1714043 - Lack of subpixel anti-aliasing in tab, side and status bar in Proton

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1724057

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Description

[lihuejy]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.12; rv:88.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/88.0

Steps to reproduce:

• Open FF Nightly 91 and compare to FF 88.
• Analyse the fonts with "Digital Color Meter" on macOS

Actual results:

There is grayscale anti-aliasing in Proton's tab bar, side bar and the status bar that you have when you press "Ctrl + F"

Firefox 91: https://imgur.com/a/6H7J8Nt

Expected results:

Before Proton you had proper sub-pixel anti-aliasing in both tab and status bar.

Firefox 88: https://imgur.com/a/5adspaI

The side bar had grayscale anti-aliasing even in Firefox 88, but proper sub-pixel AA would be preferable here as well.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Firefox::Tabbed Browser' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please revert this change in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[lihuejy]

It could be that only the macOS version of Firefox is affected, see: https://teddit.net/r/firefox/comments/nqcxii/protons_tabs_now_lack_sub_pixel_antialiasing/

Comment 3

[clessili]

It could be that only the macOS version of Firefox is affected

Saw the same thing on Windows 10, I filed bug 1712991

Comment 4

[Pulse]

RGB AA on Nightly (openSUSE Tumbleweed KDE) seems really hit and miss. When creating a new tab the font may or may not show as RGB AA. The Hamburger menu does not have RGB AA. The fonts in the New Tab do have RGB AA. On Windows 10 the fonts all see to have RGB AA regardless of where.

I've been trying to run a mozregression but so far it's coming up empty.

about:support

Comment 5

[Pulse]

Not sure id this helps, it's on 89 on Tumbleweed.

tab fonts

Comment 6

[Negritas Sergiu, Desktop QA]

Hello I have tried to reproduce the issue on MacOS using the steps provided in the description and using the Digital Colour Meter native to the MacOS 10.15.7.

However the RGB ratio in the tabs bar was R: 255, G: 255, B: 255 for firefox 91.0a1(2021-06-01) and for firefox 88.0.1 the R: 245, G: 246, B: 247. the samples I took by navigating to www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox and with the light theme enabled for each firefox and hovering over the tabs tittle.

If you could give some more info on steps or a small video with the issue this will do great in order to reproduce it and further investigate it it would be very helpful.

Thank you for your contribution!

Comment 7

[lihuejy]

(In reply to Negritas Sergiu from comment #6)

If you could give some more info on steps or a small video with the issue this will do great in order to reproduce it and further investigate it it would be very helpful.

I tried to test it with the light, dark and system theme - once with browser.proton.enabled = true, once with browser.proton.enabled = false.
I used Firefox Nightly 91.0a1 (2021-06-08) (64-bit).

(1) On my first test I had the following results: https://imgur.com/a/CLS0XcQ

(2) Then I tried recording it, but I couldn't reproduce it. With both proton.enabled true and false and all themes, I got: https://imgur.com/a/5yC1rPw

(3a) Then I made another recording with System theme only this time and both proton.enable true and false and got different results again. Here is the video of the third try with proton.enabled true: https://imgur.com/a/nLVoj1X (same results as 2)

(3b) And here is the third try with proton.enabled false: https://imgur.com/a/mNPUbPW

Ah shit, upon rewatching I noticed that I forgot to disable Compact mode as well as my small userchrome.css that only does 3 things that have nothing to do with the fonts:

• replace the Proton icons in the address bar for the old ones, since the new ones are way too thin
• increase favicon size to make the mute button more visible
• make the address bar stop expanding and throwing its shadow

Please excuse that oversight. I have the same problems (sub pixel AA being hit and miss) even with my userchrome.css not in use and enabling Normal mode.

Comment 8

[Negritas Sergiu, Desktop QA]

Hello! Sorry for the late reply! On my macOS i still can't reproduce the issue.

Shilpa can you provide more info on this issue?

Comment 9

[ValdikSS]

I have exactly the same issue on Linux. I guess this is not a Proton issue, but a WebRender issue.
You can disable Proton in about:config (browser.proton.enabled=false), but the sidebar and tabbar won't have subpixel AA.
But if you disable WebRender (gfx.webrender.force-disabled=true) and restart the browser, sidebar and tabbar will have subpixel AA.

Please test it on macOS and assign to WebRender if this applies to macOS as it is in Linux.

Comment 10

[Negritas Sergiu, Desktop QA]

Hello! I have tried to reproduce the issue with firefox 97.0a1(2021-12-29) and 91.0a1(2021-06-02) on macOS 12.1 and on Ubuntu 20 unfortunately I was't able to reproduce the issue.

Adding the QA-not-reproducible tag since I could't reproduce the issue on our end.

Comment 11

[ValdikSS]

See also: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1724057

Comment 12

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

Redirect a needinfo that is pending on an inactive user to the triage owner.
:dao, since the bug doesn't have a severity set, could you please set the severity or close the bug?

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