What is wrong with new light mode and why
First, all the eyeburning jokes aside (they will pass, switching from dark to light for the first day is always the hardest thing), I like that attention is being paid to the light theme.
The new contrast on message text is lovely, and much nicer to read than the old one. But, as with most, I'm not a fan of the sidebar.
Part of that is obviously just that it's jarringly new, but it does have one genuine problem, which is the design sensibility itself overall.
It's basically a dark theme design, light-ified. And not just that, it's really, really trying to be LIGHT. And as a result, it doesn't look good.
Why is that? It's because light and dark colorscapes aren't just equal but different. They're actively good at very different things.
The thing dark themes are fundamentally amazing at is making color contrasts pop. There's a reason code editors are dark, and it's not just terminal heritage: You can make colors pop in lighter themes, but in a very dark theme you have much more freedom in choice of colors that really stand out.
What's the weaknesses, then? Well, first, it's not actually easier to read (there's a pile of articles on what is easier to read, not going to repeat them here), and the highest contrast tends to make text a bit less legible due to the background and text bleeding into each other undesirably. This effect, as far as I understand, is worse with light-on-dark than dark-on-light contrast pairings.
What's the design sensibility these inform? What wee see in apps like Discord and Visual Studio Code: UI elements are just flat slabs of color distinguished by different hues, and smart use of smallish contrasts make things nice, clean and readable, because color pops. The old light gray text on dark gray background looked fantastic in dark mode.
What's a light color scheme good and bad at?
Well, it's comparatively bad at making colors pop. It's not that it can't be done, but you have a bit less freedom in choice and need to employ a lot more intense colors - my light VSCode theme uses very, very intense neon blues to highlight code snippets as blue, for example, and this isn't bothersome at all.
Light themes aren't generally amazing at distinguishing small differences in contrast.
What are they good at, then?
Contrast, baby. You can go absolutely ham on the starkest contrasts you can get and it looks good in a way it never would on dark mode. Stark black text on really light background is a treat for the eyes.
It's also much better at drawing materials, shapes, surfaces. Drop shadows are gorgeous and make things pop and stand out without being overbearing. Strong linework is much more at home in the light than it is in the dark - in the dark, it pops out too much, making subtle gradients obtrusive instead of just informative. Contrast differences are enough in the dark. With a light theme, you can things to have some substance, and deliberately draw lines between different parts of the UI. They won't stand out annoyingly, they'll just fade into the background but give a nice, structured feel to the UI, the way shadows do in real life.
Light themes can also incorporate color into the UI in a more balanced-feeling way because they don't make colors poop with the salience of a floodlight in your face.
Finally, light doesn't have to be "bright as the Sun" - the best "light" themes don't try to be light, they just try to be good UIs that don't actively try to be dark.
Pop open Excel, if you have it installed. Strong lines all over the place to delineate different UI elements, the ribbon shadowed to float. Even splashes of color or simple contrast differences have border linework added them because that's how light looks good. The styles menu is very even-keeled in the "colorful" light theme - change the theme to "Black" and all of the colours scream at you. It's less hideous than a dark theme that's been lightified, but still bothersome and in your face way too much. You'd design your UI elements differently if dark was the baseline.
And that is where the light theme of Discord, and many light themes for apps like VSCode make their mistake: They take dark design and lighten it up, and it usually looks ugly as sin, because direct translation betweem the two paradigms doesn't work. Light design to dark design can, somewhat, but it's suboptimal, and taking a dark design and lighting it up is near invariably hideous. To be excellent, you have to handcraft that stuff. Take inspiration from the dark design, why not, but the design has to really "walk in the sun", not just be dumped in a bucket of white paint.
PS: The forum can't be copypasted to, which sucks.
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This is such a good explanation, very informative.
I think their attitude in communicating this change is very informative as to how seriously they actually took it. They even admit on the blog post about light theme that they struggled to find employees who used it in the first place, so it's completely understandable why all their changes seem to be to placate people who hated light theme in the first place and were giving vague, "I might use it if..." suggestions. It's also very evident, from your post here and their blog post, that they see light theme as a mere palette swap of dark theme, not its own entity with different needs and purposes.
I'm sure it's much easier for them to treat light theme this way, as something they can set common variables for and then never have to duck their head in to test ever again (because "ewww, light theme"), but your post perfectly exemplifies why that's the wrong way to do it and I hope they take it into deep consideration as they comb through the feedback in the coming days.
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Nah, I think they're serious enough, just had a different perspective. Time will tell what happens, I obviously hope they'll redo it my way, but I'm not exactly impartial.
The kind of "actively light" design is obviously pleasing to some, given people have said as much and eg. Visual Studio Code themes and the new lightmode taskbar in Win10 were designed like that. But I think making a "light mode" thinking "good UI that just doesn't actively try to be dark and where lots of color and contrast is okay" would probably end up having wider appeal.
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A good writeup, just a couple of remarks:
"contrast on text"? Are you joking? Those middle gray blobs that pretend to be letters in no way provide any kind of useful contrast. Contrast would be dark gray to black letters with sharp edges. You even write about that kind of contrast later. Even channel links (medium blue on light blue) have better contrast than normal text now.
Code editors did not go dark because of syntax highlighting. In fact, most light mode highlighting schemes are better because they (need to) concentrate on the essentials instead of just throwing as many colors as possible at the user. They went dark because monitor backlights became brighter and people didn't realize that the default settings are optimized to "out-floodlight" other monitors in brightly lit stores. Those "100% brightness, 1 million Candela" settings were never intended for daily use.
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I agree with most to all of this, but the real solution is to let us decide what the sidebar is vs the main body of text. I am part of the population that genetic feels harm and sees halos from reading light text on a dark background, so I cannot physically use the dark mode. This light mode sidebar, which was only thrust on me because my computer rebooted itself, is agonizing on my eyes. It's too much at once, makes the whole screen look cluttered. If nobody on staff uses light mode, maybe they should have reached out to the users who did. This is why auto updates are pure evil. I do not want this sidebar in the slightest as a light mode user, and it means I'm going to use Discord on my phone more, which does not force updates I do not want.
tldr: make it so we can switch light or dark mode on the sidebar separately, not in conjunction with the messages themselves.
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One of the greater strengths of the old light mode, in my experience, was the dark sidebar. It provided a grounding to the light mode so that it wasn't jarring, and I felt like it was a good way to present the interface in a way that did not feel overwhelming (as dark mode did for me. things just felt a little lost in space). With this change the same dilemma I had with dark mode now presents on light mode, but arguably worse as it is MUCH brighter.
As was already stated the principle of using the dark mode design philosophy and just switching it to light doesn't work with light versions. The new sidebar is hard to look at.
In a future update I would like it if we had the ability to toggle between this light mode or the old legacy light mode. And if more changes to the light mode roll out maybe ask current light users if they would be willing to test it for you.
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Dark theme was and is better in all ways
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Completely useless remark by our boy Bahamut Cat.
The only reason people hate light mode is because it sucks. Discord and VS Code can't get it right, despite 99% of programs having light mode color schemes (hell, I'm writing this reply in a light mode Discord forum, and it looks great). Even IDEs like IntelliJ, Eclipse have light modes which looks very appealing and I have never found a problem with them, but I could never for my life get VS Code's light theme right, everything just felt off. Just because people can't get it right now doesn't mean that it's impossible to do, developers are just lazy.
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