1280748 - Window frame is one pixel too thin on Windows 7 / 8 / 8.1

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[RadarNyan]

Attachment: FF_frame.png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:47.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/47.0
Build ID: 20160604131506

Steps to reproduce:

Back in 2010, there was a bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=618353 . I wasn't an active Firefox user back then so I've no idea what it might look back then, but as for today, I found Firefox's window frame is one pixel too thin comparing to other windows. 

And the weird thing is, when border is 1px too thin, the close button is 2px too near to the border (that is, even if the window frame is fixed, the button is still 1px too near) - I don't know why is this happening, perhaps something to do with the patches linked with the older bug I mentioned at the beginning.

Now, please check the image attached. I've draw two red lines across three windows: the inner (left) line is the border of window content (for a browser it should be webpage), the outer (right) line is window outside border. There are three windows aligned alone the outer line: Windows Explorer (as example of standard window frame), Firefox (nothing changed) and the Firefox I've "fixed" with Photoshop: I've moved the upper-right corner buttons by 2px, made border 1px thicker (in fact I did this with css, but that wouldn't work on the upper-right corner buttons) and added the bright line (outside window content) which Firefox have removed back.

I can understand that removing the bright line is meant to fit Firefox's design, but in my opinion that shouldn't affect window frame thickness. Even if the window frame is made 1px thinner than a normal window by design to counteract the extra 1px transparent area after removing the bright line, or just doing that so we have 2px extra width when browsing webpages - there is absolutely no reason to move the upper-right corner buttons.

I was using Google Chrome before the recent change to Firefox so I know that Chrome also have this dame problem (the buttons are even more closed to window border, they look ugly!) but that doesn't mean Firefox need to follow this stupid design right?


BTW, both window frame and upper-right corner buttons are fine when maximized.

Comment 1

[Benjamin Smedberg]

This is specifically about Windows 7, right? This has all changed again in win10.

Dao, do you know if this is a widget: win32 issue or a Firefox theme issue?

Comment 2

[RadarNyan]

(In reply to Benjamin Smedberg  [:bsmedberg] from comment #1)
> This is specifically about Windows 7, right? This has all changed again in
> win10.
> 
> Dao, do you know if this is a widget: win32 issue or a Firefox theme issue?

Ac

Comment 3

[RadarNyan]

Attachment: FF_window_frame_bug_8.1.gif

Comment 4

[RadarNyan]

(In reply to Benjamin Smedberg  [:bsmedberg] from comment #1)
> This is specifically about Windows 7, right? This has all changed again in
> win10.
> 
> Dao, do you know if this is a widget: win32 issue or a Firefox theme issue?

Sorry about the unnecessary comments... I'm not very familiar with bugzilla's system and I can't delete what I just added by accident.

Anyway, I've asked a friend for some screenshots and made a gif animation added as new attachment (FF_window_frame_bug_8.1.gif) showing this bug on Windows 8.1 (actually he's on Windows 2012 R2, basically 8.1 for servers) there are mainly two problems (the same as I stated in op)
1) Window frame is 1px thinner than a normal window.
2) Close button is 2px to near to the right border, even if the window frame is fixed (made 1px wider) the close button would still be off position by 1px.

As for Windows 10, the window border is too thin for me to tell... I think Windows 10 wouldn't have this problem.

Comment 5

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to RadarNyan from comment #0)
> Back in 2010, there was a bug:
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=618353 . I wasn't an active
> Firefox user back then so I've no idea what it might look back then, but as
> for today, I found Firefox's window frame is one pixel too thin comparing to
> other windows.

I think this was already the case in 2010. The mockups wanted a thinner border and that's what bug 618353 was about. So this bug is really asking to reverse bug 618353.

> And the weird thing is, when border is 1px too thin, the close button is 2px
> too near to the border (that is, even if the window frame is fixed, the
> button is still 1px too near) - I don't know why is this happening, perhaps
> something to do with the patches linked with the older bug I mentioned at
> the beginning.

It's a side-effect of making the border thinner (bug 718184).

Comment 6

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

I don't have a strong opinion here, but there seems to have been a deliberate decision to make the border thinner on purely aesthetic grounds, and we've been sticking to that decision over all those years, so I think it's pretty unlikely that we'll change this again now.