonahoe (talk) 11:37, 2 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Well actually, the link color could be changed to Vector's #0645ad. Surprising that makes so much of a difference. Color contrast is weird. Snowmanonahoe (talk) 11:44, 2 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

it used to not do that, i would hide the sidebar once and never see it again Brawlio (talk) 01:27, 3 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

You can click "hide" next to appearance to collapse it. That should then close it for future page views. Jdlrobson (talk) 07:19, 3 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

that's how it used to work, but not anymore, it reappears every time i open a new webpage or refresh the current one Brawlio (talk) 17:58, 3 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hi! I’m working on improving some templates on dewiki for the night mode. I was wondering: tables using the class ‘zebra’ seem to automatically get a zebra scheme also in dark mode, but templates using individual variations of zebra (through TemplateStyles) with different class names don’t. Is there an easy way to imitate the dark mode zebra styles also for templates? XanonymusX (talk) 06:49, 29 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hey could you file a ticket on Phabricator with an example? If you can I will look at this over the weekend but right now am not 100% sure what you are referring to. Jdlrobson (talk) 03:20, 2 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

I think I have figured it out (there is no universal solution, as we are talking about individual TemplateStyles). Basically, Zebra in night mode switches between --background-color-base and --background-color-neutral-subtle. I am using those variables for my night mode styles now. XanonymusX (talk) 15:25, 4 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

...doesn't work with night mode (example). Snowmanonahoe (talk) 02:38, 8 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

phab:T360691 (still need to open a dedicated ticket for this one. Jdlrobson (talk) 00:11, 17 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hi, it seems like the night mode checker hasn't been updated since a week, for example for dewiki, and is only showing 50 pages. hgzh 09:58, 15 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for flagging! I will look at this today! Jdlrobson (talk) 18:11, 15 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

I am still looking into this. I got a new request to run the checker for all wikipedias which is proving more difficult than expected 🙂 Jdlrobson (talk) 00:09, 17 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

How can I disable the dark mode, without disabling Vector 2022? Vestrian24Bio (talk) 02:42, 16 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

@Vestrian24Bio: Hello, you can change from dark mode to light mode from the "Appearance" menu on the right (it look like this). Thanks. SCP-2000 (talk) 03:11, 16 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Okay, Thanks! Vestrian24Bio (talk) 03:24, 16 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hello,

I was using the beta version of Vector 2022. But today when I was checking Wikipedia (main page and some internal pages) I noticed that "night mode" is activated there, without the option of night mode (or dark mode) being activated in Preferences/Gadget!

Regards Mrt.rahimzade (talk) 08:20, 16 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Hello @Mrt.rahimzade. That's correct. Yesterday evening European time, we introduced the color options (Automatic, Light, and Dark) as part of the Accessibility for Reading beta feature. Anyone who was using the beta feature was supposed to see the new color options.

Originally, our intention was to make Light the default (and anyone who'd want to change that could select Automatic or Dark). But apparently, we made Automatic the default. This got many people confused, and we'd like to apologize for that.

At the same time, we encourage everyone to try out dark mode on different pages. Here you will find detailed instructions on how to make templates and other community-written code dark mode-friendly. (In particular, focus on the part "If you want to identify problems beyond the top 100 articles.")

Thanks, and apologies again! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 13:22, 16 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thank you, Mr. Grabarczyk, for taking the time to explain this matter, your work is wonderful and I hope you will do well! Regards. Mrt.rahimzade (talk) 17:25, 16 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Starting today, the night mode checker seems to be using the vector dark mode and not the minerva night mode. This has two problems. First, the section header still reads "Mobile", and it should either be changed to "Desktop", or there should be a separate section for mobile. Second, pages are opened with ?vectornightmode=1, but that doesn't do anything if vector22 is not the default skin, which is the case for (at least) itwiki, ruwiki, and dewiki. Adding &useskin=vector-2022 to the query string should be enough to fix this. Daimona Eaytoy (talk) 21:30, 16 May 2024 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for flagging the legacy Vector default skin. I am overhauling a few things with the checker here and hopefully will be up and running again by the end of the week. Jdlrobson (talk) 00:07, 17 May 2024 (UTC)Reply