960672 - Windows - Update Composer UI

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Theme, enhancement)

Description

[Josiah Bruner [:jsbruner]]

Similar to bug 867161, except for Windows.

Richard volunteered to work on this, since I lack a Windows machine.

Don't forget that this bug depends on the changes in bug 867161 for the XUL change.

Comment 1

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

Attachment: patch

For XP I used the same box-shadow like OS X and Linux are using. On Aero I reduced the shadow as I think with the light blue background it looks better with a lighter shadow.

A zip file with this (and other patches) can be downloaded here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/23792533/thunderbird-29.0a1.en-US.win32.zip

Comment 2

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

Attachment: patch

Oops, the previous patch didn't apply cleanly.

Comment 3

[Josiah Bruner [:jsbruner]]

Comment on attachment 8362144 [details] [diff] [review]
patch

Review of attachment 8362144 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

It looks really good. No issues. Thanks!

Comment 4

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

Attachment: screenshotW8.png

As requested by ThomasD a screenshot. This one is under Windows 8.

Comment 5

[Josiah Bruner [:jsbruner]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/bcca0f06c29a

Comment 6

[Stanzilla]

Any plans to use Windows 8 colors on Windows 8?

Comment 7

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

Yes, but I'm waiting for the Fx implementation.

Comment 8

[:aceman]

I can't say I am happy with these changes (e.g. on Win XP the address widget and subject is solid grey as if uneditable even when it is already filled in, which is unintuitive). We have no such dynamic onmouseover UI in the rest of TB. But if you quickly update the rest of TB to be similar to this composer, it will not look so out of place:) Just please not more australification...

Comment 9

[Josiah Bruner [:jsbruner]]

(In reply to :aceman from comment #8)
> I can't say I am happy with these changes (e.g. on Win XP the address widget
> and subject is solid grey as if uneditable even when it is already filled
> in, which is unintuitive). We have no such dynamic onmouseover UI in the
> rest of TB. But if you quickly update the rest of TB to be similar to this
> composer, it will not look so out of place:) Just please not more
> australification...

Hmm. Do you have a screenshot for Windows XP? The point is definitely to make it NOT look disabled. As for updating the rest of TB, I do want to do that in some components. However, I feel we can only use these non-platform consistent controls on areas that are not connected to "system-based" areas. (Toolbars, Window buttons, etc).

I'm sure there are definitely other areas we could update though. Gloda perhaps?

Comment 10

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Aceman certainly has a point with his comment 8, and I'm also still wondering how much "lighter" the UI has become by replacing edges and corners with lots of white with a single large grey surface.

One thing I noticed is that the background color of the "postcard" header is pretty dark (and somewhat brownish-stale) on XP, darker than the current BG. I'd prefer a lighter, cooler shade of grey going towards white. More so if we buy into the idea of having a "postcard" header on our "letter paper", so both of them should probably have similar colors.

Comment 11

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

(In reply to Thomas D. from comment #10)
> One thing I noticed is that the background color of the "postcard" header is
> pretty dark (and somewhat brownish-stale) on XP, darker than the current BG.
> I'd prefer a lighter, cooler shade of grey going towards white. More so if
> we buy into the idea of having a "postcard" header on our "letter paper", so
> both of them should probably have similar colors.

It's using the system color for -moz-dialog and depends on your color settings. If it's defined to be brownish-stale then it uses it. I don't want use fixed colors to be system compliant. What we could do is lighten it up with a semi transparent image.

Thomas, can you try this in your userChrome.css?

#composeContentBox {
  background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.5), rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.5));
}

Comment 12

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to Richard Marti (:Paenglab) from comment #11)
> (In reply to Thomas D. from comment #10)
> It's using the system color for -moz-dialog and depends on your color
> settings. If it's defined to be brownish-stale then it uses it. I don't want
> use fixed colors to be system compliant. What we could do is lighten it up
> with a semi transparent image.
> 
> Thomas, can you try this in your userChrome.css?
> 
> #composeContentBox {
>   background-image: linear-gradient(rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.5), rgba(255, 255,
> 255, 0.5));
> }

That's a lot better because it makes the whole header look lighter (less heavy) and less disabled.

Comment 13

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

Then please, can you file a new bug for this?

Comment 14

[:aceman]

Attachment: screenshot of Win XP

The address widget looks as opaque/disabled as the toolbar above it and rest of window decoration.

Comment 15

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

The only disabled thing I'm seeing is the Send button. How do think the toolbar above is disabled?

Comment 16

[:aceman]

It is not really "disabled" as in "having the text greyed out and not responding to clicks".
It "appears to be disabled" as in "in the rest of TB UI you write only into white fields/widgets, never grey areas".
On the grey toolbar above, you can only click on predefined buttons, not on the rest of the area that has no buttons. That is semantically a bit different than "now you are supposed to write into a grey area too".

So the idea here is that from current experience and UI styles in Windows apps, users may not even try to hover over the grey area as there is no reason to expect some white editable field will suddenly jump out from it. Of course, I am talking Win XP here. Win 8 is a different mess by itself.