Bug 209851 – Default link colors lack sufficient contrast in the dark color scheme

• Component: CSS
• Status: RESOLVED FIXED

[Thomas Steiner]

Created attachment 395153 [details]
Too low contrast for links when page in `color-scheme: dark`

OS Version: OS X 10.15.4
URLs (if applicable): https://color-scheme-demo.glitch.me/
Other browsers tested:
  Add OK or FAIL after other browsers where you have tested this issue:
    Chrome: Fail
    Firefox: Fail (doesn't support `color-scheme` yet)
    IE/Edge: Fail (for old IE and new Edge)

What steps will reproduce the problem?
1. Go to https://color-scheme-demo.glitch.me/
2. Note how when the page is toggled to `color-scheme: dark` all user agent stylesheet link colors (apart from :active) have too low contrast.

What is the expected result?

Link colors (except for :active) should have enough contrast.

What happens instead of that?

Link colors (except for :active) don't have enough contrast.

[Radar WebKit Bug Importer]

<rdar://problem/61149466>

[Thomas Steiner]

Since this probably requires changes to the user agent stylesheets, it would be great to agree on a cross-browser set of dark scheme default link colors.

[Chrome](https://crbug.com/1066811)
[WebKit](https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=209851)
[Firefox](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1626560)

[Thomas Steiner]

I have opened https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/5426 for cross-vendor awareness.

[Tim Nguyen (:ntim)]

*** Bug 226893 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Tim Nguyen (:ntim)]

*** Bug 235328 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Tim Nguyen (:ntim)]

https://searchfox.org/wubkat/source/Source/WebCore/rendering/RenderTheme.cpp#1334-1338

[Aditya Keerthi]

I don’t think this is as simple as just updating the color in `RenderTheme.cpp`, I believe there is also logic on `Document.cpp` to support the `link` attribute that needs to be reworked.

[Connor]

Are there any plans/relative priorities for fixing this? For a blog website, simply using `color-scheme: light dark` has a lot of benefits.

Firefox and Chrome have fixed their link colors in `color-scheme: dark` (on macOS/desktop at least), so I hope to see Safari support land.

[Aditya Keerthi]

Pull request: https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit/pull/17512

[EWS]

Committed 267847@main (5413aa7d4157): <https://commits.webkit.org/267847@main>

Reviewed commits have been landed. Closing PR #17512 and removing active labels.