[Feature] Dark mode

[Brettdah]

Suggestions

It should be great if you could add a dark mode for the main windows late at night the window is killing my eyes ;)

Edit :
Oopsy may by the GUI redisign could be enough ;)
#2848

[DasSkelett]

I'm not sure on the Windows side of things, but on Linux Mono took the active GTK theme, so a dark theme was possible (and indeed used by me and @HebaruSan and maybe others).
But with the release of Mono 6 it broke again (after @HebaruSan contributed multiple commits to Mono to make it work before), and Mono ignores the active theme again, thus you only have the standard white theme.

I think Windows added some darkmode functionality in the last couple of updates, but I don't know if it is only for UWPs or if you can somehow use it in .NET apps too, or if it was only for their preinstalled UWPs (like the Settings).

[HebaruSan]

As stated, the loss of dark mode on Linux is a Mono issue (presumably an unintentional bug), but we've helped them fix things before. Investigation notes for that:

• It does still try to load the GTK colors in X11DesktopColors's static constructor

  • In fact it gets all the way through that block of code
  • However, when it saves the values to the theme, it doesn't stick:

    Style bg 0: 56,60,74          (value direct from GTK)
    Bg: 56,60,74,255              (value converted to .Net Color format)
    Button face: 240,240,240,255  (value retrieved from theme after set)
    

• Application.VisualStylesEnabled is inconsistently false when ThemeEngine's static constructor runs

  • Which makes it use a ThemeWin32Classic instead of ThemeVisualStyles
  • This despite our call to Application.EnableVisualStyles();
    • Which sets visual_styles_enabled to true
    • And nothing sets it back
  • Other times, it's true, and a ThemeVisualStyles is used, and the colors still don't work
  • ThemeVisualStyles inherits from ThemeWin32Classic inherits from Theme, and the color properties are in that third class anyway, so VisualStylesEnabled has no significance

• The color properties on Theme are implemented with some asymmetry: the get returns SystemColors.Whatever, while the set calls SetSystemColors, which works by calling System.Drawing.KnownColors.Update

  • System.Drawing.KnownColors tracks a big array of color values, and Update sets values in that array
  • The SystemColors class doesn't have source in the Mono repo, meaning it may be part of the "reference assemblies" instead

So it looks like the implementation of SystemColors was changed from one that consults KnownColors to one that does not.

[HebaruSan]

My fix for Mono was accepted, so Linux users should have dark mode again at some point in the hopefully not-too-distant future.

Windows users already have access to dark theming via the standard/classical desktop theme color settings:

In Windows 7:

1. Right click desktop
2. Personalize
3. In the list of themes find the section at the bottom called "Basic and High Contrast Themes"
4. Choose High Contrast Black
5. Launch CKAN!

Yes, this will change the color of all your apps and taskbar and so on. I'm looking into a way around that now, there should be some way to combine this with the more modern Aero theming.

[HebaruSan]

OK, partial success with this method (it seems that not quite every color is theme-able):

1. Right click desktop
2. Personalize
3. Window Color (in the bottom middle)
4. Advanced appearance settings...
5. Choose the colors that you want to use
6. Launch CKAN!

I'm going to see whether we can do anything at the application level to improve upon that, maybe there are a few hard coded colors left in there somewhere...

[HebaruSan]

Well, we can do significantly better in a dark theme context, but it requires turning off the "visual style" setting that gives the grid headers and inactive tabs a gradient. The result is a more Windows 95-98 look when NOT in a dark theme: