173667 - Need more contrast to distinguish between active and inactive tabs

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox :: Toolbars and Customization, enhancement)

Description

[Hampton Maxwell]

It should be obvious at a glance which tab is active and which tabs aren't.  On
platforms that don't use native themeing (Linux, Windows before XP) all tabs are
the same color.  Making inactive tabs slightly darker would make the active tab
stand out more, for easy selection and closing.

Comment 1

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

we'll have native theming on gtk and pre XP windows soon, I suspect. 

Comment 2

[Marc Boullet]

suggestion from Hasse in the forum:

 With the help of a userChrome.css file in your profiles "chrome" folder you can
customize the tabs to your liking. I use this to separate
the tabs.

tab[selected="true"] {
font-weight: bold !important;
}

Works fine for me. Maybe this can be set as a default.

Comment 3

[David Tenser [:djst]]

> we'll have native theming on gtk and pre XP windows soon, I suspect.

Is this why the bug was marked as NEW? Or is this bug about distinguishing the
active tab even when native theming is used? If so, I strongly disagree. I like
Phoenix to remain as native as possible.

Comment 4

[Hampton Maxwell]

This is not a problem when native theming is in because the theme will cause
inactive tabs to use the system's inactive color value.  However in the
meantime,  tab color is variable and defined by a system setting - making it
difficult to define a value that's X shades darker than that setting.

Comment 5

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Hyatt's solution was to bold the active tab font. 

Comment 6

[David Tenser [:djst]]

The problem with Hyatts solution is that it makes the text wider, which reduces
the mount of visible text on a tab. It would be better if the solution was to
have different colors on active/inactive tabs. That solution would not affect
Windows XP tabs, which already are easy enough to distinguish (bold tabs are
really not neccesary in Windows XP).

Comment 7

[Simon Paquet [:sipaq]]

verified.

Comment 8

[Simon Paquet [:sipaq]]

Taking QA Contact

Comment 9

[Jesse Ruderman]

Continued in bug 248562?