Closed Bug 1572968 Opened 5 years ago Closed 4 years ago

consistent dark mode for all pane and dialogs

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Theme, enhancement)

Product:
Thunderbird
Component:
Theme
Platform:
x86_64
Windows 10
Type:
enhancement
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED WORKSFORME

People

(Reporter: vtol, Unassigned)

References

Details

Attachments

(6 files)

light and dark patchwork
2.77 MB, image/png
Details
dark browser gui
156.21 KB, image/webp
Details
less patchwork in the UI
164.06 KB, image/webp
Details
dark mode search
107.15 KB, image/png
Details
Unreadable text when writing
443.13 KB, image/png
Details
Unreadable email area
173.10 KB, image/png
Details

TB dark theme || OS dark theme with TB default theme

Suppose the distraction/strain lies in the eye of the beholder but from this user's perspective it would be welcome if the dark theming would be a consitent experience rather than what it currently looks like a patch work of light and dark areas.

Particularly in a low light environment the light patches are sort of gleaming in contrast to the dark areas.

comparision with a few other (albeit potentially closed source |& commercial) apps

Summary: consitent dark mode → consistent dark mode

Well, which parts do you want to make dark, even the message background?

Yes that would be my humble suggestion, bascially all the light patches (except for the chat bubbles), but incl. the message background. Similar to the comparision samples - which are not meant to turn TB into something else but rather just showing that the UI is more consistent.

I am not really aware of what the (longterm) roadmap for TB is and how it is supposed to fare in the market share of mail clients but reckon, whilst some may consider this just eye candy and roll their eyes at this suggested enhancement, that a consistent dark mode/theme might be more attractive/appealing to a potential userbase that cares about such 'feature'.

With dev tools being detached for UI manipulation it is a bit difficult to go though the respective UI elements or else I woudl have provided a mockup covering the light areas, if such would have been of help anyway.

(In reply to Jorg K (GMT+2) from comment #2)

Well, which parts do you want to make dark, even the message background?

For me the email list is in light theme. Is that expected? If so then this part should be dark IMO.

(In reply to Zhaolin Yu from comment #4)

For me the email list is in light theme. Is that expected? If so then this part should be dark IMO.

You're on TB 60? With TB 68 it should be dark.

So after checking TB 68 I must say that the dark theme is severely lacking.
Namely:
1 - in the Calendar tab, the Calendar is not dark and has some awful gradients (the mini-Calendar on the left pane and the main Calendar)
2 - the today pane is also lacking dark theming in many components.
3 - The mini-calendar on the tasks tab is also not dark themed.

Those are some of the main issues. I would recommend looking at TT Deep Dark to complete theme. That is what a dark theme for Thunderbird should look like.
Furthermore, please consider changign the icons to the Monterail theme icons, or the TTDeepDark symbolic icons. The current Thunderbird icons are very outdated from current UI conventions.

With TB 68.1.1 the dark mode has improved. The Lightning calendar, including the today panel and the mini-calendar, are now fully dark. Thanks a lot for fixing that.

Following elements are still not dark though:

  1. The Message and Write windows: It would be convenient if email message and compose windows (including HTML emails) are shown in a full dark mode as well. For example, the K9 email app on my Anroid phone is able to that, even with HTML emails.
  2. The settings window: Similar to Firefox, the settings window is still not dark.
  3. The popup window: Popups are also still shown in a light mode.

Is it planned to address those remaining parts in order to have a fully consistent dark theme?

I have to revise my previous comment as the calendar is not completely dark. The window for creating new calendar items does not follow the dark theme.

We depend on Mozilla (Firefox) code. As long as they don't support the dark mode in every dialog we can't use it.

The Message and Write windows: It would be convenient if email message and compose windows (including HTML emails)
are shown in a full dark mode as well. For example, the K9 email app on my Anroid phone is able to that, even with HTML emails.

We use the Mozilla rendering engine to display HTML pages. The content of web pages isn't displayed differently in dark mode in Firefox either. E-mail apps like K-9 mail or FairEmail have a dark mode, but they heavily simplify the HTML they display. Dark mode would be possible for plaintext and simplified HTML display.

Thanks for the clarification, reusing existing Mozilla code makes sense of course.

With Firefox I'm using the DarkReader addon to get all websites into "dark mode". This works really well but this addon is not available for Thunderbird. I'm aware that this is not really part of this particular ticket, but it would be awesome if Firefox/Thunderbird would support this functionality natively.

As for the Android email apps, I agree with you that FairEmail simplifies the HTML messages heavily. However, with K9 I didn't spot any (major) difference between the Thunderbird and its own rendering, except of the dark mode of course.

Whether those concepts/implementations (DarkReader, K9, etc.) can be used for Thunderbird/Firefox is another question though. I was just wondering if the devs are aware that a large number of users are looking for a true and consistend dark mode, i.e. all windows/panels/dialogs/popups etc. and if there are any plans to design and implement such features in (near) future?

Attached image dark browser gui —

(In reply to CyBiS from comment #7)

  1. The settings window: Similar to Firefox, the settings window is still not dark.

(In reply to Richard Marti (:Paenglab) from comment #9)

We depend on Mozilla (Firefox) code. As long as they don't support the dark mode in every dialog we can't use it.

(In reply to CyBiS from comment #11)

users are looking for a true and consistend dark mode, i.e. all windows/panels/dialogs/popups etc. and if there are any plans to design and implement such features in (near) future?

The FX/TB dark gui is available with the pref browser.in-content.dark-mode. Not sure how it pans out in the 68.x branch but it does well with 69.x and onwards branches.

(In reply to CyBiS from comment #11)

I was just wondering if the devs are aware that a large number of users are looking for a true and consistend dark mode

To my understanding the the daily update pings of lightning is at ~ 7 Million vs 4 upvotes for this bug...

(In reply to Richard Marti (:Paenglab) from comment #9)

We depend on Mozilla (Firefox) code. As long as they don't support the dark mode in every dialog we can't use it.

I don't think anyone noticed, but Search Dialog got dark theme support in Bug 1017904, so.. Subscribe dialogs should be done also.

+        lightweightthemes="true"

(In reply to vtol from comment #12)

The FX/TB dark gui is available with the pref browser.in-content.dark-mode. Not sure how it pans out in the 68.x branch but it does well with 69.x and onwards branches.

Thanks a lot for the setting, this did the trick. The config pages are now dark as well, for both Firefox (69.x) and Thunderbird (68.x).

(In reply to Jorg K (GMT+2) from comment #10)

We use the Mozilla rendering engine to display HTML pages. The content of web pages isn't displayed differently in dark mode in Firefox either. E-mail apps like K-9 mail or FairEmail have a dark mode, but they heavily simplify the HTML they display. Dark mode would be possible for plaintext and simplified HTML display.

Maybe it has slipped but it would appear that bug 1494034 provides the necessary code to render the html dom dark if the content provider, which in this case is TB, caters for the CSS Media Queries Level 5 code prefers-color-scheme.

It would seem a trivial and not expensive to add such code to the html content generated by TB.

If I get the patchset https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/4739353088fc right then even options could be added for whose who prefer the html content not being conistent with the OS/TB theme.

pref(ui.systemUsesDarkTheme,0) == mq_prefers_color_scheme_light.html greenbox.html
pref(ui.systemUsesDarkTheme,1) == mq_prefers_color_scheme_dark.html greenbox.html
pref(ui.systemUsesDarkTheme,2) == mq_prefers_color_scheme_no_preference.html greenbox.html

Depends on: 1494034

Suppose it still requires a CSS dark scheme to be implmeneted for rendering the html content. Maybe some of TB's UI code is reusable in order to prevent bloating the code base. Else the dark theme CSS code here on bugzilla could be recycled since it has good contast and legibility.

I agree that prefers-color-scheme should be dark for the dark theme and should be surfaced as a pref for anyone to toggle. Pulling in a couple folks to this conversation. Thoughts Alex?

Flags: needinfo?(alessandro)

The UI patchwork (calendar & Task) appears to have lessened with TB/Lightnig 70.0b3

Sure, I don't have anything against exposing that option as a preference, and it makes sense to toggle it by default when switching to dark theme.

Flags: needinfo?(alessandro)

It is enabled by default. Not sure if already on TB 68 but surely later.

For sure it is enabled in FX69 and thus logically should be in TB70 beta however the HTML (body) content rendered in TB is probably lacking the necessary CSS code prefers-color-scheme, which being the difference to FX that is being fed content (settings) of the remote node it is connecting to.

Suppose plaint text content with class="moz-text-plain" would eventually also be rendered dark, if set, and not display differntly?

(In reply to alta88 from comment #14)

(In reply to Richard Marti (:Paenglab) from comment #9)

We depend on Mozilla (Firefox) code. As long as they don't support the dark mode in every dialog we can't use it.

I don't think anyone noticed, but Search Dialog got dark theme support in Bug 1017904, so.. Subscribe dialogs should be done also.

+        lightweightthemes="true"

The search dialog is not readable in dark mode. 70.0b3
If dark mode leaves function unreadable, our only choice is to switch out of dark mode for the whole machine. (?)

Attached image dark mode search —

(In reply to doug2 from comment #23)

The search dialog is not readable in dark mode. 70.0b3

On 70.0b4 the search results indeed are not legible due to wrong contrast of script colour

If dark mode leaves function unreadable, our only choice is to switch out of dark mode for the whole machine. (?)

Not necessary, you can always switch to a light theme in TB

(In reply to doug2 from comment #23)

(In reply to alta88 from comment #14)

(In reply to Richard Marti (:Paenglab) from comment #9)

We depend on Mozilla (Firefox) code. As long as they don't support the dark mode in every dialog we can't use it.

I don't think anyone noticed, but Search Dialog got dark theme support in Bug 1017904, so.. Subscribe dialogs should be done also.

+        lightweightthemes="true"

The search dialog is not readable in dark mode. 70.0b3
If dark mode leaves function unreadable, our only choice is to switch out of dark mode for the whole machine. (?)

Yes, it wasn't a good decision to add it without informing the reviewer. I'm on a patch I'm on a patch to make it readable.

Sorry paenlgab, it should have been mentioned instead of assuming it would be noticed. There was no issue on linux, and the result rows in Search should have the exact same rules as main threadpane, but apparently it hasn't been done yet on all platforms.

Summary: consistent dark mode → consistent dark mode for all pane and dialogs

Why the change in the bug description? It now implies the exclusion of the html body content generated by TB which though was stated as included in the course of the thread.

Flags: needinfo?(vseerror)

If you are looking for a more consistent dark mode, if you are still on Thunderbird 60 and if you don't mind to use an add-on for this, you can install my "TT DeepDark" complete theme add-on. You can find it here: https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/tt-deepdark

But If you are on Thunderbird 68, unfortunately my add-on isn't compatible with it for the moment. It needs to be rebuilt with a different approach. I'm currently raising funds to support the port.

Flags: needinfo?(vseerror)

I have the problem that even with light mode the text is wrong when writing an e-mail, Thunderbird 75.0b1. Is there anything to work around this?

Markus, you use a dark system theme? Then create the pref ui.systemUsesDarkTheme as integer and set it to 0.

Does this need to be a meta bug, with more bugs blocking it?

(In reply to Richard Marti (:Paenglab) from comment #30)

Markus, you use a dark system theme? Then create the pref ui.systemUsesDarkTheme as integer and set it to 0.

Flags: needinfo?(markus-github)

I do not find such a pref (ui.systemUsesDarkTheme) in my profiles under Windows 10. All I change is the Windows mode (settings, personalization, colors, dark/light).

I just upgraded to Thunderbird 78.0.1 and tested the new "updated" dark theme. The content in the email was hard to read so i changed it back to my previous theme. But now the inner area for the email content is stuck in dark mode. Nothing I can do can change it back.

Attached image Unreadable email area —

Dark theme unable to be disabled

78.1.0 helps?

just updated, holy crap that finally fixed it. it was driving me crazy, couldn't read anything. Thank you!

Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 4 years ago
Flags: needinfo?(markus-github)
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME

On Thunderbird 78.2.2 x64 on Windows, with Windows is dark mode and with Thunderbird's theme set to either 'default' or 'dark':

  • the compose window is dark but the reading window is light
  • quoted text in reply windows tends to be dark blue - against black - and so almost wholly illegible.

(In reply to nicholas_j from comment #37)

On Thunderbird 78.2.2 x64 on Windows, with Windows is dark mode and with Thunderbird's theme set to either 'default' or 'dark':

  • the compose window is dark but the reading window is light

This is by purpose because many HTML mails are expecting black on white and failing with other colours.

  • quoted text in reply windows tends to be dark blue - against black - and so almost wholly illegible.

This sets a lighter blue with dark theme: https://searchfox.org/comm-central/rev/f892204fdc17e07b7c2e5e4817a1d27d9fb7a328/mail/components/compose/content/EditorContent.css#74. Have you set a colour in userContent.css?

(In reply to nicholas_j from comment #37)

On Thunderbird 78.2.2 x64 on Windows, with Windows is dark mode and with Thunderbird's theme set to either 'default' or 'dark':

  • the compose window is dark but the reading window is light

I've build addon for the new Thunderbird 78.4 that will make reading window dark (by inverting color and shifting hue):
https://addons.thunderbird.net/thunderbird/addon/darko_t/
It's not 100% perfect, but in the evening it's 100% better than white background! :)

You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.

Attachment

General

Creator:
Created:
Updated:
Size: