Closed Bug 569850 Opened 13 years ago Closed 12 years ago

For tabs in the title bar, background tabs shouldn't be transparent under Win XP and Win 7/classic

Categories

(Firefox :: Theme, defect)

x86
Windows XP
defect
Not set
major

Tracking

()

VERIFIED FIXED
Firefox 4.0b10
Tracking Status
blocking2.0 --- final+

People

(Reporter: shorlander, Assigned: dao)

References

()

Details

(Whiteboard: [target-betaN][hardblocker])

Attachments

(5 files, 1 obsolete file)

To mesh with the system theme for Windows XP we need to switch the background tabs to match the system theme's colors.

This would require four styles of background tabs:

- Luna Blue/Olive (Brown)
- Silver (Silver/Purple)
- Royale (Grey/Blue)
- Zune (Grey)
I don't understand this bug. The blue/olive/whatever shade can be picked up by overlaying the background with some semi-transparent gray texture.
I think it means that tabbar in Tabs On Top needs to be pixel-perfect to match colour in titlebar. XP equivalent of extending Aero Glass beneath titlebar into chrome, but in this case extending titlebar into tabbar.
(In reply to comment #1)
> I don't understand this bug. The blue/olive/whatever shade can be picked up by
> overlaying the background with some semi-transparent gray texture.

That won't work in all cases because the background color that shows through isn't always the right color. A generic translucent gray also isn't the right color because it makes things look flat and washed out.
(In reply to comment #3)
> (In reply to comment #1)
> > I don't understand this bug. The blue/olive/whatever shade can be picked up by
> > overlaying the background with some semi-transparent gray texture.
> 
> That won't work in all cases because the background color that shows through
> isn't always the right color.

The only significant deviation seems to be Silver, but I think that's commonly considered the ugliest standard XP theme, so putting it in the generic Luna bucket and being done with it seems reasonable.

> A generic translucent gray also isn't the right
> color because it makes things look flat and washed out.

That's not generally true. It depends on the the back and white share and opacity of each gradient stop.
(In reply to comment #4)
> The only significant deviation seems to be Silver, but I think that's commonly
> considered the ugliest standard XP theme, so putting it in the generic Luna
> bucket and being done with it seems reasonable.

> That's not generally true. It depends on the the back and white share and
> opacity of each gradient stop.

I agree it could probably get close but I don't think overlaying an opacity of gray will ever be as rich as using an actual color shade. Even when you get it just right it tends to look like it has a film covering it.

I also don't see how to use that technique when the tabs are overlaying a color that isn't the toolbar color (blue, green, silver, etc.)?

If there is a way to make it look like attachment 449023 [details] without doing anything theme specific that would indeed be preferable though :)
(In reply to comment #5)
> (In reply to comment #4)
> > The only significant deviation seems to be Silver, but I think that's commonly
> > considered the ugliest standard XP theme, so putting it in the generic Luna
> > bucket and being done with it seems reasonable.
> 
> > That's not generally true. It depends on the the back and white share and
> > opacity of each gradient stop.
> 
> I agree it could probably get close but I don't think overlaying an opacity of
> gray will ever be as rich as using an actual color shade. Even when you get it
> just right it tends to look like it has a film covering it.
> 
> I also don't see how to use that technique when the tabs are overlaying a color
> that isn't the toolbar color (blue, green, silver, etc.)?

The direction I'm thinking is to hardcode the color for Luna and use an overlay otherwise.
>The direction I'm thinking is to hardcode the color for Luna and use an overlay
>otherwise.

It's too bad we don't have solid data on which themes are commonly in use, but I think it is worth us hard coding all of the cases that Stephen has mocked up.  Royale was deployed to all Windows media center and tablet editions, so should have significant coverage.  Zune had to be downloaded, but strangely I seem to run into it enough walking around that I'm worried about excluding it (like I'll see Zune at the dentist, or in an airport on someone's laptop, it might potentially be even more popular than Olive?).
The overlay would do what Stephen wants it to do for Royale and Zune.
If I may ask, why the color of Luna isn't the same for both tabs position? Tabs On Top have lighter color than Tabs At Bottom.
Assignee: nobody → dao
Blocks: 560507
No longer blocks: 544820
Severity: normal → enhancement
No longer depends on: 543910
Depends on: 581770
Blocks: 572160
Do we have something like this filed for aero basic?
I'm going to keep aero basic in sync, but it's not my primary concern here. Please file a new bugs if you're missing something specific. (One bug I know about is the toolbar background not matching the frame color, but I don't have the number handy.)
No special treatment for Royale/Zune yet, I might spin that off to a new bug.
Attachment #490495 - Flags: review?(mano)
For testing/ designing purposes (since the Embedded theme and Royale Noir are not as "popular" as the distributed ones; although a fair amount of users- like me- do in fact use them)--

Here is a neat executable/ installer package that installs all the Signed Microsoft Themes onto your Windows XP machine: http://www.ryanvm.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3434&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

(executable download at http://www.mediafire.com/?dtyzkkjiqdw)

NOTE: These are signed themes (unlike unsigned custom themes made by the tweaking community) and do not require UXTheme Patching. Though, it would be interesting if there are matching theme backgrounds for them like how TaskSwitchXP does it (http://www.ntwind.com/software/taskswitchxp.html): "It dynamically adapts to the current Windows XP theme..."

The most likely method of TaskSwitchXP's dynamic adapting would be looking into the current .MSSTYLES theme file that the system is using. Is Firefox capable of dynamically changing it's thematic looks according to that file? (An example of a popular .MSSTYLES file that is used would be SlanXP: http://lassekongo83.deviantart.com/art/SlanXP-2-0-51492944 -- check out the color settings in that file and see what Firefox's UI can do with it?)
Hmm... What I suggested seems to be beyond the scope of the current bug (it might need to be a new feature in and of itself)-- shall I file a new bug/ feature request for accommodating *dynamically changing* theme backgrounds?
Whiteboard: [target-betaN]
Attachment #490495 - Attachment is obsolete: true
Attachment #502073 - Flags: review?(gavin.sharp)
Attachment #490495 - Flags: review?(mano)
This is needed to make background tabs look reasonable when tabs are in the title bar on XP (which the user can opt in to by hiding the menu bar) and on Win7 classic. -> requesting blocking
blocking2.0: --- → ?
At the risk of making waves when perhaps I should not, In my not so humble opinion, having tabs-in-titlebar in beta9 without having this patch included as well is just asking for a lot of negative feedback.
Keywords: regression
(In reply to comment #18)
> At the risk of making waves when perhaps I should not, In my not so humble
> opinion, having tabs-in-titlebar in beta9 without having this patch included as
> well is just asking for a lot of negative feedback.

I also marked this  s a regression caused by the check-in for bug 572160.
Not a regression as filed. If you feel strongly about it, feel free to morph this enhancement request to a proper bug and resummarize it accordingly.
Keywords: regression
Well the issue here is that if you have a non aero capable graphics card and you are running either windows vista or windows 7, now suddenly under the default Operating configuration and Default Firefox configuration, you end up with what is a really non usable user interface.  I think that qualifies as a regression.
Keywords: regression
Summary: Theme Specific Background Tabs for Windows XP → Firefox is unusable on a non aero capable configuration after landing of the tab-in-titlebar feature
Summary: Firefox is unusable on a non aero capable configuration after landing of the tab-in-titlebar feature → Firefox is unusable on a non aero capable configuration after landing of the tabs-in-titlebar feature
Severity: enhancement → major
That default configuration would be Aero basic, I think, which should work just fine.
I will check tha,t so far I only tested Windows 7 classic which did not work at all.
Blocks: 624235
OK changed the summary again to more accurately describe the issue since my previous change made it actually be incorrect.
Summary: Firefox is unusable on a non aero capable configuration after landing of the tabs-in-titlebar feature → Inactive tabs practically invisible under Windows/XP Luna theme or Windows 7 classic them if tabs-in-titlebar
Summary: Inactive tabs practically invisible under Windows/XP Luna theme or Windows 7 classic them if tabs-in-titlebar → Inactive tabs practically invisible under Windows/XP Luna theme or Windows 7 classic theme if tabs-in-titlebar
inactive:hoover isn't too good either.
If you use the CaptionText color for background tab text it will be readable over the title-bar background, no matter what crazy settings are used in "classic" theme mode.
Keywords: regression
Summary: Inactive tabs practically invisible under Windows/XP Luna theme or Windows 7 classic theme if tabs-in-titlebar → For tabs in the title bar, background tabs shouldn't be transparent under Win XP and Win 7/classic
blocking2.0: ? → final+
Whiteboard: [target-betaN] → [target-betaN][hardblocker]
Attachment #502073 - Flags: review?(gavin.sharp) → review+
http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/b0fe7e0df71a
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 12 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
Target Milestone: --- → Firefox 4.0b10
No longer blocks: 624235
This change makes the background tabs on WinXP systems, using classic theme, really dark and the text hard to see.

Accessibility out the window?
(In reply to comment #33)

Please file a bug.
(In reply to comment #34)
> (In reply to comment #33)
> 
> Please file a bug.

done Bug 626214
(In reply to comment #3)
Well, IMO since Fx4 uses the OS colour as background, it should adjust accordingly the colour - or simply the brightness - of the other objects.

Or simply it should NOT use the OS title colour.
Excuse me, the previous comment was in reply of Bug 625324 comment #3
Verified fixed with Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:2.0b10pre) Gecko/20110116 Firefox/4.0b10pre
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED
Depends on: 626214
(In reply to comment #43)
> Verified fixed with Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:2.0b10pre) Gecko/20110116
> Firefox/4.0b10pre

In addition of being utterly bad-looking, the new color scheme hardly even serves the purpose properly, as we also have https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=626214

Question is, shall we be re-iterating one feature over and over which eventually leads to another bug & fixup?

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SOLUTION to this bug was to add white shadows with the black text-label which would make the text visible with no matter what the background may be, even when it is transparent.

It'd be crazily easy & lightweight solution, just one line CSS voodoo.
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Wrapping up the entire world with leather is an overkill; wrapping the feet is enough to save it from dust - we call 'em shoes.
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