Some messages in Dark Mode are unreadable
Categories
(Thunderbird :: Theme, defect)
Tracking
(Not tracked)
People
(Reporter: jonas.gamao, Unassigned)
Details
Attachments
(2 files)
Screenshot_20231229_075845.png
Steps to reproduce:
Viewing emails
Actual results:
The text from some emails are in black, and are not inverted when in dark mode.
Expected results:
Maybe an option to change to light mode for the message itself, and not the whole UI would be useful to have?
|
||
Comment 1•2 years ago
|
||
Hi :)
I believe that the HTML instruction are not impacted by the theme. If the background is set as #000 for example the dark mode would not touch it. I I will try to validate this with some e-mails, but I don't believe this is a bug!
It seems to occur when the sender set html css in email as a dark colour for font but did not set a background colour, so the default dark theme background gets used.
It also occurs if sender set a pale/white background but did not set a font colour, so in a dark theme you end up with default theme white font and a sender set background of white.
Result is unreadible text until you change to a light theme (or dark them depending upon issue) or highlight the 'hidden text' as a quick fix for reading purposes.
Settings > General
under 'Languages & Appearance'
Click on 'Colours'
Default has Text = White, Background = dark
Workaround Fix options
option 1:
do not select 'Use System colours'
Set 'Override the colours specified by the content with my selections above:' as 'Always'
option 2: (does not work if white on white, but does work for dark on dark issue)
select 'Use System colours'
Set 'Override the colours specified by the content with my selections above:' as 'Never'
option 3: (I use this)
Set Text = Black, Background = White
do not select 'Use System colours'
Set 'Override the colours specified by the content with my selections above:' as 'Never'
Never thought of reporting this bug, but I'm encountering it every week or so. From memory, the colors are messed up more often when I'm composing a reply or forwarding emails.
|
||
Comment 4•1 year ago
|
||
@admin
"the colors are messed up more often when I'm composing a reply"
Are you composing HTML or plain text? I spent way too much time this week trying to make the plain text Write window more visible. The long version with several screenshots is at:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1443170
Latest "aha" discovery there:
Just had a thought - the Write window is always a separate window, not a tab. But opening incoming messages in a new window gets my chosen full white on full black colors, just like in a tab.
I defaulted all my colors, no change. Tried your Dark theme, no change. Tried the Light theme, and the Write window went dark! See screenshot.
I managed to get all the Themes disabled, and everything went dark. See screenshot.
Enabled the System Theme, and so far everything is still dark. Survived a TBird close and restart. See screenshot.
In case it might matter, this is happening on Arch Linux with Cinnamon Desktop, in dark mode.
Even now, if I go to the Themes selector and Enable the Light theme, every part of Thunderbird except the Write window turns light - black text on white. The Write window switches to maximum contrast pure white text on a pure black background. With any other theme, the Write window background is the dark gray used in the Folder pane.
Something very strange seems to be going on here...
(In reply to LorenAmelang from comment #4)
@admin
"the colors are messed up more often when I'm composing a reply"Are you composing HTML or plain text? I spent way too much time this week trying to make the plain text Write window more visible. The long version with several screenshots is at:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1443170Latest "aha" discovery there:
Just had a thought - the Write window is always a separate window, not a tab. But opening incoming messages in a new window gets my chosen full white on full black colors, just like in a tab. I defaulted all my colors, no change. Tried your Dark theme, no change. Tried the Light theme, and the Write window went dark! See screenshot. I managed to get all the Themes disabled, and everything went dark. See screenshot. Enabled the System Theme, and so far everything is still dark. Survived a TBird close and restart. See screenshot. In case it might matter, this is happening on Arch Linux with Cinnamon Desktop, in dark mode.Even now, if I go to the Themes selector and Enable the Light theme, every part of Thunderbird except the Write window turns light - black text on white. The Write window switches to maximum contrast pure white text on a pure black background. With any other theme, the Write window background is the dark gray used in the Folder pane.
Something very strange seems to be going on here...
I'm composing HTML with default settings on Kubuntu. I'll wait for it to happen again and see if I can contribute with more useful info.
If anyone is using or has installed any addon which may effect the theme background colours then please state what addon you were using and then completely uninstall that addon and restart Thunderbird to ensure all parts of addon are removed.
OK... I have received one email which looks like same issue as image posted by reporter. It's from Pinterest.
I changed the view to Simple HTML and it's easy to read.
View > Message Body as > Simple HTML
Or change the theme to 'Light' - which works from a point of view ability to read email.
OR highlight the text in email.
Basically not good html created by someone using MS Office so contains a load of unnecessary bloat code and they are trying to force a particular view of email which fails. HTML is trying to guess what theme you use and control the various colours. As far as I can tell, this email would look dreadful regardless unless you are possibly using Outlook.
This is not a general problem in all other emails - it is the only one I've encountered so far. It's not just the newest versions of TB - this also looks dreadful in 102*.
It would be helpful if people who see same problem as the image posted to check the Source.
Select email to view in Message Pane.
click on 'More' and select 'View Source'
At the top is a load of headers.
Then it will have the Plain text section.
After the section which may start with something like this:
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Type: text/html; charset="UTF-8"
Do you text which looks like the following - I'm only posting a very small section of text, but in reality there is a lot more as you can see a portion in the image provided - believe me there's a lot more and it's only a few lines in the actual email - go figure!!!
=0A<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.=org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">=0A=0A<html xmlns=3D"http://www.w3.org=/1999/xhtml" xmlns:o=3D"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:v=3D= "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml">=0A<head>=0A<meta content=3D"text/html;
Are the effected emails all showing they were created using Microsoft Office product?
I'm not so sure this can be regarded as a bug when issue maybe the html in the email.
|
||
Comment 8•1 year ago
|
||
This is a big problem, not being able to read emails.
This wasn't a problem for me until recently. I don't know what has changed. The latest update? Or the way the senders are formatting the HTML in their emails?
I'm using Thunderbird 128.5.2 on Windows 11 Pro 24H2. I have Windows set to using DARK MODE for apps.
When I receive a message that uses HTML, sometimes I simply cannot read the message. It has very dark text on a black background.
I see the problem especially with emails sent by amazon.com.
I have viewed the message source, and it looks like the message sets the dark text color - #333 - but it does NOT set the background color. It seems that the sender just assumes that the background color will be something light???
The sender should really should not be assuming anything like that, but what can you do? The people at amazon.com really should know better. The base text in their emails has color #333.
So what can I do to read my emails?
I opened up the Developer Toolbox, and I see that the HTML for the email is enclosed in a <browser> element containing a "#document" (???) When I look at the email's HTML, it looks like Thunderbird has inserted its own stuff into it and otherwise altered it in several ways. The <style> from inside the <head> is moved into the <body> (???) for example.
I see two empty <table> elements with CSS classes "moz-header-part1" and "moz-main-header". Then, I see a <div> element with class "moz-text-html". The actual HTML of the email -- the message text, if you will -- seems to be inside this <div>. If the classes start with "moz" I'm sure they're from Thunderbird, no?
I tried to use CSS in my userChrome.css to apply a background color to class moz-text-html, but that didn't work. No surprise. I don't know how to select for something inside a #document.
What else can I do to read my emails? I have resorted to dragging my cursor over the whole message. Or reading the Plain Text, which is really a pain. Maybe an extension that provides a button to alter the <body> element for the message to add a background-color to it??? Or maybe add it to the CSS for class moz-text-html. I can do either manually using the Developer Toolbox, so I know it's possible.
|
|
||
Comment 9•1 year ago
|
||
(In reply to Mark Barnes [:WoofGrrrr] from comment #8)
I opened up the Developer Toolbox, and I see that the HTML for the email is enclosed in a <browser> element containing a "#document" (???) When I look at the email's HTML, it looks like Thunderbird has inserted its own stuff into it and otherwise altered it in several ways. The <style> from inside the <head> is moved into the <body> (???) for example.
Maybe unrelated, but I've been struggling with getting a canonical link into my website pages. If I use the default method, I see the link in the <head> of the html file I upload to the server. My Vivaldi (Chromium) web browser DevTools sees all that code, but shows it in the <body> section rather than in <head>. And Google search can't see a canonical that isn't in <head>. Google's Search Console also sees the link moved into the <body>, so it isn't just Chromium - but they are both Google products...
I have no idea what all this means, but your mention of your style being moved into <body> certainly caught my eye.
As for Thunderbird, mine seems to have stopped showing the problem I mentioned above.
128.5.1esr (64-bit)
Mozilla Thunderbird for Arch Linux
archlinux - 1.0
I use the Dark Reader extension:
Version
4.9.68
Last Updated
March 29, 2024
But I'm pretty sure I had Dark Reader enabled when I posted before. Maybe an older version?
|
|
||
Comment 10•1 year ago
|
||
I have a work-around.
The CSS needs to be in userContent.css instead of userChrome.css.
I use this:
@-moz-document url-prefix() {
div.moz-text-html {
background-color: #E0E8E8 !important;
}
}
|
||
Comment 11•6 months ago
|
||
Is this still an issue with the dark message mode feature?
|
|
||
Comment 12•6 months ago
|
||
(In reply to Martin Giger [:freaktechnik] from comment #11)
Is this still an issue with the dark message mode feature?
I've had the Dark Reader extension on for ages. In TBird 138, the toggle at top right of the message pane switches between two views, both with serious problems for Dark Reader. Randomly one or the other is better for each message.
I just tried turning off Dark Reader, now the toggle switches from light to dark, with a more accessible dark mode than either Dark Reader option.
I have some screenshots but it looks like I can't drop them here.
To see the change, you have to turn off Dark Reader and close the message, then re-open it!
So is that toggle the "dark message mode feature" you asked about? I'll need to see it work on lots more messages, but so far it seems a big inorovement over Dark Reader!
|
|
||
Comment 13•6 months ago
|
||
(In reply to LorenAmelang from comment #12)
So is that toggle the "dark message mode feature" you asked about?
That is the feature, yes.
|
|
||
Comment 14•6 months ago
|
||
(In reply to Martin Giger [:freaktechnik] from comment #13)
(In reply to LorenAmelang from comment #12)
So is that toggle the "dark message mode feature" you asked about?
That is the feature, yes.
In yesterday's trial of the new dark mode, several messages were quite nice. The Economist newsletter was miserably unreadable, huge blinding white headlines with dark gray text barely distinguishable from the black background. Switching to "Simple HTML" made most of the text and all of the images disappear. Thankfully they have a "read in browser" button.
A bank eMail was very strange - one paragraph (with a slightly lighter background than the rest in light mode) showed in light gray on white in dark mode, while the rest of the message was almost black text on black background. Switching to "Simple HTML" made it readable.
Unfortunately that preference remains active, and doesn't work for many other messages.
I wish both view mode and the light/dark toggle could affect only the current message, and return to the default choice for the next message!
Maybe there could be a hamdy toggle for More -> Message Body -> Original/Simple that only affected the current message...
I guess we're stuck with the current craze for fashionable and tricky view effects. I wish they would consider accessibility!
|
||
Comment 15•1 month ago
|
||
I'm finding with the 140ESR that all messages are readable and stay dark but some need the dark-mode toggle on and others need it off. This means I set it for one message, then go to another and it is either light-mode or is unreadable, and toggling again makes it better for now, until a different message.
The dark mode is too often failing to make the text light to be readable, and it seems to relate to HTML vs plain but it's not obvious what is going on.
Description
•