As an award-winning digital agency, Thunderbolt Digital love to keep on track with the latest news and trends for web design in Surrey, meaning we pay close attention to local businesses as well as well established giants like Google. Many users will be glad to hear that Google is currently testing out a dark mode for its web browser chrome. However, some of you may be asking: just what is dark mode?
Dark mode is actually quite self explanatory – it’s a setting that websites and apps can implement to make the overall colours scheme darker and easier on the eyes. Generally in web design, backgrounds often default to white or light colours for readability or for the sake of working well with brand colours. In contrast (quite literally!), dark mode is becoming increasingly popular amongst users as it reduces battery consumption and minimises digital eye strain associated with long periods spent looking at screen, especially when browsing on mobile devices in dimly lit areas or at night.
When looking at trends for web design in Surrey, we’re already see dark themes amongst mobile apps, entertainment industries and social platforms, and can be seen on Youtube, Discord, and Twitter to the relief of many users, many of whom prefer darker surroundings for media elements, all of which are prevalent on the above sites. The complementary nature of dark themes towards images and video are no coincidence, however, and some sites like Netflix, Spotify, and Hulu don’t have a “dark mode” but design their sites using dark palettes specifically to work with the content they share.
Previews of Google’s upcoming dark theme is exciting to many people, but it has also been noted that there are already potential issues, including the including the low-contrast dark font in the menus, as well as the fact that the “new” theme is far too visually similar to the already established incognito mode, which could cause more confusion for users and negatively affect AI.
However, the theme is only in its testing stages, and will not be released to the public for the next few months, so hopefully these kinks will have been ironed out by release date – keep checking back for more news and updates!