138856 - Aqua buttons don't fit in some dialog boxes

Status: NEW

(Core :: Layout: Text and Fonts, defect, P4)

Description

[Kerry Shetline]

Technically, this bug report should probably be broken into a few separate
reports... but each item here, by itself, would likely seem annoyingly trivial.

Collectively, however, I think they add up to an important problem for the
overall appeal of this browser to graphically-oriented Mac users.

* The font used in the navigation toolbar, URL type-in field, Preferences
dialog, etc., doesn't render very well. In "www.foo.com", for example, the w's
all look lopsided, and run together without a single pixel of clearance in
between. It looks as if the font used is an outline font that is not properly
hinted for non-antialiased rendering at the font size being used.

* This same font, used in bold for mail and news accounts, unopened mail subject
lines, etc, looks even worse bolded. It would nice if there were a Preferences
option for changing fonts used by the Mozilla GUI itself, not just for fonts
used in web pages.

* Either the font used inside default FORM input fields is too big, or the input
field widgets are too small... either way, I often find that text that should
fit comfortably into a field (and does so with IE or Netscape on a PC -- I have
yet to try Mozilla anywhere but on OS X) doesn't. For example, typing in '03062'
for a zip code, and the FORM field has to scroll sideways when I type the '2'.

* In a number of places, such as the Preferences dialog or the Mail/Newsgroups
Account dialog, the large size of OS X Aqua buttons doesn't appear to have been
well accomodated, leaving the buttons looking like they are being uncomfortably
wedged into position.

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

-> mpt will love this

Comment 2

[J Luh]

Bug 73734 addresses the first two complaints.

Comment 3

[timeless]

uid is being phased out.

Comment 4

[Andrew Thompson]

Attachment: Various browser's URL bars

I fear he's right about the font being nasty.
If you look at this picture and the blowup I'm about to post, you'll see that
IE and Nav 4 are both un-aliased, which looks better than Mozilla.

Best of all is chimera, which is aliased but looks great. Could be a
Carbon/Cocoa thing. I think Chimera and Moz are using the same font (looks like
it to me) but Chimera's looks 1 point larger.

Comment 5

[Andrew Thompson]

Attachment: Blowup of first picture

Comment 6

[Andrew Thompson]

We really should split this up, but here are some thoughts:

0/ Mozilla's text looks terrible in the URL bar. We're not anti-aliased, at least 
on my system, and the font used is awful at that size without it, as the 
screenshot clearly shows.

1/ could make font 1pt bigger, but would need to see how this impacts Mac classic 
skin. Might require major changes. 

2/ user can change browser fonts using prefs.js?

3/ The zipcode this is very true. Either we need a smaller font for forms, or we 
need our text entry <input> elements to be wider on Mac OS (I run XBL widgets so 
I'm not a good judge)

4/ Prefs dialog is a disgrace, but I don't know what's up with that.
Apparently we're not allowed to make it any bigger or resizable because the 
component owner won't allow it. I just don't know how to respond to that.

Comment 7

[Frankie]

Attachment: Mozilla antialiased toolbar screenshot

Which parts of this bug are still active and which have been closed? The
toolbar and tab fonts (and body text, dialogs, etc) have all been gorgeously
antialiased since about 2 days after Jaguar came out.

Comment 8

[Kerry Shetline]

Prefs dialogs and some other dialogs still look bad, with oversized Aqua buttons
that don't fit well in the available dialog space. Some buttons get clipped off,
some are just awkwardly close to the edges of dialogs.

Here are some sample images:

   http://www.shetline.com/moz/mozdlog1.gif
   http://www.shetline.com/moz/mozdlog2.gif
   http://www.shetline.com/moz/mozdlog3.gif

Either the dialogs need to be made larger, or the buttons smaller. There's an
alternate standard Aqua button style that's more compact and could be used to
make some of these dialog layouts work better.

Comment 9

[Frankie]

Renaming since the other parts are fixed. There should probably also be keywords
about which themes are affected. I use Pinstripe and everything looks great.