Why use blank images in a background?

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After putting Git Bash onto windows, I’ve been reading through documentation on this website:
https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2

I tried to find a dark mode extension that would work in Microsoft Edge, but found this websites colours didn’t change.

In order to change the background to something my eyes could handle, I looked in dev tools and found an image set as the background.

But the image just seems to be a white square?

image

I’m curious to the reason behind this.
Has anyone felt the need to do something similar to this, and if so what was the reason?

Any articles or documentation that give an explanation would be appreciated.

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Hello!

While I don’t know if this isn’t just a case of a broken link, developers often use blank images while coding a sites’ layout. Create the layout now, add the actual images later. Saves you the time to find, download and use placeholder images.
There is even an api offering blank images in every possible format.

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Hi there! As for me, Gloom Dark Mode works perfectly:

Screenshot

Clipboard 1
Clipboard 11920×1048 149 KB

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Thank you, will use gloom DM from now on, saves me editing the DOM every time I go to the next page XD

But I’d still be interested in the reasons behind using a url of a flat colour.
It seems like an odd design choice.

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Are you not satisfied with the @DanielHuebschmann 's explanation above? :slightly_smiling_face:

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I understand some images may be used as placeholders, I do this myself.

But it feels like there might be more to it.
The website already sets a colour, why would it also need an image of the same colour?
Does this mean the website is unfinished?

I’m aware that temporary choices are made early on, that end up in a project long after they are no longer needed.
Which often leaves me feeling a little uneasy. Since I’m still learning.

I’d rather ask than assume… Just in case there is another reason I’m unaware of.

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Yeah, maybe. Or they just forgot to delete it

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To be honest, I can kind of understand doing this on purpose. Over the years I’ve seen lots of users complain about the layout or colors of a website being ugly or unuseable and it turns out it’s because they have a browser extension that is overriding the CSS. When you’re building a UI, one of the important parts of acccessiblity is contrast, so you need to control the color of the foreground and the background.

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