Closed Bug 1686359 Opened 4 years ago Closed 3 years ago

Changing Windows 7 theme to high contrast (black) and back to normal causes Thunderbird's MIN/MAX/CLOSE buttons to disappear

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Theme, defect)

Unspecified
Windows 7
defect

Tracking

(Not tracked)

RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

People

(Reporter: dannyfox, Unassigned)

Details

Attachments

(8 files)

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:84.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/84.0

Steps to reproduce:

Have Thunderbird open in the usual fashion. Change something in Windows Themes, such as press SHIFT-ALT-PRTSCN to activate High Contrast, then again to revert back to normal.

(Running standard public release of TB 78.6.1 under Windows 7/Pro 32-bit.)

Actual results:

On activation of High Contrast, colours all change to HC mode, some fonting and box/border/button layout might change minutely, and specifically the control buttons in the top right corner are laid out differently (but perfectly accessible). Windows MIN/MAX/CLOSE buttons appear in the top right corner, with TASK & CALENDAR buttons immediately below rather than beside (to the left).

When reverting back, the colours and TB layout all appear normal -- except that the Windows MIN/MAX/CLOSE buttons are gone! Only the TASK & CALENDAR buttons are displayed in the top right corner. (By mousing to the right edge beside the T&C buttons, the CLOSE function can be clicked.)

TB must be closed and restarted to restore the buttons.

Expected results:

TB window should be fully restored as originally displayed -- with Windows MIN/MAX/CLOSE buttons in the top right corner and TASK & CALENDAR buttons immediately before (beside, to the left).

Dan, this is worksforme on Win10, 78.6.1 (64-bit), but reported against Win7. Can you add screenshots (avoid private data leaks) and attach to this bug?

Richard, can you test this on Win7?

Severity: -- → S4
Component: Untriaged → Theme
Flags: needinfo?(richard.marti)
OS: Unspecified → Windows 7
Summary: Changing thematic info in WINDOWS causes MIN/MAX/CLOSE to disappear → Changing Windows 7 theme to high contrast (black) and back to normal causes Thunderbird's MIN/MAX/CLOSE buttons to disappear

This works for me too on my Windows 7 VM. I have only Basic and no Aero. It can be that this happens on Aero.

What is the use case for this scenario to switching to HC and back? I think, normally someone uses a theme for longer time and only switches for testing something. Then he can also restart TB which doesn't last long.

Flags: needinfo?(richard.marti)

All pics captured consecutively following each step.
All trimmed consistently with Photoshop to same dimensions to show slight migration & re-scaling of toolbar & grid.
First image shows full toolbar in original (standard) mode following restart of TB, trimmed to 202 pixels high -- for baseline & context.

Comment on attachment 9196880 [details]
2 - Newly Restarted (Toolbar in Context).png

All pics captured consecutively following each step.
All trimmed consistently with Photoshop to same dimensions to show slight migration & re-scaling of toolbar & grid.
First image shows full toolbar in original (standard) mode following restart of TB for baseline & context, trimmed to 202 pixels high.

All pics captured consecutively following each step.
All trimmed consistently with Photoshop to same dimensions ( to 529 pixels wide x 202 pixels high) to show slight migration & re-scaling of toolbar & grid (except first image 2048 x 202).

@Thomas: I'm running AERO - so yes, it happens on Aero.

@Richard:
The problem SHOWS UP clearly when switching to & from high contrast, but there are probably a couple dozen more common (but still rare) functions that users might invoke to cause this. I've had it appear several times in the past without knowing how or why because it is so "not-noticeable" until I go to close or minimize TB -- and by then who knows what I did a few days ago? This time I know precisely what I did to cause the issue, and it was easily repeatable. In hindsight, previously I was probably changing theme pictures (or something similar) that may have involved re-drawing the screen. In fact, one time recently I was testing a bug for Wayne which required a screen reset, and it happened then -- thought it was just a fluke and didn't bother to re-test because of too many variations. I'll bet this issue hasn't been reported because it is so fluky -- nobody really notices until later and can never recall which of a thousand everyday things was unique to cause it.

NEW INFO:
It turns out all three buttons are still present but hiding off-screen. There is a hint of the red CLOSE button to the right (accessible, as I first reported) -- but ALL THREE are accessible if you mouse carefully along the very top edge. See the inset (Pic 5A) which shows RESTORE DOWN (MAX) title -- mouse arrow was along top edge for this but disappears in screen capture. Meanwhile, my drawn red arrow shows the CLOSE button just peeking over the right edge.

And BTW, minimizing & maximizing the TB window by clicking the TB Icon on the Task Bar does NOT restore the buttons -- first thing I tried. As one would expect, this is simply saving & restoring the window as it exists, warts and all (or in this case, buttons or not).

Duplicate comment removed.

Just for the record (to provide clarity and remove confusion):

The three Windows buttons are MIN/MAX/CLOSE when a window is up & visible but not in Full Screen mode.
In Full Screen mode, the buttons are MIN/RESTORE DOWN/CLOSE instead (but otherwise logically the same).

My testing was all done at FULL SCREEN so the "MAX" I referred to was actually "RESTORE DOWN".
I just now tested not in full screen and I got the same results -- buttons go missing.

@Reporter,
Does this still reproduce when using version 91? And if you resolved the problem, what was the solution?

Whiteboard: [closeme 2021-12-22]

Yes, it still occurs, and in fact it is a little worse.

When I switched to high-contrast (by ALT-SHIFT-PRTSCN), I was looking at THIS Bugzilla page in a FF window on top of TB. The entire screen changed to HC in several increments over several seconds, then stabilized. The MIN/RESTORE DOWN/CLOSE buttons were present in TB as they should be, except in HC colours.

When I moused over the buttons to see if they worked, I got a black bar over the buttons (attachment 1 [details] [diff] [review] of 2) and mouseover would not activate the buttons nor make them flicker.

When I switched back to normal mode (again by ALT-SHIFT-PRTSCN), the buttons were gone, as per the original bug report (attachment 2 [details] [diff] [review] of 2). But also as per original, carefully mousing along the top corner border did allow access to the buttons although they never actually displayed.

Finally, as previously, minimizing & maximizing the TB window by clicking the TB Icon on the Task Bar does NOT restore the buttons. Nor does clicking the top of TB to switch between window mode and full screen.

Attachment #1 [details] [diff] of 2: In High Contrast, buttons initially appear, but mouseover causes a black bar over the buttons. Mouseover does not activate the buttons nor make them flicker, even though a portion of the button frames are visible above the black. The black bar never disappears.

Attachment #2 [details] [diff] of 2: The buttons were gone, as per the original bug report (attachment 2 [details] [diff] [review] of 2). But also as per original, carefully mousing along the top corner border does allow access to the buttons even though they never actually displayed.

...And I noticed just now, after bringing TB to the foreground (ie by closing THIS overlapping FF window) that the column headers (name, subject, etc) are all only half their usual height! (They remain so, even when I click the top back to restore-down or go back to full screen.) That never happened in the original, according to my previous attachments.

Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 3 years ago
Resolution: --- → INCOMPLETE
Whiteboard: [closeme 2021-12-22]

Just upgraded TB to the newly-released 91.5.1 (by Help, About). Problem still remains. MIN/MAX/CLOSE buttons are blacked when switching to High-Contrast mode, and buttons still disappear when switching to (or back to) Normal mode. One further note: Whereas I had noticed that Mousing along the top margin above where the buttons should be actually would allow clicks to do the operations (Comment 14), mousing over the visible TASK and CALENDAR tabs (or clicking there) actually senses the MIN/MAX/CLOSE buttons (or activates them if clicked) -- the mouse footprints don't align with the display! So the user may think he'll get one of the Tab buttons by clicking over it but actually gets one of the screen control buttons. Only mousing along the bottom of the Tab buttons do the Tab functions actually kick in. (Sorry, I can't say and don't recall if this happened previously, but I suspect it did if nothing has been done to fix this problem.)

But I agree that switching screen modes to & from HC and back again is very rare and unlikely to impact many. Closing & restarting TB is an adequate work-around -- as long as there isn't a more serious issue lurking somewhere.

One more thing...
The overall FONT also changes when switching to HC mode, but doesn't revert to the original when switching to back to normal mode.

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