App/UI/Night mode

As of v4.4, XOWA offers night mode.

Enabling [edit]

Night mode can be enabled in the following ways:

• Main Menu: Choose View -> Toggle Night mode
• Options: Go to Special:XowaCfg?grp=xowa.gui.nightmode and check Enabled

Color control [edit]

Colors for night mode are controlled by three different UI components:

Operating System [edit]

Colors for the following must be changed at the Operating System level:

• The window title bar
• The main menu bar
• The vertical scroll-bar

For example, on Windows 7, they can be changed at Control Panel -> Personalization.

Note that these can not be changed within XOWA, as the underlying UI framework library (SWT) does not allow it.

SWT [edit]

Colors for the following are controlled by SWT:

• All button backgrounds
• The url bar
• The tab buttons
• The find box
• The progress box

By default, a simple white on black theme is chosen. Exact colors can be chosen through Special:XowaCfg?grp=xowa.gui.nightmode.

CSS [edit]

Colors for all HTML content are specified through the CSS. By default, XOWA uses a global css at C:\xowa\bin\any\xowa\html\css\nightmode\xowa_night.css.

This CSS can be generated using the following process:

• Go to http://userstyles.org
• Search for Wikipedia
• Pick a user-style. For the current global CSS, I used https://userstyles.org/styles/105844/wikipedia-dark-st
• Click the "Show CSS" link
• Copy the CSS and place it in C:\xowa\bin\any\xowa\html\css\nightmode\xowa_night.css.
• Remove any line that starts with "@-moz-document"
• Remove any line that loads external urls (for example, loading images from http://imgur.com)

Note that the global night mode css file should not be modified (C:\xowa\bin\any\xowa\html\css\nightmode\xowa_night.css). Any modifications here will be lost in the next update.

If you want to customize the CSS, it must be done per wiki. Place the modified css file at C:\xowa\user\anonymous\wiki\your_wiki_name\html\xowa_night.css

Known issues [edit]

White border around tab buttons [edit]

The tab buttons have white borders. Unfortunately these are specified thru SWT and cannot be changed.

Flashing white background when viewing new pages [edit]

The HTML browser can sometimes flash white when viewing new pages. This seems to be an issue with the SWT browser control. It can be mitigated through the following

• Go to Special:XowaCfg?xowa.app.security
• Change Load HTML to browser method to url

Note that this option is not changed automatically because it has a minor privacy implication (pages are saved temporarily to the disk instead of being set directly through memory)

Flashing white background when opening new tabs [edit]

The HTML browswer can still flash sometimes when opening new tabs (Ctrl+T). This is an issue with the SWT tab control. Unfortunately, this cannot be changed

Various icons are hard to see in night mode [edit]

For example, the save button on the New Personal Wikis screen is a black floppy disk. This is hard to distinguish against a black background.

By default, XOWA is designed for a non-night-mode setting ("day mode"). Most icons will look fine for day mode. Unfortunately, resources are not available to always support both a "day mode" and a "night mode" theme.

Of course, contributions are always welcome. If you want to contribute a unified night mode theme, please contact me via Help/Feedback