Basically all these runs are "limited edition" and are pre-sold. But you can find a lot of people reselling on some markets. I used the one on reddit [0] until keyboards stop being a "hobby" for me.
Nord also has ports for some applications (Emacs, Guake and Tmux are those I care about). Unfortunately, not for all daily apps yet. https://www.nordtheme.com/ports
I clicked on one of the applications and that changed the URL but does not leave the previous URL in the back history. Letting JS control the history state was a mistake.
Just wow! I don’t quite remember the last time I was this happy after changing something in my config. Thank you so much, my bite taking just got to whole new level of enjoyment :)
They want you to buy the PRO version which leverages the availability but makes it actually look decent. It's meant only as a demo so you can check compatibility I guess.
And that's a good thing that you don't like it! Lots of us do and that's a good thing too! The world would be a rather boring place if one person got to tell the rest what is aesthetically pleasing.
I think I might be neurodivergent, having a similar look and feel across code editors and terminals always pleases me greatly for some reason. That’s definitely one reason I like Dracula; it’s so easy to get it across everything I use.
Been using it for over a year; IMO it’s a pretty readable theme that’s easy on the eyes.
I switch between a variety of middle-value color schemes. Like QB64 but with less saturated color overall and a bit less contrast, plus some red, green, and gold or orange hue backgrounds thrown in for variety. The dark themes or the light ones never work that well for me.
I've started creating my own (only for Geany so far) because there just aren't many like that.
Some reason = probably strong myopia or astigmatism.
I have those issues and with dark themes (or just in the night when I’m tired) my eye’s lens tend to open so widely that my vision becomes blurred because the focus point of my eyes is now behind my glasses.
If you support contact lenses, it’s an issue they can effectively fix because the focus point can never be behind your correction lens.
Interesting point. I experience the same, and realized that my glasses are getting old - probably need new ones. Maybe parent doesn’t even have glasses?
For this reason I prefer not-pitch-black dark themes. E.g monokai is a bit brighter background and is thus more comfy.
Can confirm the potential astigmatism reason, which I have, and also struggle with dark themes. For some odd reason, maybe there is an expert here, crisp light shapes on a dark background make it either super obvious to a person that the shapes are malformed or it forces their eyes to strain more to compensate.
It’s good to know that I am not alone. There’s this general aspect of not being cool when one is using light theme. How do we tell them that it’s not by choice? I really like the look of someone working in that dark theme and tried a lot to force myself into it only to fail miserably and come back to light theme.
Bro, nobody cares what color scheme you use, if you're confident about how you feel about it. I toggle between dark and light myself in vscode, depending on how I feel, really like the dark and light versions of the Github theme myself.
I had thought this to be true, but in certain startups with a certain culture, using a light theme will make you look like Dinosaurus who's not able to keep up with the latest tech trends. I know it's dumb, but it is reality in some places.
Unfortunately people do care and look down on others based on color theme. Just as some people look down on others not wearing a rolex.
Tech is full of blowhards just as everywhere else. Techies using light themes aren't synth wave futuristic a-poc hacker material.
On the internet some start up guys were bragging about rejecting a candidate because he wore a collared shirt to the interview. That it showed he would never "get it".
Most of the time I use a dark theme. With some self-directed sarcasm: I’m a pretty cool guy; I was bullied and I spent the next 20 years learning how to cool. Like my life depended on it. From the amount of time spent multiplied by my dedication I’ve done an ~okay job. idk, as a example: I have a tall, scary-looking high-tech dirtbike on street plates and an Italian two-piece suit of fine gray wool and I show up to work on that. Without appearing to try hard.
So I think I have wasted enough of my life on trying very hard to be cool to claim the credentials to say:
What is truly not cool is people whose status and social signaling revolves around “dArK tHeMeS aRe CoOl” and turn their little noses up at people getting f…ing work done. Which is cool.
Another astigmatism person here. I cannot get on with dark colour schemes at all. Every so often I give it a go, in my IDE or desktop theme, and then quickly switch it back. It's not that it's too dark per se, but it feels like the text is just 'floating about' with no real anchor to the page, which is a bit of an issue when you are trying to code or write documentation.
I think you may have some valid points here. I use specs, have been using for past 8-9 years. I remember using dark colour schemes as long as I can remember and don’t remember exactly when this issue started. Maybe, 1-2 years. I have two specs, different design but same power. I will experiment with the other one to see if that helps.
Currently I’m using the light version of light owl theme. Still experimenting to see it I can find better ones. I am fond of yellowish backgrounds though, like the one here at HN or the one present in ACME.
I have astigmatism and otherwise almost perfect eyesight. No issues with dark themes. If anything, I feel the letters washing a bit out is better than the background washing everything out.
I have a harder time reading the text I'm typing here on the white background when taking off my glasses, than in my dark IDE.
I have both myopia and astigmatism. I prefer dark themes but even my dark themes have a light dark background compared to those punkish very dark backgrounds.
I wouldn't say it hurts my eyes, but as soon as I open the IDE and a big black box shows up I feel depressed already. I usually just use what is default anyway. For example, Visual Studio looks weird to me in dark mode, but Visual Studio Code looks weird to me in light mode.
Maybe a good reason to paint some makeup. As another commenter said itt, “Bro, nobody cares what color scheme you use, if you're confident about how you feel about it.”
I get that with dark themes, but specifically ones with low contrast.
I really couldn't use Github's dark theme when it was first released because everything looked blurry. Their new "high contrast" dark theme is a great improvement.
I use Dracula for pretty much everything. Code editors, terminals, browsers, Slack, and even CSS skins for Tailwind, Wordpress, and more, if I'm installing an application, there's a pretty good chance there's already a theme for it.
But there's an interesting side effect of having a theme repository with over 200 applications: app discovery! Whether it's learning about interesting projects (BetterDiscord, MatterMost, Obsidian) or blasts from the past (I hadn't thought about BBEdit in a long time! And does anyone remember Brackets?), it's kind of a cool spot to find and remember things.
Good work and thank you to everyone who has worked on these themes, I use them every day for a lot of apps :)
Man Brackets brings me back. When I was 16-17 I forked a popular HTML skeleton extension but with the difference that I wanted it to have Bootstrap markup ready. This was with zero javascript experience (the extensions themselves used JS). It wasn't until later that I realised it had many thousands of downloads. As of right now 120k.
Sadly I've deleted the Github repo, but amazingly Brackets still had a copy of the plugin in their S3 bucket.
Brackets definitely brings back sweet memories. I started learning HTML/CSS a decade back on Sublime Text and found Brackets soon after and used it for a while!
I hugely appreciate they're designed with accessibility in mind, and that they also try to cover edge-cases introduced by popular packages.
I've been using the dark one for a while and while it's not quite as aesthetically pleasing as themes like Dracula, Nord and Solarized, it more than makes up for it with legibility and clarity.
I'm a fan of the aesthetics to be honest, white on black or black on white is far more preferable to me than the colourful primary colours of other themes, especially solarized
I use Dracula color scheme along with the Cascadia Code font [1]. I've been using this set up in both VSCode for Rust and Java in IntelliJ. I find this combination to be extremely readable. Dracula uses many very different colors which make different parts of code obvious. Cascadia has unique shapes for many of the characters which makes distinguishing them a breeze. Would definitely recommend giving this combo a shot!
It took me years to switch from Ubuntu Mono[1] to IBM Plex Mono[2] but now I feel like I'm never gonna change fonts again. I gave Cascadia a try but it feels way too bold. On paper it looks like a really cool project but after I've installed it it felt like all my code was shouting at me (I mean even more than usual), it was disturbing.
Yes, Cascadia is a bit quirky but pretty nice. Currently I’m on JetBrains Mono which I find works great for me in terms of legibility. I love the slightly increased letter height and use it at 11 pt on a 27” display in Visual Studio. It reminds me a bit of IBM Plex Mono but I like it more. https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/mono/
> there just is something comforting in having things look the same across applications...
Speaking of which, I remember coming across a tool on Github(?) that allowed generating color themes for multiple applications and editors at once from a single set of colors (maybe even directly from the dominant colors of an image, like gvcci[0]). Does anyone happen to know that project?
Yup. I use Nord too, since years now. Both Dracula and Nord have something in common: they're using a very light dark background, which makes for dark themes very easy on the eyes. Dracula is RGB (40,41,55) while Nord is even lighter (45,51,65).
It seems like a grift to me. SEO the name of a popular theme (Darcula) and sell a Pro version.
Edit: my gripe is really with Google and Bing, which will show a lot of results for Dracula in the results for darcula theme when there are plenty of results for Darcula. This happens a lot with other terms as well. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I used solarized for a long time, but then I got PaperColor [0] recommended by a colleague recently, and after trying it for a bit I liked it so much that I switched to that exclusively.
It was originally made for vim, but there are ports to other tools[1].
I use solarised, I like that light variant of papercolour more I think, but IMO the thing so broadly missed that solarised gets right is the dark variant's background - it's not too dark, not so much darker than the text that it looks like some sort of high contrast mode. I use it year round with the exception of very bright/direct sunlight in summer, when it's harder to see so I switch to the light variant.
Are most people working with these themes in fairly low lit environments with a backlight? Because I assumed that current research indicated that in normal light darker text on a light background was actually less tiring for the eyes.
No, they're just in their 20 somethings, so looking cool outweighs "will an old dude be able to read it" argument. When younger I also loved nothing more than sitting in the dark room and staring at green letters on the black console screen. However now, being an old dude myself, not driving myself blind has become an actual concern...
I'm 42. I still hate staring at a lightbulb, and have dark mode on all the time. And my vision ain't what it used to be.
Pure white on a pure black background is horrible, but off-whites on a darker background looks nice and doesn't strain my eyes like a canvas of white does.
Yeah, when I do use light themes, I mute them similarly. And I have the brightness on my screens turned down a bit, and the blue channel trimmed down a smidge.
All the lights in my house are at 2200K, so I definitely have a preference towards warmer light.
My theory is that it's like cilantro (some people think it tastes like soap) or like pineapple on pizza (which is objectively wrong, about this there can be no debate). I just can't stand bright light.
I'm sure a sizeable chunk of dark theme users do just like to pretend they're administering The Matrix or something. But not all of us :)
For some of the reasons mentioned by other people in this thread, I don’t think glasses actually fix the problem. I have astigmatism and generally light text on a dark background is difficult to focus on.
Contacts aren’t an option because my astigmatism is strong enough that a rotation of 2 degrees throws them off.
But separately from eyesight issues I thought there was some evidence to suggest that aesthetic preferences aside, dark lettering on lighter backgrounds was still easier to read.
Have you found that a combination of the right theme and glasses makes reading from the screen for hours comfortable?
I have read about that research but I don't think we can conclude from it that dark backgrounds are a fad. They have other advantages (e.g. matching the dark room I work in) and besides, most dark themes are not pure white on black, but something less contrasting.
I've always forced myself to take a break from the screen, and for very long (book length) stuff will always either use a hard copy or ebook so perhaps my usage patterns won't match yours. I use variants of solarized style light themes, though do experiment occasionally as I've never found the definite 'answer' to the best theme for me.
I don't think the research would conclude that dark backgrounds are a fad necessarily. The reason I'm attracted to themes with darker backgrounds is that they are generally better for getting a set of text colours with roughly equal levels of legibility - whereas lighter backgrounded themes often have two or three colours which are really hard to see. The flip side is that darker colours + astigmatism seem to lead to reduced breadth of vision.
Why does this comment thread need a "get off my lawn" type response? Some people like dark themes cause white strains the eyes. I like off-white themes but none of those I've used are all that great for coding so I stick to dark themes
Dark themes don't work for me either. What did work though is reducing blue light, and lowering monitor brightness. My eyes were much happier after I discovered this.
I found the auto-retyping-animation product description on the site very misleading. As I scanned the page I read "Dark theme for Vim", and was immediately confused. Only when I returned to the top of the page did I notice that there was some silly animation which "retyped" Vim for a variety of other editors.
You're right, it's Vim + a bunch of other editors, but when you scan the page that's not what you read - it scans as "Dark theme for vim", not "Dark theme for vim and a bunch of other editors"
235 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 249 ms ] thread[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/mechmarket/
https://omnitype.com/products/gmk-dracula-v2-0-keycaps
> [1] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=matklad....
Dracula is purple.
But I agree it’s much more aesthetically pleasing over Dracula.
https://github.com/jayzelenkov/sublime-railscasts-extended
bite taking -> note taking sry :)
https://github.com/chriskempson/tomorrow-theme
Been using it for over a year; IMO it’s a pretty readable theme that’s easy on the eyes.
Edit: I feel these are just two extremes with most folks not caring at all.
I've started creating my own (only for Geany so far) because there just aren't many like that.
I have those issues and with dark themes (or just in the night when I’m tired) my eye’s lens tend to open so widely that my vision becomes blurred because the focus point of my eyes is now behind my glasses.
If you support contact lenses, it’s an issue they can effectively fix because the focus point can never be behind your correction lens.
For this reason I prefer not-pitch-black dark themes. E.g monokai is a bit brighter background and is thus more comfy.
On the internet some start up guys were bragging about rejecting a candidate because he wore a collared shirt to the interview. That it showed he would never "get it".
So I think I have wasted enough of my life on trying very hard to be cool to claim the credentials to say:
What is truly not cool is people whose status and social signaling revolves around “dArK tHeMeS aRe CoOl” and turn their little noses up at people getting f…ing work done. Which is cool.
:sunglasses_emoji:
Currently I’m using the light version of light owl theme. Still experimenting to see it I can find better ones. I am fond of yellowish backgrounds though, like the one here at HN or the one present in ACME.
I have a harder time reading the text I'm typing here on the white background when taking off my glasses, than in my dark IDE.
I really couldn't use Github's dark theme when it was first released because everything looked blurry. Their new "high contrast" dark theme is a great improvement.
But there's an interesting side effect of having a theme repository with over 200 applications: app discovery! Whether it's learning about interesting projects (BetterDiscord, MatterMost, Obsidian) or blasts from the past (I hadn't thought about BBEdit in a long time! And does anyone remember Brackets?), it's kind of a cool spot to find and remember things.
Good work and thank you to everyone who has worked on these themes, I use them every day for a lot of apps :)
Sadly I've deleted the Github repo, but amazingly Brackets still had a copy of the plugin in their S3 bucket.
Similarly, oh-my-zsh's plugins are a great place to find out about "the most popular CLI tool you've never heard of."
I've been using the dark one for a while and while it's not quite as aesthetically pleasing as themes like Dracula, Nord and Solarized, it more than makes up for it with legibility and clarity.
[1] https://github.com/microsoft/cascadia-code
[1] https://design.ubuntu.com/font/ [2] https://www.ibm.com/plex/
Speaking of which, I remember coming across a tool on Github(?) that allowed generating color themes for multiple applications and editors at once from a single set of colors (maybe even directly from the dominant colors of an image, like gvcci[0]). Does anyone happen to know that project?
[0]: https://github.com/FabriceCastel/gvcci
I’m currently using Ayu Light in Sublime with BB Manual Mono Pro TX.
Edit: my gripe is really with Google and Bing, which will show a lot of results for Dracula in the results for darcula theme when there are plenty of results for Darcula. This happens a lot with other terms as well. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It was originally made for vim, but there are ports to other tools[1].
[0]: https://github.com/NLKNguyen/papercolor-theme
[1]: https://github.com/NLKNguyen/papercolor-theme#-related-proje...
Pure white on a pure black background is horrible, but off-whites on a darker background looks nice and doesn't strain my eyes like a canvas of white does.
Yeah, when I do use light themes, I mute them similarly. And I have the brightness on my screens turned down a bit, and the blue channel trimmed down a smidge.
All the lights in my house are at 2200K, so I definitely have a preference towards warmer light.
My theory is that it's like cilantro (some people think it tastes like soap) or like pineapple on pizza (which is objectively wrong, about this there can be no debate). I just can't stand bright light.
I'm sure a sizeable chunk of dark theme users do just like to pretend they're administering The Matrix or something. But not all of us :)
I can understand though that someone might not want to bother with glasses if the problem is easily fixed by using a light theme.
Contacts aren’t an option because my astigmatism is strong enough that a rotation of 2 degrees throws them off.
But separately from eyesight issues I thought there was some evidence to suggest that aesthetic preferences aside, dark lettering on lighter backgrounds was still easier to read.
I have read about that research but I don't think we can conclude from it that dark backgrounds are a fad. They have other advantages (e.g. matching the dark room I work in) and besides, most dark themes are not pure white on black, but something less contrasting.
I don't think the research would conclude that dark backgrounds are a fad necessarily. The reason I'm attracted to themes with darker backgrounds is that they are generally better for getting a set of text colours with roughly equal levels of legibility - whereas lighter backgrounded themes often have two or three colours which are really hard to see. The flip side is that darker colours + astigmatism seem to lead to reduced breadth of vision.
Hmm, sounds like you need glasses, why don't wear them? Too hung up on looking cool?
Why not just accurately say what it is?
Yeah it's pretty cool that somebody could market a color scheme.
>Hey! You're coming from [Country] where this could be too expensive.
>I believe in Purchasing Parity Power, and I want to make this affordable.
>If you need it, use the code [code] for an extra 63% off the regular price.
I was viewing from Colombia.