Begin the begin...

We do need to start somewhere/sometime, so here we go. As life went I have basically been AFK for the last few years, but as I am returning in front of my keyboard this old idea/project of mine keeps lurking, and this will be the place I keep track of what I'm doing.

Full disclosure : as I am writing this, I don't have a theme yet. Or a website really, this is just me typing in vim for the moment, but I'm hoping to get something up relatively soon.

Obviously I can't say for sure, but it will probably be in a dark-ish tone. On that topic though, I have been using some dark themes in a few places/applications, and mostly I like it, but as it turns out this might not be the best after all.

Indeed I recently came across an interesting post on the subject and the gist of it is, that there isn't any real benefit after all.

Turns out except for quite specific & rare cases, you don't save any power by using a dark theme. Sure, your screen might be black instead of white, and that might have an visual impact on you, but really as far as power consumption goes, it doesn't make a difference.

As for you and the visual impact, my takeaway is this :

• studies have found that in fact a dark theme/background does impact readability, but not in a good way. People were having more difficulty focusing on a dark theme than a light one, because more light actually means less work for the eyes to focus on things, like the text you're reading.

  Something that, adding a personal anecdote as if relevant, I feel I've personally experienced. That is, a few times I found myself "having trouble" reading a (long) text on a dark theme, or being able to focus on said text for a long time got tiring much faster than it should have - and I'm pretty sure it would have with a light theme.

• it might not be so much the darkness that matters, as much as the contrast. Because eye strain has also to do with differences of light in different places, so either way : full on white is bad, but full on black is too.

  And what you'll usually find with (good) dark themes is some kind of dark gray, which isn't too aggressive to the eyes. Similarly, instead of a pure white background, a light theme should also go for a more dull white.

  Won't change the fact that we're used to live during day light, and to quote Kevin's original post :

  A dark blob on a light background is far easier for the human eye to see, than the reverse.

All that to say, I still feel like going for dark-ish tone is better. Not full bright black, but dark gray or something. In fact, the background in my vim window right now isn't black but some kind of dark gray.

And if you still like to use dark theme/mode whenever you can, make sure it is more dark gray than black, you'll get less eye strain that way. Another good idea is to have a light source in the room you're in that is not your screen. And chances are it might not be a white light, but have a warmer tone, so adapting the color temperature of your screen to match the room - via the use of software such as redshift - would be a good idea.