Someone's casual opinion about "readability" is not objective. It is the very definition of subjective. I mean, if you've been on HN at all you've seen massive debates about fonts, colors, contrast, and so on, where people have profoundly different opinions about readability.
Run a study and then talk. Otherwise it's just subjective observations.
Further, we're talking about page theme spreading to the chrome of the browser. It makes the chrome less important than the page contents. It seems they're putting "readability" focus exactly where it should be.
Have they? The base of your argument is a classic appeal to authority. They're "very proud, considerate, intentional" designers so they must be right and everybody else wrong.
Where's the data? Aren't unhappy users valid enough data to demonstrate a downgrade in user experience?
> They're "very proud, considerate, intentional" designers so they must be right and everybody else wrong.
Contriving a straw man to argue a position does no good.
I specifically took issue with claims that it's thoughtless. That in no way says it's right or wrong [1], but I'm extraordinarily certain that a lot of people thought long about every detail of this, they probably argued and different people had different takes, and we can see the results of that process. Trying to casually dismiss all of that as thoughtless is gross.
> Aren't unhappy users valid enough data to demonstrate a downgrade in user experience?
Unhappy users aren't proof of much at all but that people really dislike change, and that you can't please all of the people all of the time. The eventual net result is an entirely different thing.
And again, the net might be positive and it might be negative. I've made zero assessment of that. I happen to be a pretty malleable user and I just flow with whatever, adapting to whatever various platforms demand I use.
[1] Although notions of right and wrong depend upon the inputs to your assessment. e.g. often we'll some users feel that a certain function or trait is a first class, primary element, while it isn't to others. What is right for one can be wrong for another. Seldom is it universal. Every design of any complexity is wrong for some subset of users.
Nothing is thoughtless, if we're being pedantic assholes about the situation who only care about protecting Apple from mean words.
For the sake of conversation though, yeah, I'd argue that Safari is the most thoughtless among the mainstream browsers. Compared to Firefox, Edge, Chrome and even Brave or Vivaldi, Safari is a less compatible, less up-to-date, less secure and less cared-about experience.
It has been running for centuries. It’s called typography. Its rules are not arbitrary and legibility is the most important one.
No need for scare quotes around readability. It’s a science.
There’s a latitude of contrast ratio between which human eyes can comfortably withstand and discern tones. It varies across individuals, of course, but not as much as you might think. No human sees ultraviolet, for example. And even if you have 20/20 eyesight, you need to design for a much wider spectrum of the Bell curve if you care at all about accessibility.
You might be interested in checking the history and methods behind CIE 1931. Also, “The Elements of Typographic Style” is a deep but fascinating book.
It’s not off the cuff. It uses the site’s background as it’s own and has to guesstimate what color the letters on top must have in order to remain legible.
Compare the job of this algorithm, having to deal with a crazy amount of possible color combo, to that of an experienced UX designer making just a dark and light theme, both thoroughly tested, and you can begin to grasp the trouble they’ve put themselves into.
Run a study and then talk. Otherwise it's just subjective observations.
Further, we're talking about page theme spreading to the chrome of the browser. It makes the chrome less important than the page contents. It seems they're putting "readability" focus exactly where it should be.