494777 - New mail indicator for feeds has poor contrast

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, defect)

Description

[Joe Sabash [:JoeS1]]

This might depend on display resolution, but with 1024x768 the new mail indication is barely visible.

See screenshot clip

Comment 1

[Joe Sabash [:JoeS1]]

Attachment: screeshot clip

Comment 2

[Gary Kwong [:gkw] [:nth10sd] (NOT official MoCo now)]

cc'ing our UI gurus.

Comment 3

[Joe Sabash [:JoeS1]]

I should add that this is with the recently checked in icons set.
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1pre) Gecko/20090524 Lightning/1.0pre Shredder/3.0b3pre ID:20090524031837

Comment 4

[Joe Sabash [:JoeS1]]

Attachment: new icon for rss-feed png

Some assumptions here that the original icon is split top and bottom for feeds/feeds-new in the rendering.
If so, this should work better.

Comment 5

[Joe Sabash [:JoeS1]]

Attachment: Muted no new messages

Another possibility addressing the "too colorful" objections.

Comment 6

[Alex Ihrig [:Thunderbird_Mail_DE]]

1) Latest nightly builds are missing the rss icons

2) For the Aero theme I'd prefer folder / rss(-folder) / etc. icons from Firefox 3. They could be grey or light blue for folders without new items. Colored items could indicate folders with new items.

Comment 7

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

(In reply to comment #6)
> 2) For the Aero theme I'd prefer folder / rss(-folder) / etc. icons from
> Firefox 3. They could be grey or light blue for folders without new items.
> Colored items could indicate folders with new items.

Agreed, I'll add the icons from Firefox. For indicating new items, I've been thinking about using text color on Linux, XP and Aero. Will fix up with a patch for this.

Comment 8

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

(In reply to comment #4)
> Some assumptions here that the original icon is split top and bottom for
> feeds/feeds-new in the rendering.
> If so, this should work better.

I like the concept of the size change, that could have a lot of promise.  But the smaller size looks fuzzy.  The smaller size needs to be sharper and clearer if we are going to go in this direction.

(In reply to comment #5)
> Another possibility addressing the "too colorful" objections.

I like this concept better, though I think the muted colors are too dark and flat.  If we went with a grey color and kept the sizing the same I think we could get the right effect going.  Having both the color and sizing changed seems a little too much differentiation.  

Maybe we can just try drawing the icon with a new gray color scheme first and then look more into size changes after.  Gray might not be the perfect color to use as it tends to convey "off", "finished", or "old".

(In reply to comment #6)
> 2) For the Aero theme I'd prefer folder / rss(-folder) / etc. icons from
> Firefox 3. They could be grey or light blue for folders without new items.
> Colored items could indicate folders with new items.

This also sounds like a good direction to try.  If we make the prominent color a light blue our yellow star would stand out well and we could keep the orange around for the "not new" status.

Comment 9

[Joe Sabash [:JoeS1]]

Attachment: sharper version

The idea is to make the "no new messages" part be non-descript.
Here are 2 new versions that still should be recognizable as feeds.

Comment 10

[Joe Sabash [:JoeS1]]

Attachment: Even sharper version

Comment 11

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Attachment: patch using colored text on gnomestripe

Ok, this is for gnomestripe, as this bug affect Linux as well. How do I change the platform field to reflect that?
This is a slightly different approach, but one that will scale great with monitor resolutions. What do you think?

Comment 12

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Attachment: screenshot of gnomestripe patch in action

Comment 13

[Gary Kwong [:gkw] [:nth10sd] (NOT official MoCo now)]

(In reply to comment #11)
> Created an attachment (id=396122) [details]
> patch using colored text on gnomestripe
> 
> Ok, this is for gnomestripe, as this bug affect Linux as well. How do I change
> the platform field to reflect that?

Change the field to "All".

Comment 15

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Comment on attachment 396122 [details] [diff] [review]
patch using colored text on gnomestripe

Sorry, this has severly bitrotted :(

Comment 16

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

Comment on attachment 396124 [details]
screenshot of gnomestripe patch in action

wow, that does simplify all that original work and looks good too.

The colors on that theme are perhaps somewhat light but it's theme color choices for Highlight.

Comment 17

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Attachment: updated patch without bitrot

Comment 18

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Comment on attachment 400474 [details] [diff] [review]
updated patch without bitrot

>diff --git a/mail/themes/gnomestripe/mail/folderPane.css b/mail/themes/gnomestripe/mail/folderPane.css
>--- a/mail/themes/gnomestripe/mail/folderPane.css
>+++ b/mail/themes/gnomestripe/mail/folderPane.css
>@@ -2,33 +2,30 @@
> 
> .tabmail-tab[type="folder"] > .tab-image-middle > .tab-icon-image,
> treechildren::-moz-tree-image(folderNameCol) {
>-  background-position: center center;
>+/*  background-position: center center;
>   background-repeat: no-repeat;
>   background-color: transparent;
>   background-attachment: scroll;
>   -moz-background-clip: border;
>   -moz-background-inline-policy: continuous;
>-  -moz-background-origin: border;
>-  background-image: url("moz-icon://stock/gtk-directory?size=menu");
>-  list-style-image: url("chrome://messenger/skin/icons/folder-blank.png");
>+  -moz-background-origin: border; */

Remove?

>+/* do we still need this one? */
> treechildren::-moz-tree-image(folderNameCol, selected, open, 

Do we?


> /* ..... Shared folders .....
>@@ -132,61 +114,60 @@
> 
> .tabmail-tab[type="folder"][SpecialFolder="Virtual"] > .tab-image-middle > .tab-icon-image,
> treechildren::-moz-tree-image(folderNameCol, specialFolder-Virtual) {
>+/*
>   background-image: url("chrome://messenger/skin/icons/folder-pane.png");
>   background-position: left -128px;
>   list-style-image: url("chrome://messenger/skin/icons/folder-blank.png");
>+*/

Remove commented out code


>+/* copied from pinstripe */

Don't think this comment adds any value

Comment 19

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Attachment: patch without comments

Comment 20

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

Comment on attachment 401182 [details] [diff] [review]
patch without comments

lets roll with this.  I might miss the stars but the color change gives a much greater indicator over even the older stars that stood out a bit more.

Comment 21

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Comment on attachment 401182 [details] [diff] [review]
patch without comments

Newsgroups in the folder pane images are off with this patch (100px off to the right? or something)


>+treechildren::-moz-tree-cell-text(folderNameCol, newMessages-true){

Nit: add space after ). Same below

>+treechildren::-moz-tree-cell-text(folderNameCol, newMessages-true, selected){


The "!important" statements you have in a few places seem unneeded.

Comment 22

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Attachment: updated to reflect feedback

this removes the !important parts, fixes the newsgroup issue and makes sure there are proper spaces before "{"

Comment 23

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Attachment: [checked in] proposed fix

Turns out !important was needed in the case of Trash/Saved Searched under feeds and news.

That change is included in this patch.

Comment 24

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Checked in: http://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/765e1e92f04e

Comment 25

[Joe Sabash [:JoeS1]]

I guess this fixes gnomestripe, but it does nothing for the bright orange centipede still crawling up the left side of my folderpane. :)
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.4pre) Gecko/20090924 Lightning/1.0pre Shredder/3.0pre ID:20090924132909

Comment 26

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Attachment: patch for qute

Comment 27

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

Comment on attachment 403249 [details] [diff] [review]
patch for qute

now that I've been running with this for a little I think we need to investigate continuing the transition (perhaps later in another bug) toward using the hightlight color in the thread view as well.

Comment 28

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Comment on attachment 403249 [details] [diff] [review]
patch for qute

Code looks ok, didn't test it though. r=mkmelin

Comment 29

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Checkin needed for the patch in #26

Comment 30

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Checked in: http://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/eab8e8e7171e

Comment 32

[jmordax]

Target milestone seems to be 3.0 RC1 which I am testing right now, and I still seeing the same problem: yellow flash over orange icon. Is it really RC1 the target milestone?

Comment 33

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

isn't the text colored when there are new messages. Did the patch in this bug get dropped along the way?

Comment 34

[gekacheka]

Attachment: TB3/w2k: No-new-msgs feed icon too similar and bright, needs dimming

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091116 Lightning/1.0pre Shredder/3.0.1pre

This bug and the dup'ed bugs (Bug 495613, Bug 529225) are about the feed icons.  On W2k they (no-new-msgs feed icon, new-msgs feed icon) are both still the same bright orange.  The no-new-msgs feed icon needs to be much dimmer.

The patches in this bug so far only applied to the 'qute' and 'gnomestripe'  platform themes, not other platform themes such as 'winstripe' or 'pinstripe'.

Comment 35

[jmordax]

Ok, the text seems to appear in dark blue which really also doesn't contrast with the black. But the icons remains the same. I really think that the grayed icon could be a nice solution.

Which are the plans about this item? Are we going to change the icons also in win32 or as it is closed we won't do anything else? I understand if the icons haven't been changed in win32 the item should be reopened, right?