1187263 - Channel tabs in Chatzilla don't have borders in gtk3 builds

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: Widget: Gtk, defect)

Comment 1

[Randell Jesup [:jesup] (needinfo me)]

Who should be looking at this?  Not surprisingly, this makes chatzilla hard to use with > 5-10 tabs.  The tab bar is taller than normal as well, and it's putting a bunch of blank area between the tabs, leaving little space for tab titles.

Comment 2

[Randell Jesup [:jesup] (needinfo me)]

Attachment: chatzilla.png

Comment 3

[Milan Sreckovic [:milan] (needinfo for best results)]

So, the "regular" Firefox tabs are fine, it's only chatzilla where the problem shows up?  Andrew, do you see the same thing?

Comment 4

[Andrew Comminos [:acomminos]]

Attachment: Tabs in gtk3-widget-factory with GTK 3.14 and Adwaita

I can reproduce with the Adwaita GTK3 theme and GTK 3.14. The problem only shows up with ChatZilla because it uses XUL tabs, which may possibly lack proper styling in our GTK3 drawing implementation (I don't think there's many places we use XUL tabs in chrome at all).

Chatzilla tabs should probably look like the attached photo from gtk3-widget-factory.

Comment 5

[[e-mail]]

Actually ChatZilla looks just like those terrible GTK3 tabs; there are no borders at all, and only the slight text greying* and blue line give any hint that there is in fact a current tab.

*Not applicable to many of the ChatZilla tabs in the screenshot because of the activity indication.

Comment 6

[Olli Pettay [:smaug][[e-mail]]]

oh, indeed. I don't really use other gtk programs, but yes, gedit has similar ugly looking tabs as what Chatzilla has now.

Comment 7

[Jeff Muizelaar [:jrmuizel]]

It looks like we're drawing gtk tabs as expected. Changing your gtk theme or filing a ChatZilla bug are the best courses of action if you don't like how things look.

Comment 8

[Hussam Al-Tayeb]

(In reply to Jeff Muizelaar [:jrmuizel] from comment #7)
> It looks like we're drawing gtk tabs as expected. Changing your gtk theme or
> filing a ChatZilla bug are the best courses of action if you don't like how
> things look.

Adwaita is hardcoded as the default gtk+ theme in gtk3. While it is possible to change it tweak tools, not many know how to do so. The default Gnome3 installation provides no interface to change gtk+ themes or even font sizes. Just thought I should point that out :-)

This is what Chatzilla should look like if you want to follow the default gtk+ behavior.
http://i.imgur.com/HmVR2jB.png

Notice the border around the selected tab, the darker background of inactive tabs, and the gray titles in the inactive tabs.

Comment 9

[Randell Jesup [:jesup] (needinfo me)]

There seem to be HUGE top and side border areas that are blank.  No lines between tabs.  Active tab has a single blue line above it (weird imho).  Lack of space for text means hugely reduced number of tabs visible, and quickly there's no space for text (so you have all-blank tabs with no borders - joy!  Guess and click.)  

There's no greying of the background in inactive tabs either.

If this is their default theme in GTK3 and preferred look --- it sucks dead gerbils through a garden hose.  (An old idiom...)  The lack of distinction kills, and the border sizes kill.  Selection via single subtle blue line is poor (and horrible for accessibility!!!)   But that's not our problem really; our problem is that we're inheriting this (maybe partly broken in some way).  I'd like to *stop* inheriting, but at least someone needs to fix this for chatzilla.  If we did our browser tabs like this users would flay us.

Comment 10

[Hussam Al-Tayeb]

True. They even deprecated the gtkthemingengine which will be removed in gtk+ 4.0 and right now third party themes are going to have to be pure css (instead of gtk+ modules + styling).
This breaks oxygen-gtk3 for example.

Why not theme chatzilla's tabs similar to firefox's australis tabs? That will work around gtk3 issues.

Comment 11

[Hussam Al-Tayeb]

Australis style tabs look really nice in my opinion. Using those when the native gtk+ alternative is less favorable may be a good compromise.
Maybe someone can talk to chatzilla developers.

Comment 12

[James Ross]

Hi, I'm a ChatZilla developer. Our tabs have always had the short straw in theming due to being XUL and upside-down, which is often not supported well by the theme engines. I'd be happy to accept improved CSS for CZ's tabs providing we can not look totally out of place on the three main platforms. :)

I'd advise filing a new bug in Other Products : ChatZilla for that.

Comment 13

[Randell Jesup [:jesup] (needinfo me)]

If we have to move them to the top - fine.  Hell, a scrolling list on the (right) side would also be fine (and may help solve the "too many tabs" issue)