2005148 - Themes with low contrast frame colors (masked by an image) now affect the sidebar content since it was made default transparent

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 2005033

(Firefox :: Sidebar, defect, P1)

Description

[Jim]

Attachment: Untitled.jpg

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:146.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/146.0

Steps to reproduce:

I updated firefox to 146.0. Running win 11 pro

Actual results:

Firefox is set to dark mode. Bookmarks sidebar was black with white lettering. Now bookmarks sidebar is white with white lettering. Tried light mode same problem.

Expected results:

No change to bookmarks sidebar color, sidebar should stay black. Text is white as it should be

Comment 1

[Alice0775 White]

[Tracking Requested - why for this release]: Invisible text with white text and white background in Sidebar if some dark theme is applied.

I can reproduce the issue with theme https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-logo-on-grey-and-black/ .

Regression window:
https://hg-edge.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/pushloghtml?fromchange=f4274c58d4530a2adadb81eaafabf0d8ccead13c&tochange=935a682c44fe2c6737dce0405a52c960eaa698f5

Comment 2

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

:dao, since you are the author of the regressor, bug 1984885, could you take a look? Also, could you set the severity field?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 3

[Donal Meehan [:dmeehan]]

Bug 2005033 looks like a dup of this

Comment 6

[Nikki Sharpley (:nikkis) (she/her)]

NI-ing Emilio too - could this be related to some of the other theming changes that have been made in 146?

Comment 7

[Emilio Cobos Álvarez [:emilio]]

No, Dao's patch is to blame, but the main issue here is that the theme seems broken / always expecting the image to be the ultimate background, and that just doesn't hold with the sidebar anymore. The theme in comment 1 for example has a white-on-white color:

"colors": {"frame": "#ffffff", "tab_background_text": "#ffffff"}}

So we're showing the white which they're using as a frame background...

Comment 8

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

The theme is to blame for setting a nonsensical frame color, but I'll mark this a duplicate of bug 1952602 which covers the background image not extending behind the sidebar.

Comment 9

[Kestrel]

(In reply to Dão Gottwald [:dao] from comment #8)

duplicate of bug 1952602 which covers the background image not extending behind the sidebar.

Extending the background image beneath the sidebar would not fix this with the level of transparency (alpha 0.05-0.1) introduced by regressor Bug 1984885. The image could be anything and cannot be assumed to have suitable contrast or be easy to read against.

The sidebar content is important and deserves the same acccessibility considerations as other content regardless of the theme.

Comment 10

[Kestrel]

Attachment: Contrast issues with transparent sidebar

Example of background image being applied under transparent sidebar with a popular affected theme Fractal Senzune Alphacoder (9k users) resulting in poor text legibility in the bookmarks sidebar.

Comment 11

[Emilio Cobos Álvarez [:emilio]]

Kestrel: FWIW I don't agree comment 10 is a problem. Is exactly the design the theme is going for tab titles and toolbars, which are as critical as the sidebar...

So seems unfortunate to me, but unfortunate in the "I wouldn't use that theme" category...

Comment 12

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to Kestrel from comment #9)

The sidebar content is important and deserves the same acccessibility considerations as other content regardless of the theme.

Okay, but for the theme from comment 0, we use the colors it tells us to use. We can't magically make themes accessible regardless of what colors they specific. So I'm afraid I'll have to close this again.

Created attachment 9533642 [details]
Contrast issues with transparent sidebar

Example of background image being applied under transparent sidebar with a popular affected theme Fractal Senzune Alphacoder (9k users) resulting in poor text legibility in the bookmarks sidebar.

Seems like this discussion belongs in bug 1952602, not this bug.