Chrome's “White Flash” Problem (on new page loads)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18714902

by MrBra • 8 years ago

3 4 8 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

"Dark Reader" chrome extension has dramatically reduced my eyes stress on the web. If you don't know about it, go see it now: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dark-reader/eimadpbcbfnmbkopoojfekhnkhdbieeh

It gives you instant dark themes for every website. AFAIK it doesn't rely on custom users CSS like Stylish does, but it applies some CSS color inversion techniques that automatically produces incredibly good results for ANY website.

But I'm now a victim of those damn white flashes between every new page loads on Chrome. Actually I noticed these white flashes long before using this extension, as I think many of you did, but since you normally alternate between natively clear and dark-themed websites, this was somewhat more bearable (no white flash if next pages has a white background).

Is there a solution to this?

MrBra3• 8 years ago

First thing I thought was simply modifying Chrome default CSS but this is no longer possible as "custom.css" in profile folder was removed in newer versions.

On the Chromium front, someone forked and fixed it at https://github.com/hbtlabs/chromium-white-flash-fix but Chromium never merged it because, quoting the repository:

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What is the chromium team doing about this issue?

Issue has been logged multiple times since https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1373 Most recent progress is https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=470669

The issue has been broken down since they are attempting an algorithmic fix https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=21798

Algorithmic fix: determining what's the background color of the current page or theme page then applying it during rendering instead of choosing white by default.

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And what about Chrome? From the same repository:

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Why doesn't the Chrome team merge this?

Because it replaces the white by black and most websites have a white background and most people don't use a dark theme. Hence, the white flash is a non issue for the majority of users. Also, the webkit fix changes the background of chrome:// pages to black

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I also found multiple StackExchange questions on this with many answers providing obsoleted solutions and others which rely on very inelegant hacks, like using desktop automation software to interact in the browser in a really invasive ways.

https://superuser.com/questions/580228/prevent-white-screen-...

I suspect that after "Dark Reader" there will be so many users getting terribly annoyed by this issue and a solution must be found. So with this post I'd just like to raise some attention on this: if your eyes are being hurt by white flashes too, please upvote this post.. We know many Google employees like to hang out around here. :)

alexanderby• 8 years ago

Chromium team fixed this issue by showing theme background color by default. So you should install some dark theme, e.g. this one https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/material-incognito...

Also if you download Chrome Canary and launch it with --force-dark-mode flag, you will get early access to built-in dark mode.

MrBra3• 8 years ago

Thanks a lot! I installed it in regular Chrome and no more white flashes! Don't know why I did not think about themes... :\

MrBra3• 8 years ago

Update: dark theme does not completely remove the flash but it makes it last so short that it doesn't really affect me. Happy enough for now :)

Chrome's “White Flash” Problem (on new page loads)

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