I credit Solarized with setting the baseline allowing proper "dark" themes to be more commonplace. I'm going out on a limb, but perhaps macOS' Dark Mode, or VSCode's dark mode, wouldn't exist without Solarized blazing that path.
It's kinda funny how, before Solarized, I would see tons of gimmicky themes like some that were going for a Matrix or "classic terminal" feel, going all in on a certain theme but eschewing real usefulness. I want my basic terminal colors to remain adjacent to their intended hues! I want different keywords/tokens in my code to be distinguishable!
Ethan's application of color theory/science to the landscape was like a beacon in the darkness.
Before Solarized, I used Zenburn (I actually still do in some environments, I'm not too keen on the blueish hue of Solarized backround.) I also like Tango Light/Dark.
What exactly do you mean proper “dark” themes? Being able to swap to coding in light test on a dark or dark text on a light background goes back to at least windows 3.11.
I would assume 'proper' means 'adequate in terms of function and aesthetics'. maybe something like 'themes that don't eschew real usefulness'.
those themes did exist before solarized, but they were not the norm in many circles (mine included), as many authors did sacrifice function for the look&feel.
solarized demonstrated how to apply colour theory/science to the landscape.
I would add that it has been not just the theme that serves as an example, also the _how to make_ a theme following those principles.
Fair enough, I have the opposite experience where most people using dark UI’s where doing so for utility reasons not aesthetics. Outside of a brief fad of Matrix themed terminals which quickly died out.
I feel like we've had a similar theme journey. These days I use darcula and its derivatives I some places, Solarized in others. Tango dark as well. And fond memories with Zenburn. Monokai gets an honorable mention.
If you used Borland C++, DBase, Lotus 123, WordStar and others... or used a monochromatic monitor (green, cyan or white on black), you used light text on a dark background.
By 2010, when Solarized appeared, the larger portion of the people that started coding on a light text on dark background had already retired.
Solarized did a good job in terms of distribution, I give you that 100%. But it is not the most important theme in history or anything of the sort.
Possibly the downvotes are because folks (like me) who started coding in light text on dark backgrounds in the 80s had emphatically not hit retirement age by 2010? They'd be between their late thirties and maybe late fifties, unless you want to push it all the way back to the 1970s or earlier -- the build-out of computing infrastructure over the past century has been exponential, so there is always a preponderance of young/new developers, but with retirement age nearing 70 folks who began programming in the early 1970s are in many cases still working.
(I went sideways and left software development entirely. But I'm 58 and very much still working with text on screens and routinely use dark mode.)
As a 48 year old who's feeling quite burnt out, I'm curious to learn more about this sideways move... I'm feeling a bit trapped right now. :(
EDIT: Ah, checked your profile and history and it seems like you've become a writer? Hmm... maybe I could do that...
(BTW, the SSL cert for your website has expired!)
EDIT2: Thanks for the advice on writing, all! Honestly, I was thinking of taking the technical writer route. I've always been pretty good at authoring things like technical specs, so it seemed like a potential "lateral move," albeit one that probably pays a hell of a lot less than software development. I'm suspect that technical writing has some of the same soul-crushing aspects of software development, so perhaps it wouldn't even be worth it.
If you want to become a writer, you should definitely have a financial cushion. Replicating Stross’s success will almost certainly take years of minimally paid hard work, plus a fair bit of luck. Writing is a hard, hard business.
Unless you can write proficiently in the romance genre. There’s gold in them hills.
I wrote my first novel-shaped object when I was 15.
Sold my first short story for actual money aged 21.
First novel sold when I was 36.
... Stopped doing other stuff (mainly freelance computer journalism) to sub the fiction when I was 42.
The sole consolation is that I'm doing okay now and my career didn't really get started until most successful pop stars are at the touring-with-the-greatest-hits-playlist stage (or have given up and gotten a job as an accountant).
On romance; yes, it outsells all other commercial fiction genres combined. But don't assume it's easy money: there's a lot of competition, and every genre turns out to be much harder than it looks once you dig your teeth into it.
Fair point, it’s all hard. I intended to call out romance as a (long shot) potential source of overnight success. Reading the various self-publishing forums, any post that starts with “I earned six figures on my first book” ends with “and it’s a romance.”
I didn’t mean to imply that those authors don’t work hard or that those stories aren’t crazy outliers. Just that there’s more money sloshing around from a lot of avid readers.
As an aside, please keep doing what you do. Accelerando hooked me deep when it came out, and I’ve had a ton of fun reading through The Laundry Files. Thanks for optimizing your career for something other than money.
Re: writing, there are also people making decent money with web serials and Patreon (then publishing to Kindle/Kindle Unlimited). I suspect the most successful ones are exceeding Stephen King levels of output.
You'll find some of them on Royal Road. Lots of fantasy, litrpg, xianxia - fluffy serializable things.
I ran a novel on Royal Road as a serial. Definitely a hard market to get traction in if you’re not doing litrpg or xanxia. I published a techno thriller at 2+ chapters a week for six months and ended up with ~20 readers for the conclusion.
My three reviews were solid (all five star), but if you’re not writing to the site genres you’ll struggle to find an audience. One of my reviewers even mentioned they’d never read a techno thriller before.
Also tried Wattpad and Inkitt - basically zero views on the former, hard to say on Inkitt. Their stat reporting is super bad. Got one review there, so presumably less readers than RoyalRoad.
I've read a few web serials this last year and change (Unsong, HPMOR, and Worm).
They're interesting from many angles, although I think they distinctly lack in mass appeal. Unsong and HPMOR in particular seem to me like the kind of thing you would either love deeply, if they're in your wheelhouse, or otherwise find positively insufferable. (I loved both).
Worm, on the other hand, while in need of some editing, seems like it would be absolutely killer as an animated series in the vein of Amazon's adaptation of Invincible.
One issue that seems to come up in this space is the authors having issues getting into publishing deals. For instance, the author Worm don't currently distribute ebooks because of nebulous concerns about the effect on future contracts. Unfortunately this seems to leave such works in a state of legal limbo.
Idk what my point is, just rambling at this point. I have very much enjoyed all the stuff I've read in this area so far though.
I began coding in the late 80s as a hobby. It led to a career in programming, beginning in the 90s, just out of high school. Turbo Pascal was my first "serious" language. I'm not retired yet.
Amiga had white on dark blue by default as well, until 1990 (release of AmigaOS 2.0), when they switched to black on grey by default.
There was a long and significant period of reaction to the light on dark UI's where a lot of applications arrived either with light on dark as the default or with no option to change it, so I can understand why someone would see solarized as that start of a change towards (renewed) support for light on dark interfaces, though I do think it's overselling its importance.
I don't remember C=64 colors (friends had one, we did not) but my PC had MSDOS. The text editor was blue background, grey or white foreground. But DOS itself was gray on black. And I used DOS as my OS because it was lightweight.
Developer of Solarized here. Glad that it continues to be a popular design. I've let the github languish and regret that. Luckily since it's just a color scheme the website and info on github has been enough for it to continue to propagate.
There have been plenty of other color schemes that I think it's safe to say have been inspired by Solarized and this is very satisfying to see. Many of them have done a better job at thinking through the git structure of their projects :)
Thanks so much for Solarized. Really changed the way I think about syntax highlighting and UI! Have you run common color/font configurations from Solarized through WCAG’s contrast checking tools? As I create more and more UIs I’ve become increasingly aware of contrast for accessibility and I was wondering what your thoughts were in this regard.
I didn't run Solarized through WCAG when designing it (I don't believe that was around when I was designing it, though I could be wrong) but I did design it to enable high contrast use (this is mentioned on the site but sometimes overlooked in implementations). The highest contrast base tones as background / foreground colors (base03+base3) do pass with a 13.91:1 ratio. In "low contrast" mode, Solarized passes all but WCAG AAA with a value of 4.74:1.
As my eyes age I often use Solarized in higher contrast configuration, so I'm sensitive to this issue.
Two things I want to add (better as a comment than edit):
1) I don't use Solarized everywhere religiously. I use it a LOT, no surprise. Still my preferred color scheme in most editing, terminal, code situations. But I am happy to use other well designed colorschemes in various contexts (writing, task management apps, etc.). Even when Solarized is available, sometimes variety is what's called for.
2) Solarized was designed to enable the colors to be used in high contrast modes as well. As my eyes age I sometimes will apply the colorscheme in a higher contrast mode. This adaptability is sometimes overlooked but it is inherent and intentional to the design.
> Many of them have done a better job at thinking through the git structure of their projects :)
Perhaps so. I've attempted to find some other color scheme. The most significant color scheme change I was able to stomach during the last ten years was from Solarized Dark to Solarized Light. Thank you <3
EDIT: pull requests with translations are welcome, but you'd have to speak Polish first, which takes us back to square one. Google translate is half-decent with this language though, so you might be able to run off of that.
Thanks I'll try this - I have discovered exactly the problem described i.e. Solarized does not have enough contrast when using shitty monitors or in a very bright room. Normally I just switch to a random high contrast theme on those days but maybe Selenized would be a universal solution.
Same. I regularly switch between light and dark mode. For me, dark feels more comfortable in the short-term, but I find that I can't use dark for an entire day. Anyways, I previously used solarized. It's very pleasant for a certain period of time, but like many color themes that I like, it doesn't actually "scale" in the sense that I can't use it for extended periods of time. Gruvbox, on the other hand, I can use for very long stretches.
I heard that astigmatism is the reason some people find reading white-on-black intolerable: the edges shift from their proper places, look doubled, this kind of stuff. Idk if astigmatism-correcting glasses fix the problem, as I'm not that diligent with my prescriptions.
Personally, somehow I'm ok with looking at code and some notes in light-gray-on-black, but reading paragraphs of text is immediately off-putting. The proliferation of ‘dark theme’ sites is not working out for me.
Wow so interesting! I have a very high astigmatism so this makes a lot of sense! I wonder if it would help to wear glasses that correct. I wear my contacts and they really aren't capable of correct astigmatism the way glasses are.
Just seeing your comment. Thanks for the link, that was a great comment and helped me to understand something I experience but did not understand the cause of!
For those interested in gruvbox, give gruvbox-material ( https://github.com/sainnhe/gruvbox-material ) a look. It's a bit softer than the original, which I find a bit easier on the eyes.
As someone with an important astigmatism, I cannot stare more than a few minutes at a dark background color scheme, even if I love their aesthetic.
So I’m stuck writing code all day long with light schemes.
In this context, Solarized is a gift and I’m grateful for it. I just cannot name another light color scheme you could stare at all day long without burning your eyes.
I’m a weird freakish anomaly that actually prefers lighter color schemes. I’ve found that, with some tweaks, the default light scheme in Sublime Text to be pretty awesome. It’s calle Breakers. The greys are a little too light, but I find there is a bit more contrast than Solarized.
Dark mode isn't necessary better for your eyes than light mode [1]. I prefer a consistent lightning more, and that is often easier done with light mode. Although, this is getting better since more and more sites and apps implement it. However, not all, this results in sometimes being surprised by a white flash after browsing through some darker sites.
A while back, Eliot Miranda posted a detailed message for dark theme users on the squeak-dev mailing list. This is what he wrote:
Hi Dark Themers, in an earlier life I worked in optics, designing holographic cameras for bubble chamber physics, so I know a little about focussing systems and depth of field. The iris in the eye expands or contracts to allow or restrict the amount of light entering the eye, attempting to maintain a constant luminosity on the retina so that either not too little, or not too much light falls on the cones and rods in the retina. When the iris is dilated (open) the eye allows as much light as possible into it. You can visualize the light from a point (say a pixel) that reaches the iris as a cone. The lens in the eye focuses this expanding cone back into a contracting one that comes to a point on the retina corresponding to the position of the pixel "out there on the screen".
Focusing is achieved by a muscle around the eye's flexible lens, the cillary muscle, which squeezes the lens into a more spherical shape to cause rays entering the eye to bend more, brings no objects closer to the eye into focus, or by the cillary muscle relaxing, allowing the lens to stretch back to a flatter shape, to bend rays less, bringing objects further away into focus. In old age shortsightedness is caused by the lens loosing its elasticity and remaining squeezed, and longsightedness by it losing flexibility and the cillary muscle losing strength so that the lens cannot be squeezed as much. By the time we hit our 40's many of us will suffer one of these two extremes and have to wear glasses either for reading or for driving or, in my case, for both.
Getting back to the cone of rays from a pixel that the iris and lens conspire to bring to a point on the retina, if there is a lot of light incident on the eye and the iris is undilated then this cone is much slimmer. The result of these differing cones on focus is called depth of field. When the cone is "fat" depth of field is reduced; only pixels in the same plane (actually a spherical surface, not a plane, because the retina is spherical; film cameras have planar light receptors; the eye and camera obscures etc have spherical light receptors) will be in focus; others out of the plane will produce a diffuse circle on the retina. When the cone is "slim" (because more light is incident on the eye) depth of field is increased because the size of the out of focus diffuse circle is smaller. Consequently, when there is less light falling on the eye, depth of field is reduced; the cones are fatter and as the eye roams the cillary muscle must work to alter the curvature of the lens to keep things in focus.
The implication for the dark theme is that, while it appears to have better contrast (it does not; but more on that below), the real effect is that it causes the eye to do more work than a light theme because the amount of light entering the eye is less. So both in the short term and especially over the long term the dark theme, relative to the light theme, will tire your collate muscle and cause your lens to stiffen or squish sooner. Why then, if what I'm saying is true, did all those World War Two military aircraft use white letters on a black background? My lotus europa is the same. The disc of the instrument is illuminated by a lamp so one can see it at night, and were the panel painted white then, for the same contrast, much more light would hit the eye that for white letters on a black background and the pilot's (or driver's) night vision would be impaired as the iris would contract.
I don't want to fear monger, but I do want to suggest that it is healthier and less wearing on the eyes to use light themes.
I'm 49 and can literally watch (pun intended) how my capability to focus in the near field gets worse and worse. I've been using dark themes in the terminal for 25 years and for a couple of years tried to use dark mode also in other software as much as possible.
After reading this I really wonder if I did myself a disservice and if I shouldn't change to light mode again.
Does anyone know of more sources on this topic? And also if the effect can be reversed or at least slowed with going back to light again?
EDIT: This[1] answer on Stackexchange has some funded details.
Thanks for digging a bit. Interestingly, your source actually points towards dark mode being safer long term. My gripe with the parent is that it implies dark mode use risks damage (the lens becoming less scrunchable). I am unable to find any literature that alludes to this.
Interesting comment. I have to note that light themes give me migraines, so I’m stuck with dark.
Can’t help but feel that it is fear mongering, though. This can’t be that difficult to research. Where is the hard evidence to back this up? Your comment sent me down a rabbit hole looking for anything scientific that suggests what you’re saying, and I find nothing that implies long term damage. The quoted post is drawing a lot of assumptions.
> I have to note that light themes give me migraines, so I’m stuck with dark.
I've had that, too, especially when Windows 10 came out, and I was forced to use it. The full-on white, on a high-contrast monitor, was a literally painful experience.
However, as others, I much prefer having the same lightness everywhere. I hate switching from a dark background terminal / editor to a light background webpage, so I set out to mitigate this somehow.
So, I've started using off-white backgrounds when I use light mode. Solarized is a bit too orange for my taste, but many other schemes are available. I, personally, use Base16 Equilibrium (both light and dark).
I'm not saying you did, but I think some people set the brightness control of their monitor very high (or never adjust it), and then use things like dark mode to reduce the brightness -- rather than turn down the brightness directly.
I think "dark mode" can make this worse, as it often 'pops' best with a very high brightness, which is even more blinding when running a non-dark mode app.
Yes, I've seen that, too. However, I usually set my monitors quite low and tend to have some minimal ambient light. I only use the computer in complete darkness when watching a movie or similar. But Windows' pure black on a sea of pure white was still painful.
But I think the reason for setting the monitors to a high brightness, which I've sometimes done at work, is the awful quality of the panels. Setting them brighter makes colors pop, as you say, even in light mode.
My work laptop is one such offender, with darker hues basically indistinguishable at low brightness. However, the screen is shitty all the way, and max brightness isn't all that bright...
Dark Reader is an extension available on most browsers. It has a nice community that supports conversion to dark mode for most web pages. It has worked fine for me. I use Tampermonkey to pick up the slack where Dark Reader is inadequate. Like you, switching is worse even than light mode. I migrated to completely dark.
There is still a brief flash occasionally. It doesn’t bother me in the same way that looking at a white background does (meaning I don’t get headaches), but it definitely happens.
> I have to note that light themes give me migraines, so I’m stuck with dark.
Isn't the fact you get migraines the issue to solve, rather than the color scheme?
Most monitors these days are way too bright, especially for the amount of ambient light coming into the room. I try to get a bunch of light into my office and it is still barely close enough for this monitor. Combine that with displays getting bigger and bigger and it becomes more understandable how it can aggravate these conditions.
Dark mode fixes my problem, and I prefer dark mode aesthetically. I have no reason to do anything differently (unless there is meat to the parent reply, which is why I’m asking for a legitimate source).
> So both in the short term and especially over the long term the dark theme, relative to the light theme, will tire your collate muscle and cause your lens to stiffen or squish sooner
Does that last part necessarily follow? Maybe doing more work is a good thing?
I also prefer light colour schemes. Didn't use to, I used dark themes (like gruvbox) for a while, until I learned the value of not having my monitors blast my eyes with 100% brightness. Solarised actually helped me go from dark to light themes as the yellowish background and lower contrast were easier on my eyes than white and high contrast.
Even since I learned to turn down my monitor brightness so that white on my monitor is about the same brightness as a white piece of paper in the room, I have been very fond of Prot's Modus Operandi (https://protesilaos.com/emacs/modus-themes).
You're not the only one. There are dozens of us, probably, who prefer lighter colour schemes. I can't stand dark mode in all but a few cases. A terminal is sort of fine, but an IDE or a content-rich webpage absolute has to be light, otherwise my eyes start to get funky.
What I find is that with dark mode I can spot details better - a missing bracket for example. But with light mode I can see the bigger picture better - I can scroll through a page and find what I want more quickly. This, I'm sure, is a very subjective experience.
So I use light mode now all the time. That said, dark mode will always look cooler.
> So I’m stuck writing code all day long with light schemes.
Don't feel stuck! I think the world has gone a bit mad chasing "dark mode" for text everywhere. This must be highly personal, but light themes really reduce the fatigue on my eyes, and I've always found them preferable too. Maybe it's really the dark mode people who are stuck?
If you like solarized light, you might want to try gruvbox light [0], which I find even easier on the eyes.
Up until I read your comment, I never really made any association between my astigmatism and my discomfort with dark themes. Now it all makes sense. Also, since too much white was never a problem for me, my theme of choice in Emacs is Nano Light¹ and Solarized anywhere else.
> I cannot stare more than a few minutes at a dark background color scheme
I've struggled to find a perfect set of color themes my entire life, at least, that's what now it feels like. And at some point I realized, the smaller the palette, the fewer color variations there are, lesser the strain on the eye. Also, staring for a long time at the same - light or dark (it doesn't matter) color theme makes me feel tired.
In the end, I settled on two different [customized] themes, based on base-16 color themes. My main tool, my editor of choice is Emacs. I spent most of my time in it. I'm typing this comment in Emacs, while I have HN opened in the adjacent window (still in Emacs). I use circadian.el, which allows me to set my themes based on the time of day. They switch automatically and I love that.
Maybe try different color themes based on the light source, your mood, time of the day, place, etc.?
I used to love Solarized when using a light theme then I found papercolor. That is my preferred light although I am using a dark Tokyo Night now. I switch frequently.
White backgrounds create static like artifacts in my vision. Doesn't happen as much with dark. I've tried Light Themes because in theory it's better for asthegmatism, but it's definitely worse for me.
I even thought that maybe I had to make everything light themed so there is no contrast between pages /apps but it doesn't help.
This is purely a personal observation of how my eyes work.
Yep. I tried for a while to use dark themes but eventually realised they were making it worse, not better. Even if Solarized isn't the best light theme in existence, it's also available either built in or an extension for practically every tool I use.
I use solarized light everywhere. It sounds silly because everyone likes using a dark theme but I do it on purpose because I'm often coding from a bus stop or somewhere else outside. With a light theme it's much easier to see the screen even with full sun and glare on the screen. This is not possible with the dark theme.
I also have glare coming through a window at work that is in a new office and so there's no window blinds yet. The solarized light theme helps me continue to be able to see what's on my screen no matter what's happening and I appreciate that.
I'll switch back to a dark theme if I need to when I'm on a long trip and it's at night and I'm in the car so I don't disturb the driver with my screen.
I like that I can switch back and forth with using the same theme and that the light theme is so well thought out.
I too use Solarized Light. Apart from better readability outside, another reason for me to use the light theme is that many other things I look at use a light theme (eg HN), and switching between my terminal/ide with a dark theme and a browser with (usually) light websites was jarring.
Almost everything has a dark theme for me, including HN - sites I use regularly which don't have their own dark themes will get overridden with Minimalist.
How does HN have a dark theme? I suppose one's browser sends their light/dark preferences or websites send alternate stylesheets? How does one set it in Chrome? chrome://flags/#enable-force-dark didn't work for me.
What's Minimalist?
Whenever I saw anyone attempting to have everything dark, half the things looked awful, the dark theme was not even an afterthought...
HN does not itself have one, that's the point of the Minimalist mention. It's an extension that lets you override parts of any website. On looking at what is actually active for me on HN, it's actually another extension I use, named Stylus, (which does much of the same thing, but Stylus is focused on just the CSS while Minimalist also lets people provide modules which provides a list of options to turn on/off) which provides the Dark HN theme. I've gone back and forth between a couple of different ones over the years, and one of the older ones was Minimalist, but the one I use now is apparently Stylus -- been a few years since I touched the settings.
> Whenever I saw anyone attempting to have everything dark, half the things looked awful, the dark theme was not even an afterthought...
That's exactly why you pretty much need an extension like Stylus or Minimalist to get proper themes made by people who cares what the sites end up looking like.
> »Penumbra is a mathematically balanced colour scheme constructed in a perceptually uniform colour space with base colours inspired by the shades of colour occurring in nature due to the light of the sun and the sky. It cleanly separates the perceptual properties of colours while optimally utilizing the available colour space of typical displays.«
For some reason I find it really hard to look at. Everything has the same weight (in terms of color, if that makes sense), and I need some things to stand out, not just have a different color.
This seems interesting. But the claim about being "mathematically balanced" is skeptical to me. It seems it does better than Solarized which claimed a similar but weaker statement.
The nasty details in color space is basically that it is a non-Euclidean metric (when considering perceptual uniformity). There are empirical formula describing a metric. And one can probably numerically optimize in that metric. But it doesn't seem to do something like that (I skimmed through only.)
I agree, the “mathematically balanced” is a peculiar sales pitch. Are our eyes “mathematically balanced”? If not, then the palette probably shouldn't be either.
What you said is about the subjective aspect. But what I'm saying is that it can be mathematically balanced, but what they are doing doesn't seem to be true.
My definition of mathematically balance would be for the palette (which is N points in the colorspace) to have a certain relationship according to the metric. One example relationship would be for them to be for all nearest neighbors sharing the same distance (which might not be possible.) The one I have in mind is for a sub-set of them forming this relationship in a potentially tilted plane, and probably have 2 such planes with a certain distance apart. The symmetry in the metric probably allows you to find 2 such planes that is equidistance with the center which can then have nicer properties about the relationships between points on opposite planes.
All these are easy if the metric is Euclidean, which is approximately true with some colorspace. It would be much more complicated if the empirical metric is taken into account.
Bottom line is I expect them to define what mathematical balanced means and there seems none.
The "mathematically balanced" description seems to be selling itself short actually. If you check the actual description, it says "By using the perceptually uniform colour space Oklab, I was able to achieve perceptually uniform hue differences between each of the accent colours, ensuring maximum differentiability between highlighted words. Constant chroma ensures none of them stand out from or recede into the page more than others."
Doing the balancing in Oklab specifically addresses your point about perception in our eyes.
Does someone know of a tool that helps to generate the themes for the individual applications based on your preferred color scheme?
I am currently using Dracula (https://draculatheme.com/) as color scheme. Not that it is my favourite color scheme (actually I don’t like it’s colours at all), but the fact that the creator is providing ready to use themes for almost every application is the main reason for me to use it. I want a consistent look across all of my applications.
EDIT: other answers point to base16 as a way to do this automatically. Use that. Leaving my previous comment here just in case.
I think what the creator is doing is outsourcing the maintenance of each individual app to a maintainer that cares; the themes folder contains pointers to other repos:
This could be used to "reverse-engineer a generic platform" relatively easily:
1: Fork Dracula and its themes
3: For each color in Dracula.Palette
4: Find and replace color.hex by color.refjex on themes
5: Find and replace "color.r,color.g,color.b" by color.refrgb on themes
6: Find and replace "color.h,color.s,color.l" by color.refhsl on themes
The whole idea would be replacing #282a36 for a reference like `{{Background}}` and then using a templating language like handlebars or m4 to generate the themes.
Of course steps 4,5 and 6 are more complex than 3 lines. One will have to come up with a way to filter out spaces, commas and other things. I expect a lot of the apps out there to expect hex numbers though.
Actually that’s a fantastic idea. Should have thought of that for myself.
But as a warning, a lot of the Dracula themes are are not correctly (for some reason especially the Dracula Pro themes). For example the iTerm and Kitty theme have same foreground and background color set so I had to fix them manually. Doesn’t seem that they are tested by the author.
Way, way too low for me. I notice people who use it tend to be on the younger side and/or must have very good eyes.
Personally, astigmatism causes halation[1] of the text with dark modes. The only time I find them tolerable or needed is when I'm in a very dark room.
In the day, when I do most of my work, I am in a lit room or outside and I am looking at physical documents, desktop environments, and web pages that are all light-colored. I would feel my eyes and brain churning every time I'd have to re-focus on a dark-themed window in this context, so it only makes sense to have my code/text light-colored as well.
I have the same issue with Solarized. I need something with just a little more contrast.
One Dark is more like what I want.
But even that's not perfect. The color for comments (as with many dark themes) is too dim. Comments shouldn't stand out, but they should also be easy to read when needed. I think that Visual Studio's dark color scheme actually does great there. The green comments separate themselves well from the code, don't draw too much attention to themselves, and they're still clear when you're trying to read them.
I think that comments should stand out and modified solarized accordingly in my editors.
I made it a bright lightish green (in dark mode) in my main editor. If you haven't yet, I can only recommend to give that a try.
Justification: A comment that exists should only exist if it is important, if it is helpful documentation for a function or for some specific code section. If that's the case then a comment should absolutely be the first thing you see, thus it should stand out.
That sound a bit like I would advocate to comment less, but that hasn't been the effect of that change. To the contrary, I'd say it was a factor in my placing more (in my eyes important) comments in code bases than many other developers I work with.
Yeah, a good example of this is here - IMO the background color is just much too bright for the base text color to be so dark. You need a little contrast in the luminosity, even if you have perfect color vision. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/altercation/solarized/mast...
It's rather thought out colour scheme and kudos for the success, but contrast is way too low. My eyes got tired very fast while trying to use solarized scheme.
I've stuck with `Tomorrow Night Bright` for quite some time now as I enjoy the scheme and the contrastiness of it, though I tweaked it that the text is almost pure white and background is almost pure black.
Mind that the BBEdit information and format is out of date. Updated files can be found at the original project repository [1]. Moreover, due to containerization the "Color Schemes" directory has meanwhile moved and is now at
(This can be simply navigated to from within BBEdit via the "BBEdit" menu > "Folders" > "Color Shemes". This will open the folder in the Finder, just copy the `*.bbColorScheme` files there.)
catppuccin [1] is similar, had been using solarized for almost a decade, but tried catppuccin about 6 months ago and it was so good I’ve switched over permanently. Like solarized there are light and dark variants and there are versions for vim and vs code and many other editors as well.
Again, I started with solarized but moved onto other themes. I think it was one of the first themes that was implemented almost everywhere. It was nice to have my browser, IDE, window manager etc all themed up the same way.
I also appreciate the work he went into to set the color scheme up. I feel the same spirit with the Modus themes[1] for emacs
It's odd to me that there's essentially no competition to Solarized Light when it comes to light color schemes, and all of the focus is on dark. Personally, I don't like dark themes and find them way harder to read. I love Solarized Light, but I do sometimes wish there were a few more options available for light users.
Funnily enough, I lived next to Ethan for a few years in Seattle, and was not a solarized user prior to meeting him. Thanks Ethan!
I use Alabaster[1]. Contrary to most themes, it is quite minimalistic and it emphasises comments instead of de-emphasising them. I like the minimalism, because it lets me focus, instead of marking every single thing on the screen as a different colour of “important” making my head spin.
One of my favorite themes has a light grey for everything except strings (light blue) and comments (white). Comments are super important, they should stand out.
Thank you for the recommendations. I will check them out. To be fair, it's been a couple years since I last looked, and at that time it wasn't that there were _no_ other light themes, but there were very few and they were not nearly as good as Solarized, which I guess is a personal preference. But, I really do appreciate the recommendations, and look forward to trying some new colors.
I use printer mode (gray scale). I mean; originally just to irritate my boss during code review, but then it grew on me. I wish there was a good black&white underline/italic/bold theme a la Algol 68.
> For some reason Solarized just looks outdated to me
That might just be some kind of fatigue because I've experienced the opposite recently!
I've been a happy user of Visual Studio Code's default dark theme for a few years, and one day I snapped and just couldn't stand looking at it anymore. I switched to Solarized Light (yeah) and I find it extremely refreshing. I just had to tweak the color for "deleted block" in the scrollbar which was way too close to the "compilation error" color.
I use a Firefox browser extension called "Dark Reader" [1] to force a dark mode on most of the websites I frequent and I'm more or less happy with it. If there was an extension that Solarized them instead, I'd probably go with that instead.
Legendary color scheme, been using it for pretty much my entire career. My go-to has been using the light scheme for terminal and dark for vim. Can't live without it!
This reminds me of my fun experiments with color distances and genetic algorithms to automatically generate solarized-like color schemes: https://github.com/fdietze/chromogene
I find Solarized, zenburn, and other low contrast dark themes too hard to read in bright environments. And I try to always work in a decently bright environment.
Which leads me to the following question: has anybody migrated from dark themes to light themes after years of use? I've always had my terminal and my editor dark, but my browser light. I have a hard time reading long text like prose or forums in dark mode. So that makes me wonder if my code and terminal could also be better in light themes and I just have to struggle to get rid of my dark theme habit.
On my screen, Base 2 and Base 3 or respectively Base 02 and Base 03 appear to be quite close. The difference seems to be sufficient for highlighting a whole line, but when used to highlight individual characters they do not stick out enough, so that I need to search for them on the screen.
Same for me. I've been using monokai and, since it came out, monokai pro. Every year or so I look at what new themes are out there and try the popular ones for a bit but nothing hits that sweet spot of aesthetically pleasing and functional so well for me.
Has anyone done a cross-app configuration tool for color themes yet ? It seems most themes just reimplement everything. For example, I like tokyonight, but it seems everyone needs to port it to their favorite tool, just like solarized did:
I give solarized a lot of credit. Before it came out I pretty much stuck with whatever default theme my application used. After using solarized I started caring about my tools much more. Today, I tend to use Darcula most of the time for IDEs, but I also spend much more time customizing my tools beyond just the theme.
solarized dark was my fav theme for a couple of years until I found Ayu (especially ayu mirage). Its a bit easier for my eyes and I very like the color palette.
If someone is looking for soft and easy to read theme I always suggest to try one of Ayu ones (they have 3 + 3 bordered)
I really like ayu (mirage is my favorite as well) and pretty much use the colors everywhere except for syntax highlighting where I just can't switch away from monokai pro.
This resembles the colour theme of NEdit on Irix as I remember it from the mid nineties. Hmm, I got nostalgic saying this. Now I'm going to hunt the exact replica of that theme.
Can anyone speak to the origin of the name? I had heard that the color scheme resembled the color choices on Solaris workstation terminals, but that origin seems to be erroneous.
and here I am, clicking on this because I thought it's about solar power, can we stop this trend of using words for products that already have some other meaning?
It's kinda funny how, before Solarized, I would see tons of gimmicky themes like some that were going for a Matrix or "classic terminal" feel, going all in on a certain theme but eschewing real usefulness. I want my basic terminal colors to remain adjacent to their intended hues! I want different keywords/tokens in my code to be distinguishable!
Ethan's application of color theory/science to the landscape was like a beacon in the darkness.
Before Solarized, I used Zenburn (I actually still do in some environments, I'm not too keen on the blueish hue of Solarized backround.) I also like Tango Light/Dark.