CSS Style Choice Dark Text on Light Background
CSS Style Choice Light Text on Dark Background 
Avatar: Old Photo of Gary's Face
[M] Gary
Vollink.com
2 November 2019
Updated: 14 October 2020

Use of JavaScript and Cookies

I strive to make this web site accessible and standards compliant, but I do use a small amount of JavaScript functionality.  Every design choice is a trade-off, and here are a few that I've made. 

Visual Choice

I have always preferred dark theme, meaning gray to white text on a near-black background.  However, I know that most people prefer a light theme, so that is the first stylesheet loaded.  If an OS/Browser combination supports communication of a dark-mode choice, JavaScript will automatically choose the dark mode.  This can be overridden by a LIGHT/DARK graphic on the top of most pages, which also requires JavaScript.  Getting a choice to stick as one navigates through this site requires a cookie, set by JavaScript.  While that cookie is presented to my web-servers, my server does not use or log that visual choice. 

Deprecated SSL Warnings

The server that hosts this site allows connections from a very wide variety of SSL/TLS types, including several that have been deprecated, deemed as insecure.  I use JavaScript loaded in the header of every page to ask my server what type of SSL is being used.  If the connection is 'secure', but under an insecure type, that JavaScript will load a warning at the top of this page, just over the date.  Read more here.

My E-mail Address

I really don't want to hide my e-mail address, but if I put it in plain text, I get a LOT more junk e-mail than otherwise.  Thus, I use a JavaScript that obfuscates my e-mail address using a number of pretty basic tricks.  When the JavaScript is run, the e-mail address is produced in a readable and usable way.  While it is trivial for a spam-purposed web scraper to run the JavaScript, most don't seem to bother, even now. 

Without JavaScript support, my site should render with firstname at lastname dot com in the place where my e-mail address would normally appear, along with a link to this page.