1675970 - Email subject disappears when I hover over it with mouse when using Windows 7 Classic theme

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Theme, defect)

Description

[Stuart Soloway]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:82.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/82.0

Steps to reproduce:

This is version 78.4.1 (32-bit) of Thunderbird.
Whenever I hover the mouse over an unread email in my inbox display pane, the entire line (subject, correspondents, date, etc) disappears.

Actual results:

Whenever I hover the mouse over an unread email in my inbox display pane, the entire line (subject, correspondents, date, etc) disappears.
My guess is that the fields that "disappear" are not gone, but that they are changed to white so they are not visible against the background.

Expected results:

The fields should not have disappeared. I should point out that whenever I mouse over to somewhere different, they reappear.
I can click on the invisible fields and open the Email. But the first time I saw this bug I didn't realize it and I thought my Email had disappeared.

Comment 1

[WaltS48 [:walts48]]

This seems to happen to W7 users who are not using an Aero desktop theme. There is a simple userChrome.css to adjust the hover colors.

Unread emails disappear when cursor on them in Thunderbird 78.4.1

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

perhaps a regression of bug 1671800?

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1312357
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1312375
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1312394
to list a few

Comment 7

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

Attachment: 1675970-win7-classic-hover.patch

John, do you have a Windows 7 installation to test this patch?

If not, Alessandro can you check the code?

The patch changes for Win 7 Classic/HC the hover of treechildren::-moz-tree-cell-text to use the inherit colour and not the HighlightText colour because we don't set a hover background.

Additionally I added two rules for the folderPane icons to use the text colour to make them visible on the dark HC themes which don't use the dark theme rules.

Comment 8

[John Bieling (:TbSync)]

I only have a Windows 10 and Ubuntu build system running.

Comment 9

[Russell Page]

I can quickly create a Windows 7 virtual machine. What does your Windows 7 build environment look like? For instance, which compiler, build tools etc?

Comment 10

[Russell Page]

I just had a coffee and my brain kicked in. I'm currently looking at https://developer.thunderbird.net/thunderbird-development/building-thunderbird/windows-build-prerequisites

Comment 11

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

I let build a try version you can try:
The ZIP https://firefox-ci-tc.services.mozilla.com/api/queue/v1/task/OJgtoF4DQTiTpmgDhTYetw/runs/0/artifacts/public/build/target.zip
And the installer https://firefox-ci-tc.services.mozilla.com/api/queue/v1/task/OJgtoF4DQTiTpmgDhTYetw/runs/0/artifacts/public/build/install/sea/target.installer.exe

Please use a new profile to not get into problems when go back to the original build.

Included is also the fix for Bug 1676041.

Comment 12

[Alessandro Castellani (:aleca)]

Comment on attachment 9186525 [details] [diff] [review]
1675970-win7-classic-hover.patch

Review of attachment 9186525 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

The CSS looks good and it seems that would solve the issue.
I don't have a Win7 VM to test this, so let's wait for Russell Page to confirm.

Comment 13

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Steve, can you test comment 11?

Comment 14

[sfhowes]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #13)

Steve, can you test comment 11?

So, nobody in TB development has a W7 computer, which is an officially supported platform? I'll see if I have time to do the test.

Comment 16

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

We need to take this for 78.5.0. But it is unlikely we will do another beta before then, so it will go straight to ESR - which is OK as long as we have people test it on win7.

Comment 17

[Dan Pernokis]

I can confirm this bug shows up on Windows 7 Classic -- with a twist! I find hovering causes the entire line to go white, but ONLY for unread untagged items. That is to say, if the text is bold and black, the line disappears. Anything not bold remains. Anything of any colour (except black) remains, whether bolded or not.

Furthermore, if you hover and then click the READ/UNREAD button (which always remains visible), then the line will appear and disappear before your very eyes. (Of course if the line is selected (not hovering) to do any right-click tagging, the reaction is normal.)

Comment 18

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

I've tested it on W7 while creating the patch. Let's land it.

Comment 21

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/5e35dc929449
Windows 7 Classic: fix the hovered unread treechildren. r=aleca

Comment 22

[Rob Lemley [:rjl]]

Comment on attachment 9186525 [details] [diff] [review]
1675970-win7-classic-hover.patch

[Triage Comment]
For 78.4.3 as discussed with wsmwk in Matrix.

Comment 23

[Rob Lemley [:rjl]]

Thunderbird 78.4.3:
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/comm-esr78/rev/78bf6a40e73c

Comment 24

[Rob Lemley [:rjl]]

A candidate build with this fix is available for testing at https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/candidates/78.4.3-candidates/build1/.

Comment 25

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/candidates/78.4.3-candidates/build1/win64/en-US/Thunderbird%20Setup%2078.4.3.exe

Comment 26

[Dan Pernokis]

Sorry, I can't run 64-bit on my Windows. (And I'll need to know how to run the setup without harming my current system -- is it just like an upgrade?)

Comment 27

[Stuart Soloway]

I just downloaded it and ran it on Win7 64-bit with my existing email folders. (I set up a restore-point just in case.) It seems to work -- The bug is gone, all my Email seems to be there, and nothing has exploded.

Comment 28

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

32bit https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/candidates/78.4.3-candidates/build1/win32/en-US/Thunderbird%20Setup%2078.4.3.exe

Installing is essentially same as an update

Comment 29

[Russell Page]

I just installed the patched version, and it solved the problem.
Sorry I went dark earlier. I have had issues with the build instructions, and am working through them. I'll post another bug report once I have sorted them out.

Comment 30

[Phoenix]

Seems additional testing from my side is no longer needed :)

Comment 32

[Dan Pernokis]

I just installed the test 32-bit version of TB 78.4.3 from Wayne's link in Comment 28 and switched my Windows theme from my usual Aero to Windows Classic. Unfortunately I have bad news to report.

The program worked normally on Aero as expected. When I switched to Classic, the lines never went invisible -- but there was no mouseover! Whereas a faint selection line always appears on mouseover, there was nothing here. Even if I closed and relaunced TB, still no mouseover.

I switched to Windows Basic and it worked normally. I switched back to Classic and again no mouseover. Back to my Aero settings and all is well again. So something odd is happening under Classic.

Comment 35

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

After reading the feedback, it sounds like the patch we have now is an improvement and "good enough" to ship - not perfect but we'd prefer to not wait for another patch. AIUI this improves the current bad situation, and doesn't take a horrible step backwards. So we'll ship this to users and look forward to future improvements.

Comment 36

[Dan Pernokis]

You're going to get a ton of bug reports one way of the other. With the patch, the mouseover is invisible, and one cannot see exactly which line is focussed. I found it disconcerting and I think it's too easy to operate on the wrong message -- the user has to be VERY sure the mouse pointer is on the correct line. At least with the current white-out, the user knows exactly where the mouse is (ie, the target/focus of an imminent operation) and it DOES come back into view. IMHO, I think the whiteout is the lesser of two evils.

Of course an obvious workaround is for the Classic user to switch modes -- but that affects their entire system, and they have to know to do it.

Comment 37

[Dan Pernokis]

Clarification of my Comment #36: The circumstance is not as dire as I mentioned above.

If you select a line, then the focus is obvious, and you can proceed with confidence. But if one simply tries to mouse over blindly and right-click to select the line, you could end up inadvertently selecting the wrong line -- frustrating and possibly damaging. The right-clicked line does become officially selected (and therefore obvious too) -- one just has to be extra careful that it is actually the intended line.

So I guess the two evils are equal after all...

Comment 38

[gordon_dlm]

Confirm fixed in Win 7 64-bit with 78.4.3 (duplicate bug 1675880)
Thx for help.

Comment 40

[[e-mail]]

Installed 78.4.3 32 bit on Win 7 with a Non-Aero Win theme in effect.

As I expected from reading the traffic, now (with the default theme in effect), when I hover over an unread message, the message listing doesn't disappear. Rather, the hover doesn't do anything (no sort of highlight or such from the hover).

Certainly usable.

Thanks to all who worked on this.

Should I be using the 64-bit version? How do I move to that?

Doug

Comment 41

[Dan Pernokis]

@doug.kerr:

The question is why you would be using 32-bit TB in the first place, and I'm guessing it's because you may be running 32-bit Windows 7. Although I have a 64-bit machine (required for 64-bit Windows, BTW), we voluntarily chose to go with 32-bit because at the time there were some ancient software packages that we absolutely had to run. You may have had a similar situation where 32-bit Windows was required (or perhaps you had only a 32-bit dinosaur PC and had no choice).

Only if you have 64-bit Windows, then you can (and should) run the 64-bit version TB -- much more efficient.

I'm not fully comfortable telling you how to migrate, but... As far as I know, you just manually download the latest TB 64-bit version (Setup) and install it (someone please correct me if I'm wrong). But be sure to back up your mailboxes first! (That would be the TB and TB profile area in \USER\username\APPDATA\ROAMING\Thunderbird.)

Comment 42

[[e-mail]]

Hi, Dan,

Well, I'm not sure how I got started with the 32-bit version. Just a screw-up, I guess.

I first stated using Tbird with my current machine, with 64-bit Windows 7 in it.

So I will download the 64-but version and move to that.

Thanks.

Best regards,

Doug

Comment 43

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

there is generally no reason to move to 64 bit. it is fine to stay on 32bit until one is migrated automatically. it is a myth that 64 bit is in substantially a better build

Comment 44

[[e-mail]]

Hi, Wayne,

Thanks for that. I will sty with what I have (32 bit) on my wife's machine. I did the "upgrade" on mine.

Doug

Comment 45

[[e-mail]]

(In reply to [e-mail] from comment #44)

Hi, Wayne,

Thanks for that. I will stay with what I have (32 bit) on my wife's machine. I did the "upgrade" on mine.

Doug