Dark mode -- ok for a first step

IrinaL 

- Why do you use dark mode? How does it help you when using the browser or browing the web?

I use dark mode in my browsers because dark mode helps visually separate content/reading areas (black on white) from control/menu areas (white on black). The visual separation helps to avoid distraction. Years ago (roughly when Moses was a boy) Yale researched people's eye movements as they scanned web pages, and made recommendations about how to design pages so that user's eyes were drawn to key elements more easily, in an order that enhanced the information flow of the website. Dark mode assists that goal better, in my opinion, than light mode, because dark mode draws the user's eyes away from menu/control areas and focuses the user on content/reading areas.

- What would your ideal dark mode experience look like? Would it look more like Edge Classic, Edge Chromium, or something completely different?

I think that Edge (Classic) does a good job of visual design in this respect. The control/menu areas are separated visually by using black for some elements and charcoal grey for others, which helps distinguish between different control/menu elements, and the entire menu/control area is muted by using black/grey in those areas.

I tried using "system accent colors" to control dark mode and use of the "system accent color" (rather than, say, using black or charcoal grey for the active tab, and the other for the inactive tabs) for inactive tabs draws the user's eyes away from content/reading areas toward the inactive tab area of the menu/control part of the screen. That distracts users from content.

Look at the photo.  Where is your eye drawn?  To content or to the menu bar?

- What would a "consistent" dark mode in Edge mean to you?

For me, it means that all dark mode elements throughout W10 should use the same conventions, so that a user familiar with one dark mode element of W10 would be instantly conversant with the design/use conventions of the others.

Two thoughts along those lines:

(1) Black/grey shades (black, dark grey, medium grey) would be consistent throughout W10, that is, identical values for each (black, dark grey, medium grey) would be used in MS Mail, W10 menus, File Explorer, Edge, and so on.

(2) Content/reading areas, if content-intensive (as in the case of this message board, where people are expected to be able to quickly read the content), should be black on white, rather than white on black. MS Mail screws this up, big time, by rendering the e-mail content itself white on black. There is a reason why books and other reading media use black on white, and it isn't mindless tradition. Numerous studies have emerged recently reporting that people have a much more difficult time reading content-intensive material in white on black as opposed to black on white.

A final thought: Right now, the options for dark mode in Edge Chromium seem to be (a) follow the OS mode (default), (b) always use dark mode independent of the OS mode (dark), and (c) always use light mode (light). The options don't work that way in practice, that is how they should work.