1731849 - Style dialog buttons the same as other Windows applications

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Thunderbird :: Theme, defect, P1)

Description

[José M. Muñoz]

Attachment: dialogs.png

+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #1730153 +++

Bug 1730153 introduced blue dialog buttons. For Windows users which according to https://stats.thunderbird.net/#platlang are in the 95% majority this is surprising as a comparison with other common Windows applications shows:

Apart from MS Word/Excel/Powerpoint where colored buttons appear to be a marketing gag (blue/green/red) all other applications, including MS Outlook, don't have any colored buttons.

It's possible that on Mac with <4% market share colored buttons are common, but that should not be imposed on Windows users.

The enclosed picture shows dialogs of GIMP, Notepad++, MS Visual Studio, LibreOffice, Inkscape, Greenshot (screenshot app), WinSCP (FTP client) and Audacity together with the aforementioned MS Office programs.

Comment 1

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

What happens to those colored MS Office default Save buttons when you tab to move focus to a non-default button like Don't save?

I think this is mostly about the styling for default buttons on forms/dialogs with other inputs, where pressing Enter on such other inputs will trigger the default button. I'm not sure if all of the depicted buttons are default buttons in that classic sense, because many of them do not have other form/input fields, so it's not clear if the default choice is just a focused button or an actual default button.

Comment 2

[José M. Muñoz]

Attachment: dont-save.png

Focus shifted to "Don't Save".

Comment 3

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

This is not a regression, this is a conscious decision coming from years of UX studies and researches.

Apart from MS Word/Excel/Powerpoint where colored buttons appear to be a marketing gag (blue/green/red)

That's a wrong assumption, ignoring the fact that primary accent buttons are part of the very own design system of Windows: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-ca/windows/apps/design/controls/dialogs-and-flyouts/dialogs#defaultbutton

The fact that some apps have it and some don't speaks to the inconsistency of that platform.

It's possible that on Mac with <4% market share colored buttons are common, but that should not be imposed on Windows users.

We didn't implement that because we want to "look like macOS". It's a UX decision coming from the Thunderbird design identity. We're not making Thunderbird for a specific platform.

Sorry, but we're not changing this.

Comment 4

[Zoe Martin]

Thanks for the discussion here. The referenced Windows documentation states:
You may optionally choose to differentiate one of the three buttons as the default button.
All of the applications José collected in comment #0 except Word/Excel/Power Point show a focus ring, so the optional colouring of the default button is not necessary. However, firstly, on first launch on the "Save Message" panel TB doesn't show a focus ring (maybe that's a bug that should be addressed. Using the tab key, there are four focus stops, three buttons and one "non focus" element), and secondly, more complicated panels, like the ones mentioned in bug 1730153 comment #0 (Find/Replace, all Insert dialogues) can have the focus on elements other than buttons, so showing a default button is useful.
We have the feeling that the colour of the default button on Word/Excel/Power Point is indeed a marketing gimmick, being aligned with the "product colour" (and obviously the more conservative MS Outlook application hasn't followed suit). We also think that using the highlight colour for the button background as implemented now is a surprising choice for Windows users, so at least for that user group, denoting the default button should be done in a more subtle fashion. We will ship it like this:
https://github.com/Betterbird/thunderbird-patches/blob/main/91/features/05-feature-default-buttons.patch