2005430 - The color of the selected item in the Sidebar and Library is too prominent in OS dark color.

Status: ASSIGNED

(Firefox :: Theme, defect)

Description

[Alice0775 White]

Attachment: screenshot

See attached screenshot, The color of the selected item in the sidebar is too prominent than Windows Explorer in OS dark color.

STR:

1. Set OS color to Dark.
   (Settings > Personalization > Colors, then choose Dark from the "Choose your mode" dropdown menu)
2. Set Firefox Theme to System theme — auto and/or Dark
3. Compare with Windows11 Explorer and Firefox Sidebar/Library

AR:
Too prominent.
The saturation and brightness seem too high.
The color scheme is hard on the eyes.

ER:
For consistency, the Explorer color is preferable.

Comment 1

[Alice0775 White]

Regression window(Firefox Theme is System theme — auto):
https://hg-edge.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/pushloghtml?fromchange=751ce10ffa95f4706e709666d45db519e48786c7&tochange=85ed967e285f304f7709461aec0d33ca72805791

Regression window(Firefox Theme is Dark):
https://hg-edge.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/pushloghtml?fromchange=956a79c094231de1b8122aa41f5399b4815e9fa6&tochange=934fe5237f06760bdd5faee9ad3ef22605f362bf

Comment 2

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

:emilio, since you are the author of the regressor, bug 1993056, could you take a look? Also, could you set the severity field?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 4

[Sebastian Hengst [:aryx] (needinfo me if it's about an intermittent or backout)]

[Tracking Requested - why for this release]:
As contributor Denys has pointed out, there are multiple reports of this in the support forums.

Comment 5

[Emilio Cobos Álvarez [:emilio]]

I don't see the point of tracking for 146 if it's been a behavior since 119?

Comment 6

[Sebastian Hengst [:aryx] (needinfo me if it's about an intermittent or backout)]

It's new in 146 (from bug 1993056).

Comment 7

[Emilio Cobos Álvarez [:emilio]]

Only got the explicit dark theme, not the system theme with dark color-scheme.

Comment 8

[Denys:denyshon]

To note, I'm seeing this in 145.0.2 MSiX

Comment 9

[Denys:denyshon]

I feel like it's not new, but people say they did not have this behavior before 146

Comment 10

[Emilio Cobos Álvarez [:emilio]]

Attachment: Bug 2005430 - Tweak default dark selecteditem color. r=#theme!

Taken from here:

https://searchfox.org/firefox-main/rev/04cf27582307a9c351e991c740828d54cf786b76/browser/themes/shared/places/sidebar.css#44

But we could also potentially just use the selection highlight color?
That matches what our about:config rows do...

Comment 11

[aafn]

Hello, I also have a regression coming from https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1993056, which is affecting my add-on Bookmark Search Plus 2 https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bookmark-search-plus-2/ .

I am using browser.theme.getCurrent() to retrieve the "sidebar" and "sidebar_text" colors of the current theme.
Starting with https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1993056, now the built-in dark theme is returning "null" for the "colors" property of the Theme.theme object returned as a promise.

So there is no way to determine which color to use for the built-in dark theme anymore !
And my users are complaining then that the add-on sidebar is not matching Firefox active dark theme :-( .

I presume that a way to fix this regression would be to satisfy https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1435216 .
Also described here I understand -> https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/877

Or what do you guys advise to do ?
(note: I cannot guess / maintain hardcoded color values for the dark theme in my add-on, that would be a very bad thing to do !)

Thank you in advance for any answer.

Comment 12

[Emilio Cobos Álvarez [:emilio]]

That seems like a totally unrelated issue. But I'm very confused, such an approach just never worked with the system theme either, right?

Why not using prefers-color-scheme? That should get propagated to the sidebar correctly, if it's not it's a bug.

Comment 13

[aafn]

The system theme indeed always returned "null", so in that case I am using my colors.
Here, I am using browser.theme.getCurrent() to retrieve the colors of the dark theme programmatically, and to apply them in the style for the sidebar content of the add-on, when the user has chosen the option to follow the current theme. The user can also decide in the add-on options to not follow them, and use the native BSP2 ass-on ones, or to specify them as they want.

I do not see how prefers-color-scheme would help in the above, the add-on doesn't really care about whether something is light or dark. It is just reproducing the current Firefox theme colors in the add-on sidebar, when the user chooses the option to follow them.

Until https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1993056, the system dark theme retrieved browser.theme.getCurrent() was giving the colors, so the add-on was above to reproduce them. Since that code change, the object doesn't contain those colors anymore, the property is null, exactly like the default system theme.
So how can the add-on retrieve the dark theme colors from now ?

If you prefer that I open a new bug, I can.
I hooked to this one thinking that it was related .. my bad if not.