Closed Bug 1622695 Opened 4 years ago Closed 4 years ago

Dark mode UI not usable. Black on Black.

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, defect, P1)

Product:
Thunderbird
Component:
Message Compose Window
Type:
defect

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED FIXED
Milestone:
Thunderbird 76.0

People

(Reporter: dmccammishjr, Assigned: Paenglab)

References

(Regression)

Details

(Keywords: regression)

Attachments

(2 files)

blackemall.jpg
48.47 KB, image/jpeg
Details
1622695-dark-composer-colors.patch
2.04 KB, patch
mkmelin
: review+
Details | Diff | Splinter Review

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/80.0.3987.132 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

New mail or reply in dark mode. 75.0b1

Actual results:

Create new mail or reply to mail. Text color indicates black on white, but everything is black. Turns out the indicator box for background is really "transparent" and if I change that to "white. Further testing indicates that the default background in dark mode is transparent (not white) and so it's just the defaults that need to change.

Expected results:

The release process needs to update the default colors for dark mode.

Changing default background color does not correct this problem. New mail still comes up with transparent background. Selecting "last picked color" works, but the other TBird user in my house is going to be stymied by this problem.

Component: Untriaged → Theme

With the dark system theme or ui.systemUsesDarkTheme set to 1 the about:blank page is now dark. It seems that the editor uses this as background. Setting the text colour to white fixes the visibility but for example blockquote gets explicitly set black as colour.

If the editor uses the dark background colour it should change automatically the text colours to white or it shouldn't use the dark background like in the message pane.

Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Component: Theme → Message Compose Window
Ever confirmed: true

On Ubuntu 18.04.4 Linux the text is black on white using the default Adwaita system theme.

If I change the system theme to Adwaita-dark then I can reproduce the problem.

I'm seeing the same problem on macOS

Frustrating to have to manually change the background color for every email. Is the background default color# stored somewhere that I can edit? Changing the default background in options does not help. Need to be able to change from "transparent" to white #ffff. Thanks.

Keywords: regression
Regressed by: 1408122
See Also: → 1592210

Also having the issue of black text on dark background and can't set it back to white even with reverting to the light theme. Practically unusable!
Thunderbird 75.0b1 (64-bitni) on Windows 10 with latest updates! Everything works great but this graphic bug :-/

(In reply to Ivars Bezdechi from comment #9)

This is a M A J O R glitch which needs to be FIXED NOW! I don't think this is rocket science to fix this problem.

If it's so easy to fix, where is your patch? Let's not be mean to the developers, please.

I'm also affected by this bug and it's very annoying for me as well, but as beta tester we should expect regressions. Our role is report them to the developers. In this regard, your screenshot is useful, the last line of your comment is not. It's also not helping you, because people are generally less willing to help you after you've been mean to them.

It might be that nobody has noticed this bug yet, since it's still in the NEW state. You could help the project by going to a relevant mailing-list [1] or chat [2] to bring attention on this bug. You could say that it's a serious regression for you and for all users of dark themes, and you're looking for someone who could help triage it.

[1] Like one of these:
https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/thunderbird-testers
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird/tb-support-crew

[2] Such as:

(In reply to Bernie Innocenti from comment #10)

...
a) It might be that nobody has noticed this bug yet, since it's still in the NEW state. b) You could help the project by going to a relevant mailing-list [1] or chat [2] to bring attention on this bug. You could say that it's a serious regression for you and for all users of dark themes, and you're looking for someone who could help triage it.

Thanks for your helpful comments and the citation of resources. Regarding the two points quoted above

  • a) has already been done, i.e. most of the relevant developers are already CC on the bug and will be aware, and the bug is already well triaged, with necessary facts and regression bug identified
  • b) is really only appropriate when a developer needs advice on coding or a code aspect of a bug warrants wider discussion, or when (as you suggest) an extremely important bug (think release blocker) hasn't gotten attention but I would add the qualification "for an extended period of time, like several weeks" - otherwise, the poster will be viewed as being an impatient complainer
Priority: -- → P1

This patch sets a foreground colour for the editor field. I gave the quoted text a lighter blue to make it better readable with the dark background. Also the scrollbars are made for the dark background (this needs the background colour change in messengercompose.css to make this area dark too).

I'm thinking about doing the similar for the normal message pane. But this needs some more checks to not make text unreadable -> for a new bug.

Assignee: nobody → richard.marti
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
Attachment #9138441 - Flags: review?(mkmelin+mozilla)
Comment on attachment 9138441 [details] [diff] [review]
1622695-dark-composer-colors.patch

Review of attachment 9138441 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Looks good, r=mkmelin
Attachment #9138441 - Flags: review?(mkmelin+mozilla) → review+
Keywords: checkin-needed-tb
Attachment #9138441 - Flags: approval-comm-beta?

Pushed by mkmelin@iki.fi:
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/011b96fed1e5
Composer: when prefers-color-scheme: dark is set use appropriate colours. r=mkmelin

Status: ASSIGNED → RESOLVED
Closed: 4 years ago
Keywords: checkin-needed-tb
Resolution: --- → FIXED
Target Milestone: --- → Thunderbird 76.0
Attachment #9138441 - Flags: approval-comm-beta?

I will be more than glad to test as soon as this is ready to install. Daily? Link? Thanks for making it happen.

This should be in tomorrows Daily.

Now running on Daily. No change so far. (Except the profile is not backward compatible, even with beta - again.)

(In reply to doug2 from comment #18)

Now running on Daily. No change so far.

The daily which will have the patch from yesterday hasn't built yet today - http://archive.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/nightly/latest-comm-central/ still has yesterday's date

(Except the profile is not backward compatible, even with beta - again.)

This will always be the case, and will not change.

Running with daily for 04-07 - not good. Don't understand what I see. Text not visible at all. Did "restore defaults" options (which checks the "use Readers's default" box) but when typing, I see white rectangles on black background. Tried unchecking "use reader's default" option - then I get white rectangles on white.
Tried setting background color manually to green in open mail edit window - stayed white. Tried changing foreground to red. Changed back to black as soon as I started typing. Changed foreground to blue, background to yellow - type a character - colors changed to black & white.
I can force the background to change by typing in the color number (e..g, #ffffff) but changing the foreground color doesn't stick instantly changes to black. I've tried every combination of options and manual f & b color changes I can think of, but it is not working.

I don't see this issues here on Windows 10 and Daily. Could you try this with a new profile (.../thunderbird.exe -p)?

Tried briefly. White text on black background when I type. However Foreground & background boxes both show white. Need to try changing colors.
Could not find in Bugzilla via my dashboard? Shows FIXED?

OK - Daily with new profile. Beginning to make some sense, maybe. colors are "stored" in text stream, so before typing, no colors (indicator boxes show black & black).
Begin typing, white on black (dark mode default?) but indicator boxes show white & white.
Able to change colors of both foreground & background and indicator boxes change. Some concern about color change process - need more testing. Email sent (appeared white on black), rec'd black on white. OK.
Now - what can I do to fix my heavily used profile (converted from beta and not backwards compatible)? What component of profile caused problems in comment #20?

You could try in Config Editor to reset changed prefs which contain compose and/or color. But this doesn't belong to this bug and is more a support issue.

(In reply to doug2 from comment #22)

Tried briefly. White text on black background when I type. However Foreground & background boxes both show white. Need to try changing colors.
Could not find in Bugzilla via my dashboard? Shows FIXED?

Are you using Windows Dark theme?

I can reproduce this issue with on my Ubuntu 18.04.4 Linux using the Adwaita-Dark Linux theme and the default Thunderbird theme.

I haven't tested on Windows 10 with the dark theme. Last time I used it I couldn't get my Windows 10 to look like it did before playing with it.

Running daily 04-07-2020, test profile (created today), Win 10, 64 bit. Do not make changes to colors indicated in text area. Type anything into text area. Get white foreground/text on black background (ok), but color indicators show white on white* (actually bkgd transparent, see below)
Change foreground/Text to pink #ff80ff , type, get pink characters. ok
Click on background indicator box, color selector appears - shows current color "transparent" (no number). ? (transparent in dark mode = black?)
Select blue #0000ff - all background changes to blue. background color indicator shows blue. ok
Type newline (return)
Foreground/Text indicator color has changed to black ? Type - get black text. (last foreground color setting was pink). can't repeat.

Tried changing color settings with options - failed - seems totally random.
At one point, the foreground color indicator box was multicolored as if color was coming from some random photo snippet. (address error?)

Running daily 04-09-2020, search a folder for something, select one or more, select "Move To" - options in move to box are unreadable.
Will send screen shot.

This bug is closed. Please file a new one.

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