1430349 - webextensions options_ui preferences fonts too small and bad alignment

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(WebExtensions :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[Andreas Klauer]

Attachment: side-by-side screenshot illustrating the issue

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:57.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/57.0
Build ID: 20180103231032

Steps to reproduce:

(I'm using Linux in case it matters. Also tried a fresh profile.)

Problem noticed in Firefox 57, Firefox Nightly 59.0a1. Worked fine in Firefox ESR, Firefox 54, ...

1. go to about:debugging

2. add temporary webextension from https://github.com/mdn/webextensions-examples/tree/master/forget-it

(this is just a very nice example - see attached screenshot - issue seems to affect virtually all webextensions)

3. go to about:addons

4. click 'Preferences' for the webextension (open its options_ui page)


Actual results:

the options_ui/preferences shows up, but with

1. considerably smaller than normal fonts,

2. other items such as checkboxes have weird alignment


Expected results:

1. font size should be normal (preferably identical to browser_action popup)

2. alignment obviously too?

Comment 1

[Kris Maglione [:kmag]]

The alignment issue is a problem with the extension. It assumes that the height of the checkbox will be less than the height of the label, which is not guaranteed, so its floating checkbox input elements wind up overlapping.

The font size issue is also due to the extension. It sets the body's font size at .9em, which is about 90% of the default font size.

Comment 2

[Andreas Klauer]

It's the very same extension in both instances though. If it was simply a fault in the extension, how come it's not bad for Firefox 52/54/ before 57?

And I see this with every extension: options_ui font sizes in Firefox 57+ got a lot smaller, which in turn makes things not appear as intended. Also smaller compared to the browser_action popup, if you set it to be the same file you used for the options_ui.

Some addons already use small fonts for their settings, Firefox shrinking them further makes it unusable without manually zooming in. If you can reproduce this behavior, it should not be this way.

Comment 3

[Kris Maglione [:kmag]]

Yes, font sizes changed in 57. The size change is the reason the layout of the options page changed, since it made bad assumptions.

The options page in question uses relative font sizes, which is why the font is smaller than the font in the surrounding UI. But changes in font size are not a bug, they're just a fact of life.

Comment 4

[Andreas Klauer]

Thanks. Apparently, browser_style: false was what I needed.