
Show HN: Slack Night Mode - laCour
http://blog.lacour.me/making-slack-night-mode
======
will_hughes
The domain 'blog.lacour.me' doesn't resolve for me:

Your name servers seem to be ns[1-5].he.net, and ns1.he.net doesn't know what
blog.lacour.me is:

    
    
      > blog.lacour.me  
      Server:  ns1.he.net  
      Address:  216.218.130.2
    
      *** No address (A) records available for blog.lacour.me

~~~
tombrossman
It's not using an A record, it's using a CNAME:

    
    
      host blog.lacour.me
      blog.lacour.me is an alias for silvrback.herokuapp.com.
      silvrback.herokuapp.com is an alias for us-east-1-a.route.herokuapp.com.
      us-east-1-a.route.herokuapp.com has address 54.83.3.141

~~~
VeilEm
The CNAME doesn't resolve for me either. I can't see whatever this is.

------
wallacoloo
What ever happened to consistent, cross-application look-and-feel? I don't
want each application defining its own style which clashes with every other
application. We already have things like Qt and GTK themes for the desktop,
but the web is just a mess in that regard. I really hope to see some eventual
solution.

Mozilla's "Reader View" is a fantastic step towards establishing a consistent
(and user-configurable) look-and-feel across the web. But its domain is still
very narrow and wouldn't apply to Slack, unfortunately. Yet it's the only
product I know of that's even working towards this kind of goal.

~~~
seanwilson
It's just too impractical get every developer who also support multiple
platforms to all agree to use exactly the same look and feel. There's
similarities to getting everyone to use the same programming language.

~~~
noir_lord
Nor would I want it anyway, I think the cognitive overhead of dealing with
multiple different interfaces is offset against the fact that people can
create new interfaces and solutions, imo that is better than a "one size fits
none" approach.

------
nodesocket
Really nice hack. Unrelated, by I checked out your startup
[https://hund.io](https://hund.io). My question is... Why not just use
[https://StatusPage.io](https://StatusPage.io)? They are launched, funded,
refined, and the de-facto standard. What is your value prop?

~~~
rickycook
status page pricing is kind of ridiculous for starters. they do very little
and expect $99/mo for a basic plan

~~~
tyre
This!

Their business pricing, which includes SSL, starts at $399 per month.

Or you can self-host with something like
[http://staytus.co/](http://staytus.co/)

Yes you have to set up multi-AZ deployment, but that's super simple on AWS.
Add in their new free SSL certs and voila!

Even as a small startup, that's easily worth the time to save nearly $5k per
year.

~~~
nodesocket
This is exactly the developer behavior that can cause a good startup to fail.
Stop trying to optimize every penny! Optimize what matters. Your business.

Sure, you can spin up two, three, four instances in AWS across multiple
availability zones. Sure, you can install Ubuntu and manage servers. Sure, you
can setup an ELB, or maybe you go the extra yard and configure NGINX. Sure you
can deploy an open source rails or node status page app. All wasted energy and
wasted cycles that should have been utilized on your idea directly.

I've seen this attitude of extreme frugalness/cheapness and it seems to be a
trait that engineers are almost proud of, and brag about. Toxic behavior.

Disclosure: I am myself an engineer, but also founder.

~~~
borski
This is very dependent. Spinning up your own status page takes incredibly
little time, rather than paying $99/mo.

On the other hand, spending more elsewhere, say, to keep good books or to
acquire customers, makes perfect sense.

------
downtide
I'm on Linux with Xfce. I have tried and failed to get a dark theme working.
It's difficult to match across toolkits.

I've had web browsers that default to white screen flashing on new tabs, and
most don't respect your native theme.

My current workaround]in Firefox is to disable background images, set default
foreground/background and link colours. Set a default font, and ensure font
sizes don't fall below a certain size.

Some text inputs have a dark background and a dark font. Which makes things
very difficult. I'm typing blind.

Another issue is that many designs use background images where you would
expect foreground placement. For example Instagram doesn't work for me. Slack
is usable, but some image previews are lost. Other sites that rely upon
imagery for navigation can pose a problem. The compose window in Gmail, I have
to use mystery meat navigation to work out each button's function. Which is
quite poor.

I've tried setting my own stylesheets in browsers where you can, but it's easy
to break layouts.

Obviously accessibility is still overlooked by many site designers.

I also don't like being stuck in one browser, so a better cross application
solution is preferable, rather than site specific fixes.

~~~
wz1000
> Some text inputs have a dark background and a dark font. Which makes things
> very difficult. I'm typing blind.

[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/firefox#Unreadable_inpu...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/firefox#Unreadable_input_fields_with_dark_GTK.2B_themes)

You can customise the colors according to your preference.

I also like the FT Deep Dark theme for firefox.

------
tommoor
OP: Did you try this on Mac? I'm pretty sure Electron is only being used on
Windows and Linux unless they recently made the switch..

~~~
coloradude
AFAIK Electron has always been cross platform. But yes it is very much on
available on Mac.

~~~
farnsworth
I think he means whether the Slack app is using Electron on OS X. At one point
they used MacGap.

------
derFunk
So when can we expect the first Slack exploits abusing the slack protocol
handler and the js evaluation function? :)

~~~
MatthewWilkes
Yeah, this feels more like an (unintentional) irresponsible vulnerability
disclosure, despite how fun it was reading.

------
perishabledave
Slightly aside, but is there any evidence that the warmth of the light effects
sleep? The cited paper compares a light emitting device to a book, which would
not be the same as f.lux and this.

Not trying to dismiss this. I'd genuinely like to know as I'm often on my
computer late at night.

~~~
xresonance
Yes, and plenty to read on the subject. Look around for blue light and sleep /
circadian rhythm / melatonin production.

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2831986/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2831986/)

------
farnsworth
Cool hack, but an even better solution would be for Electron to support
userstyles (and scripts). I won't be surprised if we gradually standardize on
Electron or something like it for cross-platform desktop apps, and it would be
great for them to be as hackable as the web.

------
tjmehta
It is a Stylish theme for Slack in the browser.

Here is a link to the Github project: [https://github.com/laCour/slack-night-
mode](https://github.com/laCour/slack-night-mode)

I wish the Slack App had a night theme..

~~~
patates
In the article there is a solution for the desktop app too, only not for the
Mac.

------
Gravityloss
I often use reverse colors on OSX. ctrl-alt-cmd-8. Since most pages have white
backgrounds, this results in black backgrounds.

It's also very nice that Flux is applied after this so I don't get a dark blue
screen.

------
r0s
I use a mix of stylish themes to achieve something similar, and hide Slack's
grating UI and default colors.

------
rco8786
Reading...reading...

Oh my god they're `eval`ing url components

