- Thinkings on App and Website Theming
Some applications and websites have inbuilt theming capabilities. Others lack anything of the sort but can be themed by external means.
I’d prefer people don’t theme or alter my work, as a painter prefers people not to alter their paintings. Please don’t theme our apps pops to mind. Of course, the web is a medium in which some modification can be expected. From zooming, to forcing fonts, to high-contrast mode, etc, people will modify sites. Particularly on the web, people will theme and modify things as they see fit. It is very much part of the platform’s ethos – user agent stylesheets and extensions and whatnot.
I know that I personally alter websites all the time. Whether that be deleting an element, forcing dark mode, stopping an annoying visual effect, or something more substantial. I also know that people have altered websites I’ve worked on (and icons I’ve designed), and that doing so usually makes me feel something adjacent to bad, conjuring thoughts of ‘Have I failed, such that people must undo or change my work?’.
Another line of thought in my own theming of sites (and indeed, creation of my own bespoke apps) is that I’m being exposed to less design. Exposure to different interfaces and flourishes is inspiring. You find new interface patterns and stay up-to-date with trends by seeing what is popular and in use. As a developer and designer, keeping track with what is ‘in’ is important, as is finding inspiration to motivate oneself and apply to other contexts. By forcing everything existing into my own rigid pre-existing structures, I’m walling myself off. In some cases, this is necessary, such as when the design is really bad or user-hostile, but in many other cases it is something I’m doing out of pure comfort with the known.