Re:GitHub Releases Dark Mode
by Seirdy on Tuesday December 08, 2020 @06:16PM
(#25352903)
No, just one global stylesheet that all websites obey without breaking. The (dead) dream of the ideal user agent is a program that lets you browse with your preferred color scheme, fonts, font size, etc; websites look just like any other program. Or not, if you prefer. Content is dictated by the authors but appearance is dictated by the user-agent.
The idea of the user agent dictating presentation rather than the content author is kind of dead on today's modern web; while it's certainly possible to set a global stylesheet, doing so creates an incredibly frustrating game of trial-and-error as some websites break while others work fine.
The idea does live on outside the mainstream in ideas like Gemini, Gopher, and a small subset of the Web that focuses on textual content with very conservative progressive enhancement.
Most websites should be able to work just fine with nothing but HTML. That doesn not mean that they should actually be just HTML (my website certainly isn't); it means that enhancements like CSS and JS should be progressive. Exceptions exist, obviously.
The idea of the user agent dictating presentation rather than the content author is kind of dead on today's modern web; while it's certainly possible to set a global stylesheet, doing so creates an incredibly frustrating game of trial-and-error as some websites break while others work fine.
The idea does live on outside the mainstream in ideas like Gemini, Gopher, and a small subset of the Web that focuses on textual content with very conservative progressive enhancement.
I wrote about this previously: https://seirdy.one/2020/11/23/website-best-practices.html
Most websites should be able to work just fine with nothing but HTML. That doesn not mean that they should actually be just HTML (my website certainly isn't); it means that enhancements like CSS and JS should be progressive. Exceptions exist, obviously.