Re:When will web browsers be complete?
by TeMPOraL on Wednesday October 28, 2020 @09:18AM
(#24918365)
It's probably the unfortunate consequence of a typical software vendor's perspective.
There's a deep conflict between the interests of users and software vendors, a conflict for control over presentation. It's blindingly visible on the web, and half the reason it's in such shitty state it is, but it also applies to desktop software. The problem is that for a vendor, application's UI and UX are marketing space, and they want total control over "user's journey". For the user, UI/UX are things that stand between them and the work they want to get done, so they want it to be effort- and bullshit-free. For non-tech-savvy users this implies "consistent with all other software they use"; for power users, this means "able to be altered or removed" - but both of those viewpoints require vendor to not have the final say about presentation.
In context of dark mode, an OS-level control over UI styling is a user-friendly feature. Unfortunately, it got defeated by vendors who want the UI to be their branding space, and now they have to begrudgingly add dark mode themselves.
There's a deep conflict between the interests of users and software vendors, a conflict for control over presentation. It's blindingly visible on the web, and half the reason it's in such shitty state it is, but it also applies to desktop software. The problem is that for a vendor, application's UI and UX are marketing space, and they want total control over "user's journey". For the user, UI/UX are things that stand between them and the work they want to get done, so they want it to be effort- and bullshit-free. For non-tech-savvy users this implies "consistent with all other software they use"; for power users, this means "able to be altered or removed" - but both of those viewpoints require vendor to not have the final say about presentation.
In context of dark mode, an OS-level control over UI styling is a user-friendly feature. Unfortunately, it got defeated by vendors who want the UI to be their branding space, and now they have to begrudgingly add dark mode themselves.
EDIT: see also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24918296 upthread, it seems to be a quite accurate description of what will happen if we let the vendor side win.