Sidebar is too dark, very hard to read and hurts my eyes

What would you like?

Either improve the contrast on the side bar, or add an option to use light mode (ideally preselected when the OS / browser is in light mode) or move the coloring of text and backgrounds into CSS variables so it can be customized from support.ts

Why is this needed?

Here on Elementary OS it is very difficult to read the text and some of the background highlights on the new side bar in Chromium. Everything else on my screen is in light mode.

Other

No response

[sbarba]

It may look cool, but it puts more strain on the eyes and from this article:

“People with astigmatism (approximately 50% of the population) find it harder to read white text on black than black text on white. Part of this has to do with light levels: with a bright display (white background) the iris closes a bit more, decreasing the effect of the “deformed” lens; with a dark display (black background) the iris opens to receive more light and the deformation of the lens creates a much fuzzier focus at the eye.”

[ryanjwilke]

Great. Thanks for the feedback everyone. It’s helpful to have that extra context.

We have discussed for how we could support both a light and dark mode for the “command log” area in the future. That’d probably be ideal as a next step for this space. We’ve defaulted the design to be making use of a darker palette so that adds some separation between Cypress elements and the application that’s being tested (which is likely white). Otherwise the two spaces can tend to compete with each other and contribute to the design feeling a little busier. All that said, we can recognize that some folks may have the preference to always use this space in more of a light mode setting.

Probably the most immediate fix that we can make is to increase the contrast of some of these elements so that things aren’t quite as hard to read. Thanks again!