Fernlight Theme 1.2.36

Released 2026-06-28 to the WordPress.org theme directory.

What changed

Dark Mode

  • Fixed white-on-white hero text — fernlight_maybe_disable_dark_mode() was injecting stale v1.0.25 palette values (#2C4A5A, #F4F7FA) as dark-mode overrides, making hero surfaces near-white while cover-block text stayed white. The function has been removed entirely. dark-mode.min.css simply loads or not; no counter-CSS needed.
  • Dark mode is now on by default — the fernlight_disable_dark_mode option previously defaulted to 1 (disabled), so dark mode never loaded on fresh installs. Default changed to 0 (enabled). Existing sites are not affected.

Navigation Alignment (1.2.22 – 1.2.36 series)

A multi-pass hardening of the nav submenu alignment switcher that shipped across the 1.2.22 – 1.2.36 patch series:

  • CSS rewrite (1.2.34) — all three CSS layers (static stylesheet, inline enqueue-time block, footer runtime override) now scope selectors as body.fernlight-submenu-align-{x} .fern-nav so alignment rules never bleed into navigation blocks elsewhere on the page. Replaced CSS custom property approach with direct values to eliminate var() cascade issues. Added [style] attribute variants for left/center alignments.
  • Flex fix (1.2.35) — submenu list items are display:flex, so text-align had no effect. Added justify-content equivalents to all three layers.
  • Mega menu (1.2.29) — alignment-aware panel overrides extended to mega-menu (is-style-fern-mega) panels.
  • Submenu fallback hardening (1.2.26 – 1.2.28) — enqueue-time right-alignment override added; stronger desktop passes for submenu containers including inline-style wrappers and generated dropdown structures.
  • Visual polish (1.2.36) — desktop mega-menu hover/focus visibility, pointer and panel behavior, panel spacing and rounded corners, improved light/dark contrast.

Upgrade notes

No database changes. Update via Appearance → Themes or wp-cli. If you had dark mode toggled off manually, that setting is preserved and unchanged.