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Hexo and the Dark Mode

First approach to implement 'prefers-color-scheme'

Due to the fact, that nowadays everybody is talking about Dark Modes for Browsers and Operating Systems, in order to save battery or for easier reading (uhh, really?), I decided my blog should support that.

Switching Dark Mode in Windows 10

Starting point is the new media query prefers-color-scheme, which is actually supported by all modern browsers.

Technique

My first read was Tom Brow’s Dark mode in a website with CSS, where he shows how to use the media query. Simplified, this is it, assuming the light version is the default:

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body {
    background-color: white;
    color: black;
}

@media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
  body {
    background-color: black;
    color: white;
  }
}

Pimping CSS for automatic switching

To support the automatic browser/OS-based automatic switch in Hexo, where Stylus is used, I had to change some template files. First the _variables.styl:

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// existing color variables
color-background = #f1f1f1
color-foreground = #111
color-border = #ddd
...

// new dark color variables
dark-color-background = #111
dark-color-foreground = #eee
dark-color-border = #000
...

// new media query variable
prefers-dark = "(prefers-color-scheme: dark)"

Next step was to change the _extend.styl, where some Stylus variables are defining complete blocks to extend. Here I had to supplement all lines, where something mode-dependend was defined, by adding the new prefers-dark media query and beneath the new ‘dark’ equivalence of the style:

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$base-style
  hr
    ...
    border: 1px dashed color-border-article
    @media prefers-dark
      border: 1px dashed dark-color-border-article
    ...

$block
  ...
  background: color-block
  box-shadow: 1px 2px 3px color-border
  border: 1px solid color-border
  @media prefers-dark
    background: dark-color-block
    box-shadow: 1px 2px 3px dark-color-border
    border-color: dark-color-border

...

The same changes I had to do in every template styl file, where one of the colors or other mode dependent style was used. For example:

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#mobile-nav-header
  background-color: color-background
  @media prefers-dark
    background-color: dark-color-background
  img.avatar
    ...
    @media prefers-dark
      filter: brightness(85%)

This will be rendered as:

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#mobile-nav-header {
  background-color: #f1f1f1;
}
@media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
    #mobile-nav-header {
    background-color: #111;
  }
}

#mobile-nav-header img.avatar {
  ...
}
@media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
  filter: brightness(85%);
}

Please note the use of filter:brightness() in the example. It is always advisable to darken the images too, because they can really pop out on dark backgrounds.

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