# Forum:DarkVector appearance?
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Hi. I'm having some intermittent eye problems and the brightness of Vector is bothering them. On another wiki I'm on, DarkVector is available, and does better. Where do I ask for this to be added as an appearance option? Thanks! -Actual-nh (talk) 16:33, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

You can try pasting this CSS that DarkVector is based on into the custom CSS for Vector under your user preferences as an interim solution. I just tried it, seemed OK. CSS is linked from here.Kufat (talk) 19:40, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
One problem with "official" DarkVector releases is that this wiki has a lot of specific styling codes for various tables. I consider this poor form, but haven't really tried to help address the problem myself... One thing you could use, which is what I use on a lot of sites in addition to this wiki (I'm visually impaired myself), is the Deluminate add-on for Chrome/Chromium, which I consider by far the best general dark-mode add-on out there. You can also take my vector.css (which is DarkVector + fixes for various tables specific to this wiki), but while it works much better than official DarkVector versions, it is still incomplete. --FIQ (talk) 19:59, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
Thanks very much! How do I access your vector.css? -Actual-nh (talk) 23:44, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
It can be accessed under User:FIQ/vector.css. --FIQ (talk) 12:44, 27 January 2021 (UTC)
The proper solution is to install the DarkVector skin, which would have to be done by a site admin. The existing solution of individual users overriding their personal Vector.css a) doesn't really help anyone else, b) is inflexible to changes in other things, and c) prevents them from using the regular Vector skin. Whereas if DarkVector were installed as a separate skin, it becomes easy for anyone to switch back and forth and customize it separately. When the DarkVector users discover things on the wiki that have bad styling, we can work on changing them to use classes declared in Common.css and overridden in DarkVector.css to make them look good in the dark theme. I would be happy to help out on that end of things, but can't do anything unless the skin is actually installed. I've been advocating to have it installed for a while now... --Phol ende wodan (talk) 01:46, 27 January 2021 (UTC)
The DarkVector skin is now installed. ——paxed (talk) 13:09, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Cool, thanks paxed! For anyone else trying out DarkVector, feel free to reach out to me if you encounter stylings that weren't designed for dark mode. I'll poke around a bit when it's dark outside. --Phol ende wodan (talk) 13:38, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

A thank-you to everyone, particularly paxed! If a table currently has specific settings for colors, how does one change these to refer to classes in Common/DarkVector.css? (I have some modifications to do to templates on the other wiki I mentioned above.) -Actual-nh (talk) 19:10, 28 January 2021 (UTC)
Note: I can't edit Common.css (on the other wiki, or here for that matter). -Actual-nh (talk) 19:15, 28 January 2021 (UTC)
For anyone interested in helping out, I've been testing out some initial edits in my personal stylesheet. Though, since I have the ability to edit the sitewide Darkvector.css, perhaps I should just be editing that so it applies to everyone using the skin and if I do something dumb and awful looking then people will yell at me to fix it.
I have the ability to edit Common.css, and I made a couple edits yesterday where I took out inline CSS styles (e.g. a div with the style="foo:bar;" attribute) and put them into Common.css, under whatever the relevant class of the div was. This type of change should be pretty inoffensive since it's just moving styles to where they belong in a stylesheet, without altering them, but the benefit is that now Common/darkvector.css can override them.
What people can help me with is identifying site elements that look bad in DarkVector, and making suggestions to what to change them to. How about using MediaWiki talk:Darkvector.css to coordinate? --Phol ende wodan (talk) 19:57, 28 January 2021 (UTC)
That should work (re location of discussion). -Actual-nh (talk) 21:13, 28 January 2021 (UTC)
Wow, this is awesome, I've been using Vector with FIQ's changes for a long time.  Things that didn't look good, I would just highlight with the cursor to make them readable.  Comment chains on talk pages were particularly terrible, but there were other annoyances all over.  Fancy math functions, for instance, rendered with a halo of fuzzy white artifacts.  Thanks everyone!!  Testbutt (talk) 21:45, 28 January 2021 (UTC)