274951 - enhancements in bug list very hard to read - text has extremely low contrast

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Bugzilla :: User Interface, defect)

Description

[Rob North]

The new striped UI causes difficulty distinguishing enhancements, both on
grey-on-grey and white-on-grey rows.

If this is low contrast on my CRT, then this is likely to be even worse on older
LCD screens.

Viewed in Mozilla build 2004111421, and Firefox 1.0 browsers.

Will attach example of the low contrast text.

Comment 1

[Rob North]

Attachment: Example of low contrast text

Comment 2

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Fair point.

Why did we switch away from italics? Can we darken the grey a notch or two?

Gerv

Comment 3

[Rob North]

My suspicion would be that the colours were chosen to match the new colour
scheme of the Mozilla web site.
But you should know more about that than me ;)

It may also help to use white for the background of pale grey bars...
Then you can lighten the dark grey bars, and loose less contrast....

Personally I beleive you could use minimal contrast between the backgrounds of
the light and dark bars, and still gain the abiltiy to distiguish rows.

P.S. Is there any place where I can still see the old UI to compare with the new?
I think there are some more colour related usability issues, but I can't place
my finger on them... without comparing to the old UI.

Comment 4

[Bill]

Enhanced visibility mode helped mine. probaly rite about back ground color.

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to comment #2)
> Fair point.
> 
> Why did we switch away from italics? Can we darken the grey a notch or two?
> 
> Gerv

It's VERY hard read enh bugs in the list, even with font size cranked up on a
large monitor. The characters are just too light.  This may be OK for young
hackers, but for those of us with bifocals already ...

Request return to non-grey italics, substantially darken, or provide a better
solution - please.

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Attachment: Screen shot of buglist of enhancements

This is a killer on the eyes.

Comment 7

[Frédéric Buclin]

*** Bug 336251 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Gerv in comment #2
> Why did we switch away from italics? 

bug 142104 

>Can we darken the grey a notch or two?

yup, just change buglist.css from
  .bz_enhancement { color: #888; background-color: white; }
to
  .bz_enhancement { color: #555; background-color: white; }
screen shot coming up.  I'd settle for 666 but prefer 555.

In bug 142104 comment 4 it was decided to use 888.  White background for all enh helps but 888 is still too light. Try reading half a page of http://tinyurl.com/rocxg - readability sxcks.  Note - text size and monitor quality is not the problem - I've got 21" quality monitor on 2 systems, one flat and one tube.


Bill in comment #4
> Enhanced visibility mode helped mine. probaly rite about back ground color.

Bill I assume you're not talking about Clear Type.  So where/what is enhanced mode?  

Clear Type helps IMO especially on laptops - display>appearance>advanced+smooth edges.  


Q - should solving this simple UI usability issue depend on a mega-kitchen sink bug like bug 130276?  (which may take forever - it's made no progress)

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Attachment: rightmost window is current setting, left window is color: #555

Left window has changed text shade 555, which is darker, more readable = better.

888, the current setting, is not suitable as readable text and is nearly a light background shade.

Comment 10

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Attachment: darken shade of grey for ENH

see screen shot attachment 240632 [details]

Comment 11

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Comment on attachment 245591 [details] [diff] [review]
darken shade of grey for ENH

bad one

Comment 12

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Attachment: darken shade of grey for ENH

save my eyes :)

Comment 13

[Frédéric Buclin]

#555 is dark and hard to distinguish from black, IMO. I would prefer #666

Comment 14

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Attachment: darken shade of grey to 666 for ENH

Comment 15

[Frédéric Buclin]

Comment on attachment 245602 [details] [diff] [review]
darken shade of grey to 666 for ENH

r=LpSolit

Comment 16

[Frédéric Buclin]

Checking in skins/standard/buglist.css;
/cvsroot/mozilla/webtools/bugzilla/skins/standard/buglist.css,v  <--  buglist.css
new revision: 1.11; previous revision: 1.10
done