Open Bug 1584772 Opened 6 years ago Updated 3 years ago

color picker - no longer a quick way to switch between colors

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, enhancement)

Product:
Thunderbird
Component:
Message Compose Window
Type:
enhancement

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
UNCONFIRMED

People

(Reporter: dixe, Unassigned)

Details

Attachments

(1 file)

The "Best" of the 5 color pickers on the Mac OS is this one
69.83 KB, image/jpeg
Details

Thunderbird 68 release notes indicate "Text and background colors in the Write window and custom colors for tags are no longer restricted to a fixed 10x7 matrix of HTML colors"

This has the unfortunate consequence of making it extremely cumbersome to switch back and forth between colors. I often switch between colors for the following reasons:

  1. When making inline replies to portions of an e-mail, I highlight the text I'm replying to in one color and then I highlight my reply in another color. This makes it easier for the reader to see what's being replied to (as opposed to all of the text appearing above my response) and makes it easier for them to quickly find my replies (i.e. if my replies were black they wouldn't stand out);
  2. In other instances, I highlight errors or text to be replaced in one color and the correction or replacement text in another.

With the new color picker, not only does it take far more effort to switch between colors, but the user is likely to end up with inconsistent shades of each color since they have to manually pick from millions of colors each time they switch back and forth.

Suggested ways to address this use case include:
a) Provide an option to switch back to the old color picker;
b) Include the old 10x7 matrix of colors above the button for the new color picker (which would be relabeled along the lines of "choose a custom color");
c) Provide a way for the user to save custom colors which would appear above the new color picker (which, as in the case with option b, would be relabeled along the lines of "choose a custom color")

Every improvement or change breaks someone's workflow :/

The new panel offers some custom colours, but they are lost after a restart. How does that work in FF? Can we persist the custom colours?

Type: defect → enhancement
Flags: needinfo?(richard.marti)

The old colour picker was removed from toolkit. We have now only the new one which uses the system colour pickers and we can only offer what they provide.

Flags: needinfo?(richard.marti)

You didn't answer all the questions. Can we persist the custom colours?

I'm afraid you're right. I created a HTML page with pick a colour: <input type="color"> and on the next launch of FF the custom colours are lost :-(

I have users now in my office that are all screaming (hit critical mass)...
I thought the whole purpose of computers was to make things easier and not harder?
The color picker was fine as it was ~ why break it?
Any progress on fixing this issue?

In Macintosh the system color chooser panel actually has 5 different types of color choosers available ... the one most people WANT is the colored blob on the left end of the "tabs" at the very top - and they usually have one of the other 4 selected.

See the screenshots in this answer, please: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1274419#answer-1281433

If you are on a MAC - please select the color chooser JUST Under the Close Button - on the top - on the left. It looks like a little blob of color. You get a full and continuous color range with variable color saturation slider below - as seen in my answer in the support forums.

Windows probably hides different pallets in THEIR System color Chooser ... look for little icons ...

Note the row of 5 little icons at the top, please. Each is a different style of color picker.
For the 10x7 grid of colored squares - click the Middle Icon. For the colored pencils - click the right icon.
Most people prefer the continuous color wheel - the icon on the left.

Comment on attachment 9121204 [details] The "Best" of the 5 color pickers on the Mac OS is this one Note the row of 5 little icons at the top, please. Each is a different style of color picker. For the 10x7 grid of colored squares - click the Middle Icon. For the colored pencils - click the right icon. Most people prefer the continuous color wheel - the icon on the left.

And at the bottom is a row of "Empty" color chips ... when you get a "Custom" color you want to "Persist" you drag it into one of those empty squares - and it will be right there in the color chooser after a restart. You can save a couple dozen of your custom colors ... on the Mac.
The color chooser panel on the Macintosh is VERY Versatile if used correctly.

Sea Mac .... you don't seem to understand the problem.

It's not about choosing the right Colorpicker ( I'm always, always, working with the color wheel, since evaaah ... ).
Choosing / Picking a color with the right tool is NOT the problem, EXECUTING the choice by hitting OK doesn't implement the choice.
I'm on Macs with High Sierra & Mojave on board. Different machines, different OS versions, same restriction.

The only way for now to chose a text color is with a crude choice of writing down the HTML color ID or spelling it's name.
Using the preset pallet grid is impossible because ... there is no validation of the choice.

After almost 2 years worth of updates, no on on the dev team seems to bother. Shows how low the Mozilla people have gone.
I've started as a Windows prisoner, using the Netscape Suite and all it's modules, even the then basic HTML Composer.

From all the changes I went through when finally switching to OSX, now enjoying SeaMonkey and Waterfox instead of messed up Firefox, the Thunderbird client is the only mail client I still use.

Getting troubleshooting requests bouncing back from deaf ears is heartbreaking. Once upon a time ....

(In reply to alexcam.paris from comment #11)

Sea Mac .... you don't seem to understand the problem.

It's not about choosing the right Colorpicker ( I'm always, always, working with the color wheel, since evaaah ... ).
Choosing / Picking a color with the right tool is NOT the problem, EXECUTING the choice by hitting OK doesn't implement the choice.
I'm on Macs with High Sierra & Mojave on board. Different machines, different OS versions, same restriction.

The only way for now to chose a text color is with a crude choice of writing down the HTML color ID or spelling it's name.
Using the preset pallet grid is impossible because ... there is no validation of the choice.

After almost 2 years worth of updates, no on on the dev team seems to bother. Shows how low the Mozilla people have gone.
I've started as a Windows prisoner, using the Netscape Suite and all it's modules, even the then basic HTML Composer.

From all the changes I went through when finally switching to OSX, now enjoying SeaMonkey and Waterfox instead of messed up Firefox, the Thunderbird client is the only mail client I still use.

Getting troubleshooting requests bouncing back from deaf ears is heartbreaking. Once upon a time ....

No, I cannot REPRODUCE the problem. I'm on High Sierra / TB 68.7.0 and when I click OK the colors stay.

Linux user here (Ubuntu 20.04 LTS). The default color picker does not offer a pallet. I installed many other, better color pickers with pallets. However, I fail to find a mean to set Thunderbird to run a particular color picker. Would that be possible? I do not mind if one has to edit a configuration file and the option is not available in the Preferences dialog.

This bug report is still in "UNCONFIRMED" states. I confirm that it still stands with TH 78.7.1 (64-bit). What is the criteria to change its states?

Workaround: Not ideal, but what I do is I write the text in LibreOffice, coloring it with its color picker (which has great palettes) and then copy and paste the text into Thunderbird. This way, the color shading remains consistent and one does not have too lose time selecting the same exact shade as used previously.

AS people have discovered, the default MAC OS colour picker is now used on MAC OS. In the same way the default Windows colour picker is used on a Windows OS.
Understanding/learning/ getting to grips with how to use the colour picker used by the OS does not mean it is a bug in Thunderbird.

For those using MAC who cannot make the choice of colour apply:
This is the method that should be used and note that '4' is the all important necessity.

  1. click on foreground/background colour icon to open the Thunderbird 'Page Background Colour' window
  2. click on 'Choose colour icon' to open mac colour picker window
  3. select colour
  4. Close the mac colour picker window - this is important (Windows OS forces you to close this with an 'OK' and retains focus until you do it, BUT a MAC OS does not retain focus - it is entirely possible to keep that mac colour picker window open and continue with anything, so it is necessary to manually X close that window)
  5. click on OK to close the Thunderbird 'Page Background Colour' window

HOWEVER.....IF you are following the above procedure precisely and you are closing the mac colour picker before clicking on the 'OK' in the Thunderbird 'Page Background Colour' window and you still find that the colour selected is not being passed to that Thunderbird 'Page Background Colour' window and therefore not being applied, then please report the issue in this bug 1681341

Multiple users report usability problems with the (font/backgroupd) color picker.
Some related issues: 1710296, 1702866, 1631690, 1610546, 1584772, 1710296.

I also experience tedious, inefficient color picking on Xubuntu and would love to see an improvement.
I do understand the benefits of using the OS color picker in Thunderbird.

It should be possible to add a basic, simple & efficient color picker inside Thunderbird, which also contains a "More colors..." button that opens the OS color picker.
That might retain the best of both worlds ?

  • Create a separate font color button & a separate background color button
  • These buttons show the last selected color + a dropdown beside.
    • click on the last selected color: immediately applies that color (one click)
    • click on the dropdown: shows a usefull basic color palette + custom chosen colors by end user (retained after closing Thundebird) + "more colors" button
    • the "more colors" option might then show the OS color picker
    • selecting a color in the dropdown, immediately applies that color to the selection and sets that color in the button

This might solve the questions of multiple people.

2 good examples:

Thanks from a longtime Thunderbird user on Xubuntu.

Severity: normal → S3
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