553823 - message header is quite dark on Windows XP and vista

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Thunderbird :: Message Reader UI, defect)

Description

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Attachment: patch to fix the issue

The message header in Thunderbird on the Mac is rather dark when compared to Mail and Postbox. This patch makes it white instead.

Pro: Makes Thunderbird look lighter
Con (?): Makes the header look like it's part of the content (but unlike the content it's not scrollable)

Comment 1

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Attachment: screenshot of patch in action

Comment 2

[Nathan Tuggy (:tuggyne)]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Created an attachment (id=433747) [details]
> screenshot of patch in action

You might want to set the new feedback flag on this... ;-)

This looks interesting to me, BTW, though I don't have any strong opinions one way or another.

Comment 3

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

That's white, which is exactly what Mail.app uses.

IMHO its too "clinical", and I don't find ours dark at all. I also think that although you've got the line between them, you loose a lot of the visible separation between message header and body.

Comment 4

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

Attachment: message header design by andy

here's a similar mac message header design that andy did a little while back.  He added the lines to make the header more readable with the lighter color

Comment 5

[peter]

I find the message header background too dark on win xp.  However, I find white to be confusing since it is hard to pick out from other components.  Different monitors and OSes are going to have different gammas and contrast values.  Since you probably can't choose a shade that will keep even the same person happy on multiple monitors and OSes, I think the best solution is to make the header background a user-settable option.

Also, the whole header design is very lacking.  Field name fonts are too close in shade to the background, time is in a useless place.  Tag should be in the vast unused space, not taking up additional vertical space, etc. 

I have never understood why the header is not just considered part of the message in the first place, though.

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Attachment: winXP message header shading screen shot

peter, this bug might strictly be about Mac. Although, without a Mac screen shot from Mac, we can't tell if the winxp header (see attachment) is the same - which matches the rest of the UI.

Comment 7

[peter]

(In reply to comment #6)
> Created attachment 461988 [details]
> winXP message header shading screen shot
> 
> peter, this bug might strictly be about Mac. Although, without a Mac screen
> shot from Mac, we can't tell if the winxp header (see attachment) is the same -
> which matches the rest of the UI.

Aha!  Looking at the attachment it dawned on me that the appearance is going to depend on the Windows "appearance" theme.  The attachment you posted appears to be for the "windows xp" theme, while the theme I am using is the "windows classic" theme.  (I don't know what the Mac appearance looks like.)

The "windows xp" theme does not have the problems I was referring to in #5.

Now, it seems unreasonable to demand that TB's looks be optimized for any possible windows "theme".  I would argue that it should at least be good for standard themes, among which I would count "windows xp" and "windows classic".  However, another approach, as I mentioned in #5 is to make these things user-customizable, which alas I'm sure no one is going to want to code.

Since the message header background is now presumably defined by the windows "theme", my complaint becomes that the field labels are in a font color with too little contrast.  This could be remedied by using a font color taken from the current theme, for example the message box font color.  This allows both some degree of user-settability, and also puts the onus of proper contrast on the OS theme designer, not on TB developers.

Comment 8

[peter]

I should have mentioned that because I don't know to what extent appearance can be customized on the Mac, it's not clear to me whether the Windows issue should or should not be considered the same bug.  If someone reaches a conclusion about this, let me know and I will file it as a separate bug.

Comment 9

[Blake Winton (:bwinton) (:☕️)]

Since it looks like we've got a decent stab at a patch for the Mac in bug 665303, I think this bug should be about the Windows issue.

Thanks,
Blake.

Comment 10

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

andreas, possible to revisit this?

Comment 11

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

if it's only XP and vista and not fixed by end of year, then probably not worth keeping open.