494666 - Thunderbird should adhere to GTK icon themes (like Firefox already does)

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 499683

(Thunderbird :: OS Integration, enhancement)

Description

[Hanno Mueller]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; de; rv:1.9.0.10) Gecko/2009042523 Ubuntu/9.04 (jaunty) Firefox/3.0.10
Build Identifier: Version 2.0.0.21 (20090409)

On Linux, Firefox adheres to GTK themes. E.g. on my Ubuntu 9.04 Gnome desktop, Firefox uses the icon set which the user has chosen for Gnome. If the user changes the Gnome icons, Firefox's icons will change, as well.

Thunderbird doesn't do this. It comes with its own set of icons and it doesn't use the user's Gnome icon theme.

I may be mistaken, but https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=484064 appears to be only half the road to this. Instead of packaging Linux Thunderbird with Tango icons, it would be nicer and more flexible to make Thunderbird follow GTK icon themes and use the system default.

Thank you.

This report is based on a previous discussion on https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunderbird/+bug/135066

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Hanno Mueller]

Please ignore the comment about Bug 484064, that one is unrelated to this one.

Comment 2

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Have you actually tried a Thunderbird 3 preview build? We pick up many things from using the same core as Firefox. Firefox 2 was equivalent to Thunderbird 2, there is no released equivalent to Firefox 3 yet, so if you're comparing Firefox 3 and Thunderbird 2 then you could quite easily get different results.

Early releases available from here:

http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/early_releases/

Nightly builds here:

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/nightly/latest-comm-1.9.1/

If that doesn't fix it, then we're going to need some pointers as to what Firefox is doing that we're not.

Comment 3

[Hanno Mueller]

Thanks.

Just tested Thunderbird 3

- "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1b3pre) Gecko/20090227 Shredder/3.0b2"

- "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1pre) Gecko/20090522 Shredder/3.0b3pre"

both from https://launchpad.net/~fta/+archive/ppa/+index?start=0&batch=75

Apparently, TB3 still uses its own icons and doesn't follow the GTK icon theme.

> If that doesn't fix it, then we're going to need some pointers as to
> what Firefox is doing that we're not

Don't know, but maybe one of their Linux developers can comment on this?

Comment 4

[John Vivirito]

Ubuntu doesnt change or alter GTK in Mozilla apps.

Comment 5

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Hanno: please be more specific. What icons aren't picked up as they should?

Comment 6

[Hanno Mueller]

Attachment: Apps with Tango-based "Human" Iconset (Ubuntu default)

Comment 7

[Hanno Mueller]

Attachment: Apps with "GPerfection" Iconset

Comment 8

[Hanno Mueller]

Attachment: Apps with "Dropline" Iconset

Comment 9

[Hanno Mueller]

@Magnus: Please have a look at the three screenshots (attached). They show the Gnome file browser, the Epiphany web browser, the Firefox web browser and Thunderbird.

Note that Firefox does use the iconset chosen by the Gnome user. (Firefox requires a restart after changing the Gnome iconset, though. But _then_, it does.)

Thunderbird does not and sticks to its own icons.

As an example, look at the folder icons which are different in the file browser and Thunderbird's folder view. Firefox, again, uses the Gnome iconset's folder icons for its Bookmark management. (Not shown in these screenshots.)

Check out http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Icon_Library - a typical Gnome iconset comes with its own icons for "new mail", "reply" and "forward" etc. Thunderbird should use these icons whenever possible.

Comment 10

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Hanno: yeah we're working on it. The toolbar icons are being fixed in bug 499683.

I think it was decided to use custom folder icons since we have so many different kind of folders.

Comment 11

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

Attachment: different theme folder icons

Thanks for the report!  We do pick up different folder icons depending on the theme, it was a bit of extra work to make this happen in Thunderbird.  The attached screenshot shows a couple different icon themes.  It does require a restart for the icons to change.

There are no GTK stock icons for reply / forward / reply all and such.  The GTK stock icon set is very limited: http://library.gnome.org/devel/gtk/2.17/gtk-Stock-Items.html The stock icons do include forward / back navigation icons but we can't reuse those for reply / forward as that action isn't about navigation.

The toolbar bug 499683 will get us tango icons similar to evolution icons so we don't look so out of place.