456829 - messagereader: honor font & color system defaults

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, defect, P3)

Description

[David Ascher (:davida)]

We should figure out how much the UI should follow the system-specified defaults.  In general, I suspect we want to use %-based font sizing, rather than fixed widths, so that the system defaults become the 100% baseline, and our adjustments are relative to those.

Color choices are harder to fit within design goals, but are worth exploring.

Comment 1

[Peter Lairo]

Both color and font respected the OS settings up until Thunderbird 2. Hopefully both can be reverted to that.

Comment 2

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

blocking‑thunderbird3+; breaking system integration is a big no-no, might make thunderbird un-usable for folks with odd settings (due to taste or disability).

Comment 3

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

David says that fonts are now 100% theme based.

The colour issues don't block b1, so moving out to b2.

Comment 4

[David :Bienvenu]

giving to David, who might send it over to clarkbw

Comment 5

[Peter Lairo]

I'm not sure the  Whiteboard ("just colors left now") is correct. The fonts in the "collapsed" view ("hide details") are larger than the OS-selected size, and also larger than all other fonts in Thunderbird's UI. That's not necessary or even beneficial (IMO). Just make the Subject line *bold* in _both_ header views. That's probably all the emphasis the header info needs.

Comment 6

[David Ascher (:davida)]

I need to be convinced that this blocks tb3.

Comment 7

[Peter Lairo]

(In reply to comment #6)
> I need to be convinced that this blocks tb3.

It's the most visually noticeable change since Tb2, and it's for the worse!?

Comment 8

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

Attachment: High-contrast on Ubuntu

Best case for blocking on colors I can make (which required stepping out of my "everything's already shades of grey with a little touch of blue" Mac world): this is my Ubuntu VM set to the "high contrast inverse" theme that's apparently both useful for laptop screens in bright sun and accessibility for low-vision. A few seconds in the prefs (and then a few minutes in about:config, since our colorpicker won't pick 000033) to change the message body colors, and I had everything looking like my accessible theme except the glaringly different block of messagereader.

Comment 9

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

pushing to dmose

Comment 10

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

I guess I should take this back since I'm working on bug 461098 which has the fix for this in the works.  Currently the latest patch is in attachment 359808 [details] [diff] [review]

Comment 11

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

Just added Attachment #360179 [details] to bug 461098 which shows the latest color changes in the patch that should fix this bug.

Comment 12

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

magnus cleaned up and checked in attachment 360627 [details] [diff] [review] from bug 461098 which has the CSS changes that should fix this bug.  Please take a look at a nightly release later tonight and update this bug.  Thanks

Comment 13

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Though only for gnomestripe (linux) so far.

Comment 14

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

Attachment: windows message header comparison

I took screenshots of 3 different states of the windows system in between torturing myself by actually building Thunderbird on windows.

1) Is windows in the high contrast theme with the patch applied, there is no variation of look with this theme between either of the background color options described below.
2) windows using the AppWorkspace background color with the default theme.  This looked really horrible because it's so dark and doesn't match the button colors.
3) windows using the Menu background color with the default theme.  This looks more like what we want, the buttons blend in and it's a light enough color that the text looks good.

Will attach the patch the provides this next.

Comment 15

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

Attachment: patch to use CSS system colors in message header for the windows theme

This patch is very similar to what was done on Linux in the reply all bug (bug 461098).  In fact the only variation was the background color of Menu, instead of AppWorkspace.  

I also did some minor cleanups that probably should have been done on the Linux CSS as well had I caught them the first time around.  Will put up a separate patch for cleaning up the Linux theme later.

I know bienvenu has windows and perhaps a chance to look at this?

Comment 16

[David :Bienvenu]

sure, I'll look at this in the next hour or so.

Comment 17

[David :Bienvenu]

Comment on attachment 362791 [details] [diff] [review]
patch to use CSS system colors in message header for the windows theme

I'll land this. The lack of color contrast between the header and message area might take a bit of getting used to, but let's give it a try.

Comment 18

[David :Bienvenu]

ok, checked in.