1697445 - Compose view does not pick up background colour properly

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, defect)

Description

[jakob.rathbauer]

Attachment: compose view black background; colour preferences

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/88.0.4324.186 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

Thunderbird on Ubuntu. Using "Default" System Theme (dark from the OS).
I've configured Preferences > General > Language & Appearance > Fonts & Colours > Colours...: Text black, Background white (screenshot).

Actual results:

Background in compose view is dark (screenshot).
Reader view shows expected white background.
When changing Theme in Add-ons Manager > Themes to Light, compose view changes accordingly. Changing Theme back to System Theme, compose view still shows white background (apparently from the System Theme).
But after next restart compose view background is dark again.

Expected results:

Compose view should show same background color as the reader view (as configured in preferences).

Comment 1

[Anje]

You say: Preferences > General > Language & Appearance > Fonts & Colours > Colours...: Text black, Background white (screenshot).
'Use system colours' - unchecked and 'Override the colours...etc' is set to 'Never'
This sound correct.

But....what setting have you got in Preferences > Composition > HTML Style ?
uncheck the 'Use readers's default colours' - note if you have this selected then the background will be black.
set Text colour to Black and Background to white

Then open a new Write window.
Please report back after checking the settings as stated above.

Comment 2

[jakob.rathbauer]

I'm setting Preferences > Composition > HTML Style: untick "Use reader's default colours", Text Colour black, Background Colour white.
Write window now shows white background.

I was aware of this setting, but I read somewhere that the colour selected here will be set in the HTML e-mail itself, and I didn't want to do that.
You said: 'Use readers's default colours' - note if you have this selected then the background will be black.
But why? That behavior doesn't make sense to me. If "reader" means the e-mail reading view in Thunderbird, then it should pick up the custom colours set in Appearance > Fonts & Colours, no? And if "reader" means the recipient of the e-mail, well then, if I don't want to force a background colour on the recipient, why would the write view fall back to display this dark background, instead of behaving the same as the reader view?

Comment 3

[Anje]

Thomas D: I'm no so sure bug 1635151 is the same because in this bug the 'Override the colours...etc' setting is set to 'Never'. ( bug 1635151 set's that to 'ALWAYS')
So when user access Options > Compositions > HTML Style settings, they can uncheck 'Use Readers default colour' and then control the 'Write' window background which cannot be done in bug 1635151.

Comment 4

[Anje]

I'm setting Preferences > Composition > HTML Style: untick "Use reader's default colours", Text Colour black, Background Colour white.
Write window now shows white background.

I was aware of this setting, but I read somewhere that the colour selected here will be set in the HTML e-mail itself, and I didn't want to do that.

You are correct. unchecking 'Use readers default colours' does then include the font colour and the background colour in the html.

Selecting 'Use readers' default colours' should be applying the same selection as set up in General > Language & Appearance > Fonts & Colours > Colours...: Text black, Background white (screenshot). 'Use system colours' - unchecked and 'Override the colours...etc' is set to 'Never'.

This part does seem similar to bug 1635151, in that using 'Dark theme' the selection of 'use readers' default colour' option will ignore what is set in General > Language & Appearance and always seems to apply a dark background.
That is the problem in this bug.

Comment 5

[Tim]

I have the same problem. Using Thunderbird 78.8.1 64 bit on Pop_OS 20.10., This problem is difficult to document/explain as the colour settings are in two different places and it can take a while to work out which setting affects what.

If I make the following settings:
Preferences->Composition-> HTML style is unchecked for "use reader's default colours", text colour is set to black and background colour is set to white.
Preferences->General->Language&Appearance->Colours: "Use system colours is unchecked. Text is set to black. Background is set to white.

With these settings, when I open an email sent to me, the background is white and the text is black, as expected, but composing a new message uses a black background with white text. I would expect the compose window to also have a white background with black text.

Checking the "Use System Colours" box with override set to "always" does not change the compose window colours (still dark with white text) but existing messages display with colours matching the system theme (dark with white text when set to dark, white with black text when set to light)

Checking the "Use System Colours" box with override set to "never" inverts the colours in the compose window (white background with black text) and allows messages to be displayed in the colours they were written in. This is sometimes white background with grey text, which is hard to read.

To me, the expected behaviour, and what I would like to see, is that under Preferences->General->Language&Appearance->Colours:, if "Use System Colours" is not selected, and "Override the colours..." is set to always, messages received, as well as the compose window, are displayed with the selected text and background colours. Currently, this is not the case, as the compose window does not seem to be affected by the override setting or by the colour settings under Preferences->Composition.