tbh the way people talk when you even off-handedly mention you use light mode (even for accessibility reasons) is enough to make me never want to ask an admin for anything lmao. maybe i would like to be able to read text on a screen without being mocked for it.

i didnt mean for it to come across offensive... i also have astigmatism, horribly, which causes everything to look like stars. but i also have chronic migraines and other light sensitivities that make light skins impossible. it was not an attack... I understand the need for accessibility, which is why I have people sensitive to both ends of the light spectrum on my staff team. and yes, some admins are weird about it, but a lot of them have toggle skins now. and a lot of times if people tell me something is too difficult to read, i'll change it. make fonts bigger, change the colors used. -and i know this whole thing isn't about me- but as an admin that has had people ask before, it should never be hard to ask staff for changes, and if it is, then maybe there needs to be more open conversation between staff and members. it's not that hard to change things. it's also not that hard to ask. I'm sorry that there are staff out there that have made fun of you before, but I promise not everyone is like that. if their goal is not member comfort, then idk why they're staff.

I think one of the issues with light/dark skins is cause people think it's an attack on something they purchased or made. I don't think it's wrong to want a toggle - however for a lot of admins they aren't coders. They think it's super hard to do a toggle therefore some get defensive about it. I can't do light skins for long - so I offer where I go to code it myself. I think if there was more of a DIY type of situation for it (such as teaching people here, I'm bad at teaching through threads though) people would feel more comfortable. There are accessibility tools out there (I have a lot installed on my own browser for my lizard brain and eyes) - it's something I see in RL skins a lot and I think should move to animanga more often.

To be honest, the less people code, the more the either want something completely off the wall or fear changing a single variable. There is no inbetween and that's why people just thrust coders into positions. I think graphic/coding admins need to make a comeback tho.

I love the trend of having toggles for light and dark mode! Sometimes light mode just vibes better with me, or at least it has for the past couple sites that I'd been on for an extended amount of time. One thing that I'm learning is sometimes when I'm stuck and having a difficult time writing, if I swap to dark mode (or from dark to light mode), for some reason, I'm able to write??? Slight change in environment and quality of life.

Oh, you weren't offensive. It did come across like you might've misunderstood it was a matter of preference ("is too much for me"), when it's unfortunately not. As illidan main mentions, usually I get mocked for using light mode (because in the year 2024 people still don't understand astigmatism), so I feel a need to explain often I'm not asking for something because I like it better.

I mean, in a way I do, much in the way that most people prefer being able to see.

It kinda sucks, because when I was younger I was totally fine with dark skins for the most part. Wish they stopped playing around with brain implants and just figured out a way to make lenses that last a lifetime instead...

Echoing what Neko said, the lack of coding knowledge in the community and the fact that skins these days either require massive amounts of investment and/or real money to commission knowledgeable coders, a light/dark toggle unfortunately, boils down to being a bit low-priority compared to all the other items on an admin's massive to-do list. As a designer, I agree that accessibility should be first and foremost, but if you think about it, making sure your skin works with both light and dark colour schemes and making them both work and look good is essentially coding two skins instead of the minimum one you'll need to open.

It's already big enough of a hurdle for people to successfully open sites, let alone making something successful that would stay open for a long period of time, and I understand that sentiment completely, having personally experienced more failures in site-admin'ing than successes. 

What I think would be the solution? Having more people invested in this hobby and branching out to learn coding. But I also completely understand how for most they're here to enjoy the hobby and writing is their foremost priority, and not the bells and whistles that make it more palatable. 

For reference, currently I'm working on my newest project's site skin and needing to make sure that the colours work for both light and dark mode, I had to do mock-ups in Figma for comparison and making revisions for both themes where needed. It's not as simple as just swapping out hex codes in the root variables when you swap to another theme, sadly.

okay but this is gorgeous. T.T

Honestly, with commentary about skins; not necessarily related to dark/light modes. I do wish people had easy contact with people with sensitive eyes who can also check their accenting colours for being too bright and flag them. I have a friend who has been kind enough to let me "borrow their eyes" and check accent colours for me and flag anything that hurts their eyes. It is incredibly helpful, especially since with what Adira said, there are some work arounds for skin bases, not sure if it effects accenting colours though.

ninelie THANK YOU I was reading this thread sweating so hard like "I promise members that admins aren't ableist assholes it's just I opened one site and almost died"

unrelated to contrast/colors but like just recently I bought a site skin and asked for responsive and the coder was like "this will add an entire skin's worth of labor to the bill" and I was like "nvm"

would I KILL for a responsive skin that makes it easier to post on mobile? god yes. do I want to pay a few more hundred dollars for the privilege of making a hobby easier? LMFAO no just be happy I don't make everyone post on the jcink default skin

in my perspective on the topic (as an animanga rper), the major issue is that there aren't really like... large hubs for coding resources by role-players, made for role-players. at least, none (that aren't closed down) of note aside from pixel perfect that i've seen advertised and widely used. like yeah, there are discord servers? but finding resources in them is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

the standards are growing ever higher for aesthetics and inclusivity across the board. the knowledge required to know html/css/javascript is rising too. i really feel for the people that have to learn how to code for this hobby in its current state. even with the resources out there for the language outside of a forum context, it's a daunting task.

*insert grandma emoji here* i remember the days where bbcode and basic html knowledge was good enough!! /shakes fist

Reading through the thread so far on what's going on with the re:skin discussion, I do agree with porsef that there really isn't a lot of coding resources for RPers. While CTTW was up and had some resources along with another one (I can't remember the name lmao), there was some that we could at least try to look back at... But for someone either learning to code for jcink or just getting their feet wet on what Jcink can do, it is going to be daunting. And to be honest, while I prefer forum RP over discord RP, I can understand why people lean more into discord - there's a lot less 'barrier-to-entry' on having to set up.

As a small aside, we are commissioning a custom for a site we are opening up, but that's because it's a passion project between three of us with love and we think it is worth it. But man, if I knew how to skin (and skin well for that matter), I'd try to do it. :c

tbh this is part of why i encourage people to join sites with simpler skins so that it feels like less of an arms race to HAVE accessible skins.

this is also why i ban templates on sites i run ngl.