1768229 - New "preferred color scheme" feature - Light Mode doesn't affect panels and menus

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Theme, defect)

Description

[hevinroyal]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:100.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/100.0

Steps to reproduce:

I set the new option "Web site appearance" as Light

Actual results:

All of the following are still dark:

. Background of main drop-down menu (Containing "Sync and save data", "New tab", "Print", "Settings", etc)
. Background of right-click menu (Containing the refresh icon, "Save page as", "View page source", etc)
. Background of "Please enter primary password" menu
. Background of auto-filled user name and password menus
. Background of elements in a bookmark folder
. Background of Downloads menu
. Background of Print menu
. Background of "Clear all history" menu
. Background of "Find on this page" menu
. Background of "You are about to close X tabs" warning menu
. Colour of title bar for "About Mozilla Firefox" window, when the window is not currently active

Expected results:

Everything should have been consistently light, and not dark all over the place. I use the theme "Blue Mozilla Firefox" from Author "karoglan".

Comment 1

[hevinroyal]

Being able to set "browser.theme.toolbar-theme" permanently as 2 would fix all of the above, but once again (since v96.0), users are prevented from doing so. Why?

Comment 2

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

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Firefox::Bookmarks & History' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 3

[:Gijs (he/him)]

The pref/setting is intended for web content colours, not Firefox's colours, which is why it is explicitly labeled "Website appearance settings". To change Firefox's colours, change the theme in about:addons .

(In reply to hevinroyal from comment #1)

Being able to set "browser.theme.toolbar-theme" permanently as 2 would fix all of the above, but once again (since v96.0), users are prevented from doing so. Why?

Well, first of all you are not "prevented" from doing so, you can do so in about:config.

The theme should be specifying what to do with the UI, see this public mailing list post. It looks like the theme you're using hasn't been updated since 2013. It would be trivial to reupload a version that has the relevant key set in the JSON manifest file (subject to licensing etc., IANAL, use at your own risk, blah blah blah).

Ultimately it's going to be better for users if themes do the "right" thing instead of forcing users to adjust extra settings based on their own preferences.

Comment 4

[hevinroyal]

"Well, first of all you are not "prevented" from doing so, you can do so in about:config"

This is correct, but every time Firefox is closed and re-opened, the default value gets reset to 0. Users should be given the possibility to permanently set it to a value of their liking.

"Ultimately it's going to be better for users if themes do the "right" thing instead of forcing users to adjust extra settings based on their own preferences"

Therefore what? I wish to be able to use this theme (which I have been using for years) with a light environment (which I have also been using for years). How can you assist?

Comment 5

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to hevinroyal from comment #4)

"Well, first of all you are not "prevented" from doing so, you can do so in about:config"

This is correct, but every time Firefox is closed and re-opened, the default value gets reset to 0. Users should be given the possibility to permanently set it to a value of their liking.

The default is 1 on Windows and macOS, and 2 everywhere else, so I don't see why this would happen (are we still talking about browser.theme.toolbar-theme?).

If I had to guess, you're probably actually talking about the per-profile pref value (not the default) being set to 0; this is happening based on your theme. You could lock it using an autoconfig file; see https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customizing-firefox-using-autoconfig .

"Ultimately it's going to be better for users if themes do the "right" thing instead of forcing users to adjust extra settings based on their own preferences"

Therefore what? I wish to be able to use this theme (which I have been using for years) with a light environment (which I have also been using for years). How can you assist?

As of bug 1750932 you can add a color_scheme property to the add-on manifest to indicate whether it should get light or dark menus etc.

Comment 6

[hevinroyal]

"The default is 1 on Windows and macOS, and 2 everywhere else, so I don't see why this would happen (are we still talking about browser.theme.toolbar-theme?)"

(1) Yes, I am referring to "browser.theme.toolbar-theme"
(2) I can confirm that the default value always resets to 0 for me every time Firefox is restarted

"You could lock it using an autoconfig file; see https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customizing-firefox-using-autoconfig"

I am a bit nervous to go these kind of obscure (as in "not official") modifications because I am afraid I will mess something or there may be side-effects. Having a simple "select light or dark environment" option would make me feel better about it

"As of bug 1750932 you can add a color_scheme property to the add-on manifest to indicate whether it should get light or dark menus etc"

I am not very tech-savvy, but I really wish to keep using this theme with a light environment :( I opened bug report 1768499 to be clearer because you closed this one :(

Comment 8

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Reopening to get some more people to offer an opinion on what to do here, rather than duplicating what is effectively the same issue.

In addition to comment #6, the dupe repeated comment 0 and added:

(relating to the toolbar-theme user value being reset to 2)

(1) Firefox should correctly remember the value defined by users (in my case "2")
(2) Users should be given the freedom to set this value as per their convenience, regardless of whether:

• Firefox "thinks" that the theme is best suited for a dark environment ("What Firefox thinks" and "what users want" should not be mutually exclusive conditions)
• The theme is still being updated by the designer (I find this theme perfect and do not wish to be told to select another one)

Dão and Emilio, is there anything you think we can/should reasonably do here? This is basically the same issue as e.g. bug 1705501 but the reporter is not happy with the fix lying with the theme developer rather than end-user, when from a user perspective menus etc. didn't use to be dark before the proton work which extended the colour reading of the theme to the menus/panels (which was a long-standing feature request from "real" dark themes, as it were).

Comment 9

[Emilio Cobos Álvarez (:emilio)]

I mean, we could add some sort of override pref around here, I guess, but other than that... Looking at the theme in comment 0 it is a fairly simple theme, but the background colors are dark...:

{
  "theme": {
    "images": {
      "theme_frame": "header.png"
    },
    "colors": {
      "frame": "#021e45",
      "tab_background_text": "#ffffff"
    }
  },
  "version": "2.0",
  "name": "Blue Mozilla Firefox",
  "manifest_version": 2,
  "description": "Blue Mozilla Header"
}

Comment 10

[Emilio Cobos Álvarez (:emilio)]

Another alternative would be to remove the heuristics here and return kSystem instead, but that can cause contrast issues on themes that don't specify their color scheme (both light and dark), so not a fan.

Comment 11

[Emilio Cobos Álvarez (:emilio)]

Attachment: Bug 1768229 - Add browser.theme.toolbar-theme-override to allow users to override theme's color-scheme heuristics. r=dao,Gijs

Not sure if we'd be ok with this, but it doesn't seem too bad.

Comment 12

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to :Gijs (he/him) from comment #8)

Reopening to get some more people to offer an opinion on what to do here, rather than duplicating what is effectively the same issue.

In addition to comment #6, the dupe repeated comment 0 and added:

(relating to the toolbar-theme user value being reset to 2)

(1) Firefox should correctly remember the value defined by users (in my case "2")
(2) Users should be given the freedom to set this value as per their convenience, regardless of whether:

• Firefox "thinks" that the theme is best suited for a dark environment ("What Firefox thinks" and "what users want" should not be mutually exclusive conditions)
• The theme is still being updated by the designer (I find this theme perfect and do not wish to be told to select another one)

Dão and Emilio, is there anything you think we can/should reasonably do here? This is basically the same issue as e.g. bug 1705501 but the reporter is not happy with the fix lying with the theme developer rather than end-user, when from a user perspective menus etc. didn't use to be dark before the proton work which extended the colour reading of the theme to the menus/panels (which was a long-standing feature request from "real" dark themes, as it were).

Repeating my comment from phabricator: I don't think we want to provide this footgun. This wouldn't just affect separate surfaces such as panels and menus, since we use prefers-color-scheme to adjust some hardcoded colors that are supposed to mix with the theme.

Comment 13

[hevinroyal]

I take note of your useful comments, but I still wish to use this theme in a light environment.

Is there any way you can assist in a simple, step-by-step approach (again, I am not tech-savvy to go into advanced customisations) ? Could you perhaps edit the theme to my requirements? I should be much grateful.