1417927 - Current active tab is hard to catch with photon dark theme

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Theme, defect, P3)

Description

[:gerard-majax]

Attachment: dark theme

It has been reported to me that the current active tab's contract is low enough that it is hard to distinguish it when using the Photon Dark Theme. At least on Windows 8.1.

Comment 1

[:gerard-majax]

Attachment: light theme

Comment 2

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Stephen, should we tweak these colors?

Comment 3

[Stephen Horlander [:shorlander]]

No, there is a full color stop between the background and foreground color. There is going to be a larger contrast difference between the default theme and the monochromatic themes.

The blue active tab bar is supposed to help address this.

Comment 4

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to Stephen Horlander [:shorlander] from comment #3)
> No, there is a full color stop between the background and foreground color.

Do you mean it's one step in the photon color palette? Is this a meaningful indicator that there's sufficient contrast? Interestingly, http://design.firefox.com/photon/visuals/color.html#dark-theme uses Grey 90 vs. Grey 70, i.e. two steps? compacttheme.inc.css seems to use something darker than Gray 70.

> The blue active tab bar is supposed to help address this.

Well, it's there, but if this is supposed to be the primary indicator for the active tab, it should probably be more visible?

I just checked on https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/ and #0A84FF vs. #323234 fails most tests.

Case in point: I (not color blind, a bit shortsighted) happen to have had my screen's brightness reduced and the colors shifted to orange (gnome "Night Light" mode). Usually that's not a problem for me, but when I opened the screenshot that made it look particularly bad.

Comment 6

[profsaviour]

@stephen, the blue color is too thin to recognize. I am on linux and the slight grey and black contrast are just too not helpful.

Comment 7

[:gerard-majax]

(In reply to Stephen Horlander [:shorlander] from comment #3)
> No, there is a full color stop between the background and foreground color.
> There is going to be a larger contrast difference between the default theme
> and the monochromatic themes.
> 
> The blue active tab bar is supposed to help address this.

Is "monochromatic themes" referring to the Dark theme available? Because if so, then I disagree: there is a full color stop, but there is clearly not enough contrast, and the blue active tab bar is just below the blue title bar of the application, so it is very easy to miss that as well.

I don't have any vision problem, and yet, on the shared screenshot, it takes me enough time to determine which tab is the active one to suggest we have room for improvement.

Comment 8

[Adolfo Jayme]

+1; this is my main gripe with Chrome’s Incognito mode: I tab-surf quite intensely, and the low contrast between the foreground tab and the background makes it really hard to spot the active tab. Firefox’s dark theme now has the same problem, and no, the colored line isn’t enough.

Comment 9

[Stephen Horlander [:shorlander]]

Adding this to Photon Follow-up work.

Comment 10

[:gerard-majax]

When can we expect some news ?

Comment 11

[Julien G]

For the record, here is a small WebExtension allowing for a starker contrast (red being a sheer example) between the active tab and the others: 
- XPI: https://framadrop.org/r/uKibg6LSGr#Ztmlubq6uAbCRPfsCOQWWAP4d/Q0EsVrSidO3kB7xD8= (available for 60 days)
- gist: https://gist.github.com/SphinxKnight/904ba7a2f1e5e810e6d8dcc1de6e9f9d

Comment 12

[:gerard-majax]

Can we get some news ?

Comment 13

[:gerard-majax]

Julien, can you share that on AMO ?

Comment 14

[Julien G]

Sure, will do in the coming days (under 4 days).

Comment 15

[Julien G]

Here is the AMO page hosting the addon https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/activehl/ (source code identical to #11)

Comment 16

[:gerard-majax]

Probably invalid now with Proton.