Open Bug 1240343 Opened 8 years ago Updated 2 years ago

dark color scheme & 1 of foreground or background color not set can be hard to see

Categories

(Firefox :: Settings UI, defect)

Product:
Firefox
Component:
Settings UI
Version:
43 Branch
Type:
defect

Tracking

()

People

(Reporter: bzipitidoo, Unassigned)

Details

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:43.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/43.0
Build ID: 20160106231004

Steps to reproduce:

As I mentioned in a recent bug report, color settings are a mess.  Been that way for years.  It's hard even to identify exactly what the problems are.  Here is my take on it.

Many websites assume dark text on light backgrounds, and in many places often set only one element of the text and background colors.  If Firefox options are set to make text light and backgrounds dark (either by setting the colors in the Firefox options, or by using the system theme and having a dark system theme selected), its policy of using the one color that a website set and taking the other from the user's color setting can make some pages hard to read.

Go to Preferences->Content->Colors.
Set Text to a light color (I chose a beige, column 4, row 5 from the upper left corner)
Set Background to a dark color (I chose the darkest gray, column 1, row 6)
Set Unvisited Links to a light color (I chose light green, column 6, row 1)
Set Visited Links to a darker color (I chose a medium green, column 6, row 5)


Actual results:

Huffington Post, not the main page, but many of the others, set the text color to something dark and do not set the background color.  Black on dark gray is pretty hard to read.  An example page that probably isn't permanent:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/naps-will-make-you-more-productive_5699248be4b0778f46f916e8?utm_hp_ref=healthy-living

Forbes does it too, and also sometimes does the opposite, setting the background color to white and not setting the text.  Beige on white is also difficult to see.  An example of this, probably also temporary: http://www.forbes.com/sites/lewisdvorkin/2016/01/14/inside-forbes-our-ad-block-test-stirs-up-emotions-then-brings-learnings-and-new-data-2/#2715e4857a0b1512abc02cae


Expected results:

I don't think it's realistic to advocate that all these websites fix their color schemes.  Even the Mozilla web site in some places assumes dark text on light backgrounds!  Right here: https://input.mozilla.org/en-US/feedback/firefox?  The text of the link "Look at a different product" is hard to see.  Instead, Firefox should do something about it.

1st possibility is that on every element for which the web page specifies only one of foreground and background, Firefox should use both of the colors that the user chose and ignore the one color that the web page set.

2nd possibility is to have more options.  (I'm not keen on this idea.)  Two colors for text, one for light backgrounds and one for dark backgrounds.  Same for unvisited and visited links.

3rd possibility is to remove the color options from Firefox.  Definitely dislike that idea.
Oh yes, here is an extremely simple web page to illustrate the problem:

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<style type=text/css>
BODY {BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f8f7f6 }
</style>
<body>
Hello world
</body>
</HTML>
Severity: normal → minor
Component: Untriaged → Preferences
Confirming the issue on latest Nightly 46.0a1 (buildID: 20160117030215) on Windows 7 64bit: sometimes, with some combinations of colors for Text, Background, Unvisited Links and Visited Links, the text is pretty hard to read.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
Severity: minor → S4
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