Microsoft Teases New Outlook.com Dark Mode (theverge.com) 106
Microsoft is planning to introduce a dark mode to its Outlook.com web mail service. "While the software giant introduced a temporary dark mode for Halloween last year, Microsoft has been working on a new dark mode for Outlook.com for the past few months," reports The Verge. "Microsoft has started teasing that the new dark mode will be available soon." From the report: "One reason for the delay is our insistence that we deliver the best Dark Mode of any leading email client (you'll understand when you see it, I guarantee)," explains an Outlook.com team member in a feedback post. "The sneak preview you saw last year at Halloween was a prototype that required a lot more work to be ready for prime time." Microsoft says it has redesigned the colors and code "multiple times," and it's in the final stretch of introducing the new theme in Outlook.com.
And? (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, this is the least important thing Slashdot could have posted about. Besides, use an native client and you can theme it however you like.
Why is slashdot postig such drivel? (Score:1)
Totally agreed. What a boring as shit post... in a long line of many boring as shit posts. How much did the last owners pay for Slashdot? They paid that much and still have editors who post this drivel. Go to alexa.com and watch how much their ratings have dived.
The real story here: How do these people manage to keep their jobs?
I only come here out of reflex. There are much better tech news sources out there. Much, much better!
Re: Why is slashdot postig such drivel? (Score:2)
I think the "editors" are just a collection of shared accounts used by the current collection of unpaid interns that actually run the site. From the quality of the work it seems unlikely that any of the editors have a college degree, and even the intern supervisor ("editor in chief?") should only be making a buck or two over minimum wage. Still, that would be like $1K per quality post so I wouldn't cry for them.
Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)
this is the least important thing Slashdot could have posted about
Apparently you haven't scrolled down far enough to see the post about some analyst saying the new iPhones will be available in a "plethora" of five colors.
Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently you missed the drivel about "plugspreading" the other day.
Slashdot --- the fashion site for geeks (Score:2)
Is this tech news? Yesterday's hot news was that Apple was releasing the iPhone in 3 (or 5) new colors. Today's news is that Microsoft has reskinned a website to use darker colors.
I guess that it is news, but I struggle to really care. Has tech really become this boring?
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Yeah I though Windows anal probe 10, with it's forced software install and invasions of privacy was quite dark enough, I can only imagine the horror of outlook dark mode, emails to hell get a response I suppose.
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Is a theme news now? (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly...
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Apparently a theme also takes a few months to complete as well.
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Really? They let you change some colors? Oh, excuse me THEY changed some colors! Ahh, much better :(
Umm, I still remember when many of my programs let you change the color to whatever you wanted even if it blinded you.
A button that inverts all the colors would be magical, eh?
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The press? Microsoft still has monks hand-copying manuscripts.
This is important news! (Score:5, Insightful)
Spyware, bugs, ads are some of Microsoft's abuses. (Score:2)
Op-Ed: Microsoft layoff e-mail typifies inhuman corporate insensitivity [arstechnica.com] (July 17, 2014)
Microsoft job cuts far worse than rumored, could reach 18,000 [arstechnica.com] (July 17, 2014)
Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made. [networkworld.com] "Buried in the service agreement is permission to poke through everything on your PC." (August 4, 2015)
7 ways Windows 10 pushes ads at you... [pcworld.com]. (March 3, 2016)
Microsoft again forced upgrades on Win10 machines specifica [computerworld.com]
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My company switched from gmail to outlook-365-webmail. And I really hate it. Search for one thing is useless. Reminder can not be set to anything between 10 minutes and 0 minutees (with Google I could set it to 2 minutes). The service is also down quite often.
And all talks about the webmail is about.... themes. Yes, I have a mail that doesn't work like I would like, but at least I can make it loon orange or black.
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Re:This is important news! (Score:4, Insightful)
The amazing thing is that anyone uses their shit products anymore.
The general quality of programmer in the industry has gone down such that Microsoft stuff is just average.
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And we don't have much choice. These days, you seem to have to choose between Apple, Microsoft, or Google, and none of them are innovative anymore.
Re: This is important news! (Score:2)
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This is what happens when the priorities and feature set of software is determined entirely by marketing and not at all by technical people.
Nobody gives a fuck about 'better', or 'more secure', or 'faster' ... it's how much you can embed a link to Facebook or some other inane crap.
Software largely no longer exi
Re:This is important news! (Score:5, Insightful)
A good dark mode is easier said then done.
For a Holiday team it was a rather easy trick to switch the colors around, however there will be that one odd feature that will have the wrong colors that will not show up right in a dark mode. For Halloween as a seasonable option any bugs or annoyances are set aside as just some quirky fun that you can roll back when you want to be serious.
The Graphical User Interface Macintosh, XWindows, MS Windows. for the past 35 years have favored a light theme for the UI. Black Text on a white background, as part of the WYSIWYG design, figuring most of the content you see on the computer will be printed on white paper. The reason why OS/X, Windows, and GNOME/KDE all use similar colors and themes until recently is because there is decades of research and trial and error to show what goes best on this light theme.
Now in the past couple of years, we have moved away from printing stuff all the time, and most of the content is on a screen of some sort. This means the Dark theme makes more sense, allowing the glow of the bright letters making them bolder and easier to read, vs, the glow of the background, making the fonts thinner in appearance. Old screens with the 72dpi this isn't so bad, as a single pixel is big enough to be seen, and the glow of the background, will not overpower the pixels black. But on the new high dpi screens, the glow of the white can cover your pixels viability. So a dark theme is needed.
Now we are in Dark theme, we need to find what work viably, looks attractive, and doesn't scream goth playground.
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There is an important take away here. It has taken Microsoft 9 months to get to the point where something trivial that was mostly complete in October of last year is now ready to be announced as still not ready. The amazing thing is that anyone uses their shit products anymore.
I see this as a good sign. Major work on making something available in many colours is a sign of a company that has completely run out of innovation. I actually am quite happy that the "dark theme" is taking so long to take over all of Windows. It shows how little effort they are actually putting into that absurdity.
Now if only they could give the same lack of dedication to other UI elements like Fluent Design which can be summed up with: Same shit, just more runny.
Meanwhile, Windows 10 is BUGGY AS HELL (Score:1)
e.g.
File Explorer still has a decades-old bug meaning it cannot handle long file paths, that it itself creates, and does not use the flag Microsoft introduced to allow programs to handle long file paths.
Because Microsoft's programmer is busy changing application colours ?
Please give generously to our appeal to fund another programmer for Microsoft.
While I have you, MS (Score:5, Insightful)
How about not logging me off twice a day (if not more often) on Office365?
You actually use MS Office? (Score:3)
How about not logging me off twice a day (if not more often) on Office365?
Not a problem with LibreOffice. Come on in the water's nice. No log ins required nor any subscription fees.
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I use Outlook of Office 365 because that's what my workplace uses. I pester them to move over to Google every chance I get. Not even them use the rest of office. We share specs via Google Docs.
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Why LibreOffice over OpenOffice? (Serious question, I never knew which to choose, so I just flipped a coin.)
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LibreOffice because at some point in history OpenOffice dropped the ball and didn't pick it back up for years. That's why LibreOffice exists to begin with.
LibreOffice vs OpenOffice (Score:2)
Why LibreOffice over OpenOffice? (Serious question, I never knew which to choose, so I just flipped a coin.)
Because LibreOffice is being actively developed and OpenOffice not so much [wikipedia.org]. Basically Sun (later Oracle) didn't put serious effort into the project for a while and it forked into LibreOffice. If you have to pick one generally LibreOffice is the one you want to use.
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How about not logging me off twice a day (if not more often) on Office365?
I'm sorry; a new dark website theme is far too important compared to such trivialities as you report.
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How about not logging me off twice a day (if not more often) on Office365?
Huh? I haven't logged into Office365 in so long that I'm not sure if I could remember my password if I actually needed it. Sounds like some linked accounts in your profile are messed up. I used to have that with my Skype account when MS merged it with the Windows account even though the passwords were different. Suddenly I found myself being asked for the password despite having autologin enabled.
Long story short: Something is broke for you. MS doesn't just randomly log people out.
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It's my workplace email. That's the only bit of Office365 that we use. About a month ago it started logging out while nobody's looking. No other accounts linked. No fancy stuff added to it. Just online Outlook. I cleared the cookies, local storage, and whatever else I could find.
This is the same webmail interface where if I use a full size reading panel I can click through it and action on the list of messages underneath it. I'm not a fan.
They don't randomly log me out. The experience is as if the session t
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It's my workplace email. That's the only bit of Office365 that we use.
Oh. Workplace IT. Say no more :-)
How do you know no other accounts are linked? It's amazing the shear amount of integration MS products have in the workplace. Heck where I work I use the Office365 portal to reset my main domain account and computer password.
Incidentally that's also something that is messed up for me. My work Office365 email has a different and completely obsolete and non functional email address. Yet somehow it is still linked to my account and the passwords synced with my PC/domain account
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As far as I can tell, nothing else is linked to it. I looked everywhere on that website for things and came up empty. No Word or other desktop app licenses, no 3rd party addons, nothing. And my work computer isn't integrated with it past the browser tab, and in addition I'm running Linux so it can't be linked to Office365 even if somebody really wanted that.
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and in addition I'm running Linux so it can't be linked to Office365
That isn't a justification. Linux has been able to join active directory domains for the best part of 20 years. To be clear there's nothing on my computer that links it to Office365 either. All of that voodoo is done in the back end somewhere on a domain controller.
Mind you you're probably right and there's just something else at play, I'm just pointing out that you can't assume something is unlinked these days simply because you're not actively doing something.
This may not be news... (Score:2)
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Biggest. Thing. Ever! (Score:3)
Our lives can once again be filled with joy instead of bright grays!
Finally we can achieve the dreams of our grandfathers and never again be condemned to suffer dark fonts on light backgrounds.
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For too long we have been victimized by overly-bright color schemes when we use email. NO MORE!
Our lives can once again be filled with joy instead of bright grays!
Finally we can achieve the dreams of our grandfathers and never again be condemned to suffer dark fonts on light backgrounds.
As someone who started off with green text on a black background (or amber if you were fancy) the arrival of the paper white screen with black text was seen as an OMG!!!! I want one moment. So I'd humbly suggest you review your history about what style of screen your grandfather dreamed of.
Now git* off my lawn
(*and I am sure git has some arcane switch which will do this for you)
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For too long we have been victimized by overly-bright color schemes when we use email. NO MORE!
Our lives can once again be filled with joy instead of bright grays!
Finally we can achieve the dreams of our grandfathers and never again be condemned to suffer dark fonts on light backgrounds.
Snide comment aside one of my favourite features introduced in Office 2010 was the ability to change the theme to give a bit of contrast between the UI and the content. Incidentally MS made this frigging essential when they went with their low contrast "modern" UI garbage where you can no longer tell where your word document ends and the background starts.
Not that I care I read my email using a program. Not a website, or webapp, or an app, but an actual program that comes with an installer... and a dark the
Jumped... (Score:2)
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This is Microsoft. Their only innovation these days is the number and variety of sharks they jump.
Why is a new theme news? (Score:1)
Re: Why is a new theme news? (Score:2)
Maybe there was a notion that either Microsoft was copying Apple or that Microsoft is doing something cool?
Apple was hardly the first and Microsoft is as cool as you want them to be. Oh and some people actually like non-night themes.
What about... (Score:2)
What about a "just f__king work without giving me grief" mode?
Other issues more pressing (Score:2)
Important tech news! Are YOU keeping up? (Score:3)
A large team of Microsoft's cleverest wizards have spent the last two years working on an invention that is going to change the world, and if you don't learn about this innovation and offer it to your clients or bosses, you can expect the "oh, you're over 40?" treatment for the rest of your career.
Though our patent expert has not yet reported on his particular finding, insiders are saying Microsoft's finest hackers have learned how to change color. That is, your screen is able to show many more colors than you're probably used to see, and by using a technique where the numbers behind the pixels are lower than they usually are (how low? stay tuned!) they're able to change how things appear, without the numbers being so low as to cause an imbalance.
We contacted lead Microsoft researcher, Fucky McFuckface, and asked, "Fuckface, how dark is it going to be?"
"That's McFuckface."
"Pardon me."
"Anyway, I'm not yet authorized to say exactly how dark it is, but our engineers were able to come up with some pretty low numbers for the pixel's color values."
"So then at least this much is confirmed, that you changed the numbers on the colors rather than the alpha channel?"
"Well, I don't want to give away too many secrets, but I think that cat is out of the bag. Yes, the colors are darker because we used some lower numbers for the pixel values. In the colors. It's kind of technical to explain but I think if you see it, you'll at least somewhat intuitively grasp what must be happening under the hood, even if it's not quite apparent exactly how we did it."
"What impact do you think this will have on future technology?"
"Oh, this is absolutely transformative. I think that over the next ten years, most software engineers are going to have to learn how to type in low numbers when specifying colors."
"You mean, everyone will be expected to? Anyone and everyone?"
"Well, I think the market will expect it, yes, so successful startups will certainly be attempting to get a piece of the action. We will, of course, protect our IP."
"Thank you, Fucky."
Everyone, keep your eye on this story. Whatever screenshots that you're seeing today, I would be hesitant to begin reverse engineering what colors they used, as that might not end up exactly what consumers end up experiencing. You don't want to put man-months of expensive tech labor #2f2f2fing everything and then find out your shitty 1.0 product doesn't even do the #1f1f1f or #3f3f3f that hyperconnected always-on-the-go modern consumers expect.
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McFuckface's Rear Assistant Spud Pudpuller added "Many of the Ribbon engineers have, after a time of reorientation, successfully transitioned to the Dark Background group. After years spent realizing the brighter portion of the palette space, using visions of clown barf on a paper towel or a strip of toilet paper that wiped a unicorn's ass, they now are being retrained to conceptualize less luminous areas that might suggest wiping the residue off the anus of a unicorn with stomach ulcers or peeling off t
Lots of Anger Here, but I'm Happy for It (Score:2)
There's a lot of rage about this being a news post on Slashdot. I kinda understand because a color scheme isn't typically impressive, but when it's Microsoft or Apple responding to the assertion that their super-white motifs are blindingly bright and need to be toned down, I consider it significant.
When I saw the image, I was at least moderately excited. I prefer a dark background instead of a flashlight being shoved in my face. I only wish I could do the same with the entire MS Office suite.
You agreed, on page 469. (Score:2)
"Oh, don't worry," said Microsoft. "By 'dark mode' we meant the physical look, not data protection privacy. Never fear, your emails are still scanned by us and affiliates, pictures looked at, and sold off to buyers, including the government!"
Another goddam ... (Score:2)
... paint job [slashdot.org].
Apple's New iPhones Will Come In a Plethora of New Colors, Says Report
Microsoft fiddling while Rome burns (Score:2)
To make their current offerings usable again, much bigger changes are needed than swapping the colors.
1. Stop overwriting user preferences at each update.
2. Do not, under any circumstances, remove software without consulting the user. If software is incompatible with a system update, don't install the update without express user consent.
3. Stop making idiotic assumptions. If I install a language pack for Office, that doesn't mean you should change the user interface language or the language of the Start men
doubletake (Score:2)
At first glance I though, oh wow, Microsoft finally getting serious about privacy. Then I saw it was just another desktop theme. Figures.
None More Black (Score:2)
Maps (Score:2)
As a professional driver (at night!) I would really like there to be a night mode at the touch of a button, rather than just when it's deemed by GOOG to be permissible to have the map dark and navigation is actively turned on.
Honestly, it's not like grey pixels cost more than white ones!
Search (Score:1)
How about search being able to search. I never had this problem with Lotus Notes or a real mail client like Evolution or Thunderbird.
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