1964222 - User-specified colours no longer act as defaults

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Disability Access, defect)

Description

[ffbugz]

Attachment: 1 shot of 136 and 2 of 138. Spot the difference.

In previous releases it was possible to set a default set of colours (bg, fg, link, etc.) in the preferences or in about:config and have those take effect only when the style of the page being viewed did not set them to something else. This appears to have changed recently (likely in 138 with the introduction of "Contrast Control") so that now it is a binary choice of forcing all pages to use the user's chosen colour scheme or not to use the user's colours at all. This is a regression.

To demonstrate, go to Edit->Settings and in Contrast Control select Custom and then Manage Colours. Choose a distinctive background colour such as yellow. Now all of the pages you view will have a yellow background on everything. If you choose either Off or Automatic in Contrast Control, nothing will have a yellow background regardless of which backgrounds are unset in the page.

Contrast this with version 136 where in Edit->Settings->Manage Colours choosing the Never option for when to override just sets your colour choice as the default to be used when the page sets no background.

Attached are 3 screenshots of https://www.royalmail.com/track-your-item#/ to demonstrate. The one from version 136 shows the desired behaviour - a white background where the page has specified it and our choice of yellow background otherwise (towards the bottom). Then there are the two from version 138 - one with Off where everything is white and one with Custom where everything is yellow.

Please fix this regression to provide the option which always used to exist.

Comment 1

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

:eeejay, since you are the author of the regressor, bug 1898096, could you take a look? Also, could you set the severity field?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 2

[Eitan Isaacson [:eeejay]]

Attachment: Screenshot of the royal mail site in FF 137 showing a black background with dark text.

Hi ffbugz,

The capability of changing the default background in Firefox settings is no longer available. This was a deliberate change we decided upon. There are two goals we are trying to achieve:

1. Make the settings easier to understand for those who need a custom contrast mode.
2. Avoid pitfalls where users change the default colors only to have adverse effects.

Regarding the second point, the web today is 99% styled. We hardly ever encounter markup that is using the browser's default style. The royal mail example you brought above is rare. Prior to 138, if the user changed the fg/bg to be white on black they would not notice any change in their browsing - until they visit a page like the one you cited. The black background will be rendered with the dark text on top, and it will not be legible. Arguably, the website holds some blame here because they styled the foreground text, but not the background because they assumed the default browser background is white, which in Firefox's case cannot be taken for granted (prior to 138). Either way, the user will encounter a bug and might not even remember tweaking the default colors or have any understanding of the underlying CSS dynamics.

If you relied on this feature, I am very sorry you miss it. The alternative approach for customizing colors is through web extensions. They are able to have a much finer grained control over the browsing experience and can offer a more nuanced setting than we can with a "default color".

Attached is a screenshot to showing how the royal mail website gets rendered poorly in 137 with custom colors.