Vaadin Flow 14 ships with light and dark versions of its two bundled themes, Lumo and Material.
And now browsers can ask the host OS for the user’s preference for light or dark modes.
Is there a way to have a Vaadin app automatically use the light or dark theme variant per the user’s wishes?
Marcus Hellberg wrote a helpful post on how to switch light/dark mode theme variants programmatically. I am wondering if Vaadin 14 might be able to switch automatically now that the user preference is detectable from within the browser.
If not, perhaps Someone could show Java code for inquiring about the user’s preference from server-side Java code.
You can use window.matchMedia API to listen for changes to the prefers-color-scheme media query standardized in Media Queries Level 5. See CanIUse.com for browser support.
That CSS media feature of color scheme preference has 3 possible values: no-preference, light, and dark. The code below looks for a match on dark.
Put the JavaScript code shown below into /frontend/prefers-color-scheme.js
On your main view, add the annotation #JsModule("prefers-color-scheme.js")
let mm = window.matchMedia('(prefers-color-scheme: dark)');
function apply() {
document.documentElement.setAttribute("theme",mm.matches?"dark":"");
}
mm.addListener(apply);
apply();
Source: https://gist.github.com/emarc/690eb2659c8b51cb895716914d65ec19
Related
In my Xamarin project (Xamarin 4.8) there are many pages with complex structure. Also there are many bitmap resources, designed for white backgrounds etc.
When user sets Dark theme on the iOS, appearance of pages become weird and unusable. On Android the application looks as nothing was changed.
For now I have no time, to set manually color properties on every control on every page and I would like to enforce light theme for the application (Android and iOS platforms), to get a time to redesign the whole application later.
In an article I read that Xamarin 5 offers a way, putting this line of code into Application class:
App.Current.UserAppTheme = OSAppTheme.Light;
I tried this way (migrated project to Xamarin 5 and called this code), but it does not work. Application on iOS in the Dark theme looks unusable.
What options do I have on this point? Is there a relatively simple way to enforce Light theme for iOS applications?
As advised by #SushiHangover and #JackHua-MSFT into this answer I used the following approach and it worked (XCode 12.3):
Into the plist.info I should add the key UIUserInterfaceStyle with value Light. And that enforces Light theme for the application, regardless of what theme is set for the device.
Final xml code, that I added to plist.info looks like that:
<key>UIUserInterfaceStyle</key>
<string>Light</string>
I've been struggling with app dialog and toolbar appearances in the social boo theme for some time. I recently discovered that my struggles are less with my code and more with the theme. In the GUI Builder switching the Native Themes from IOS6, IOS7, and Android (Gingerbread I believe) all create very different dialogs ranging from matching to illegible to ok. Also I found this demo:
https://www.codenameone.com/demos-SocialBoo.html
and ran it on my Android (S6) phone. The below image illustrates the problems:
Social Boo visualizations
Note the Dialog's appearances as they change in the first 3 images. Please note in the 3rd Android picture I'm clicking on the Cancel button to show how differently it paints with the pointer pressed. The 4th image is again from my phone, note the toolbar button on the top right with a square image placed oddly over a rectangular button. Ah finally, all the problems I'm seeing in my app happening elsewhere!
Hopefully my title question now makes more sense. Is the social boo theme being updated with CodenameOne releases or is it dead? Should I abandon using it as it'll have quite varied appearances on devices especially iOS? I'd love to have the theme maintain the IOS6 appearance on all devices - how can I achieve that goal? Thank you in advance for your help!
It's a bit out of date. Most developers just cut a PSD design from scratch which works best when based on a native theme.
You can easily fix these things if you want to work with that theme though. When we implement a theme we don't aim to implement every feature that might be needed as those are hard to predict and will increase the theme size. The original theme didn't include design for dialogs so some behaviors leaked out.
You can use theme constants and UIID's like the theme constant dlgButtonCommandUIID to determine the UIID of the buttons within the dialog.
While developing a menubar app, I am having a hard time finding the preferred method for making the app actually look good. I would have thought that Apple controls would have essentially handled this for the most part, but it appears not.
What is the preferred method for making sure a menubar app looks good in both light and dark mode? Am I missing some control functionality that facilitates this more easily or do I need to manually detect the mode and modify controls appropriately?
I have a menubar app, and I didn't have to do anything to make it look good in the dark theme.
Light theme:
Dark theme:
The most important things you need to do are:
Use system colors (e.g., [NSColor textColor], [NSColor textBackgroundColor]. These automatically adapt with the various themes. See the Color and Typography section of Apple's OS X Human Interface Guidelines.
Use template images. These also adapt to color changes. See the System-Provided Images section of Apple's OS X Human Interface Guidelines.
It's worth noting that Apple has not made it easy to programmatically detect which color theme is running (there are some tricks, but I'm not aware of any sanctioned method). My sense is that they've done this intentionally, so developers don't do custom per-theme stuff. Using system colors and template images, you shouldn't have to.
Update:
Sample project here: https://github.com/zpasternack/MenuBarTest
Well, you haven't explain (or shown) in what way it looks bad. Probably, you are using a normal, non-template image for its icon. You should use a template image, which is an image whose only significant part is the alpha mask. You tell the system that it's a template image either by naming it with a "Template" suffix (e.g. "FooTemplate.png") or by calling -setTemplate: on it.
In some WMs it is possible to choose theme which affects how windows are displayed, e.g. how a background of a button is coloured.
If I draw a window using bare Xlib calls, what should I do to conform to these theme-affected settings? I.e. am I supposed to write specific code for every possible WM? How is it resolved in general?
There are several theme types and they sometimes play together, but they should not be confused.
Window manager/border themes describe the decorations of each window, not the content
UI toolkit themes/widget themes describe how buttons, text fields etc. are drawn within a window
Icon themes describe which icons are used, covering application icons as well as file icons, action icons, toolbar icons etc.
Color themes define a palette of colors to be used within the framework of the other themes
Pointer themes define a set of mouse pointer icons
Some desktop environments bundle all these themes in "desktop" themes, or at least provide a frontend to choose all of them. Yet, these themes are independent from the desktop environment and also from each other. It is possible to set them using configuration files.
If you want your application to fit with the user's preferences, first of all you should adhere to the Icon theme. The Pointer theme is taken care of by the X server, as long as you only use stock mouse icons and don't upload your own to the X server.
The second obvious thing would be the Color theme, but unfortunately there is no standard for color themes, both Gtk+ and Qt frameworks provide this functionality in an independent fashion (and desktop theme configurators understand and manipulate both to provide consistency). You could do some magic to find out whether the user prefers Gtk+ colors or Qt colors (e.g., is running Gnome or KDE) and then extract the colors somewhat from there.
The hardest thing however is to provide a look and feel of your UI elements that is true to the UI toolkit theme(s) the user has chosen. First you would again have to decide between Gtk+ and Qt (other toolkits that are themeable exist as well, but are typically not themed by the user, or niche players like Enlightenment). Then you would have to re-implement the same functionality. Interestingly, many themes come with their own theme engine in Gtk+, and it is possible to let the theme engine do the work for you. An approach that was picked-up by several parties already. Examples:
Java Swing supports mimicing Gtk+ applications by implementing the Gtk+ themeing API and letting the Gtk+ theme engines do the work, works with some inconsistencies.
Firefox and other Mozilla Apps using XUL also do this, but there are always annoying differences, starting with the default font size.
Qt itself has a compatibility Gtk+ theme, that basically does the same; this one works pretty well.
My suggestion is to not reinvent the wheel, instead use Qt (or Gtk+ if you prefer) for GUI elements that go beyond basic drawing operations. Note that from my experience, even primitive drawing is typically better done with Qt than with Xlib.
The user gets the look&feel she expects (not only the look), the interface is rich and stable, and you save considerable time writing all this stuff.
In my Windows Phone 7 app, I want to use the light theme, no matter what theme the user sets in the phone. How to do that ?
Do I need to custom the style or theme ? I just want the default light theme.
Thanks
Jeff Wilcox offers a good way to do this using a theme manager he developed.
http://www.jeff.wilcox.name/2012/01/phonethememanager/
There is a nice way of replacing the default brushes. Saves you setting Forecolor everywhere.
http://www.designersilverlight.com/2011/01/17/theme-forcing-for-windows-phone-7-silverlight/
You'll still need to set the background of the main layout node to the default background brush.
Background="{StaticResource PhoneBackgroundBrush}"
There is no way to force an app to use a specific theme.
The best you can do is create your own style for every control you use and mimic the light theme in your styles.
Beware, this can be a time consuming and tedious task. Be sure to test all pages and all controls in all states when both the light and dark themes have been specified by the user.
I've had to do this (but for the dark theme) and it's not something I'd do again out of choice.
There are a few tips on doing this from one of the PDC sessions on optimising performance http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_phone/b/wpdev/archive/2010/10/28/pdc-live-optimizing-performance-for-silverlight-windows-phone-7-applications.aspx
This is a very bad idea.
Windows Phones use OLED displays - the pixels generate light directly, they are not backlit. Power consumption is therefore highest for white pixels. This is why Microsoft is suddenly obsessed with light text on dark backgrounds. It's not a back-to-the-seventies thing.
If you do this you will cause ridiculous power consumption.
For the benefit of the jerk who voted down a factually correct answer, I quote page 63 of the Windows Phone 7 UI Design and Interaction Guide published in July 2010 by Microsoft.
Avoid using too much white in
applications, such as white
backgrounds, as this may have an
impact on battery life for devices
that have organic LED displays.
If you're wondering why Microsoft included a "light background" theme option, so am I.