569850 - For tabs in the title bar, background tabs shouldn't be transparent under Win XP and Win 7/classic

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox :: Theme, defect)

Description

[Stephen Horlander [:shorlander]]

Attachment: Theme Specific Background Tabs Examples

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)

Comment 1

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

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.

Comment 2

[Peter Henkel [:Terepin]]

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.

Comment 3

[Stephen Horlander [:shorlander]]

(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.

Comment 4

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(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.

Comment 5

[Stephen Horlander [:shorlander]]

(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 :)

Comment 6

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(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.

Comment 7

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

>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?).

Comment 8

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

The overlay would do what Stephen wants it to do for Royale and Zune.

Comment 9

[Peter Henkel [:Terepin]]

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.

Comment 10

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

Do we have something like this filed for aero basic?

Comment 11

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

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.)

Comment 12

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Attachment: update generic textures and add a special one for luna

No special treatment for Royale/Zune yet, I might spin that off to a new bug.

Comment 13

[Stanley Chan]

Anything for the Embedded theme (http://www.askvg.com/download-new-official-embedded-theme-for-windows-xp-and-2003-no-file-patching-required/) or the Royale Noir theme (http://www.istartedsomething.com/20061029/royale-noir/) ?

Comment 14

[Stanley Chan]

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?)

Comment 15

[Stanley Chan]

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?

Comment 16

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Attachment: patch, updated to tip

Comment 17

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

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

Comment 18

[Bill Gianopoulos [:WG9s]]

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.

Comment 19

[Bill Gianopoulos [:WG9s]]

(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.

Comment 20

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

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.

Comment 21

[Bill Gianopoulos [:WG9s]]

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.

Comment 22

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

That default configuration would be Aero basic, I think, which should work just fine.

Comment 23

[Bill Gianopoulos [:WG9s]]

I will check tha,t so far I only tested Windows 7 classic which did not work at all.

Comment 24

[Biju]

Attachment: issue_tabs_on_top_inactive.png

Comment 25

[Bill Gianopoulos [:WG9s]]

OK changed the summary again to more accurately describe the issue since my previous change made it actually be incorrect.

Comment 27

[Peter van der Woude [:Peter6]]

inactive:hoover isn't too good either.

Comment 28

[patrickjdempsey]

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.

Comment 29

[patrickjdempsey]

Attachment: Mockup with CaptionText color in background tabs in XP.

Comment 31

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/b0fe7e0df71a

Comment 33

[IU]

Attachment: Screenshot: Hard to see!

This change makes the background tabs on WinXP systems, using classic theme, really dark and the text hard to see.

Accessibility out the window?

Comment 34

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to comment #33)

Please file a bug.

Comment 37

[Biju]

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

done Bug 626214

Comment 40

[Lucas Malor (mail: c6kfnkn2uc AT snkmail DOT c0m)]

(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.

Comment 41

[Lucas Malor (mail: c6kfnkn2uc AT snkmail DOT c0m)]

Excuse me, the previous comment was in reply of Bug 625324 comment #3

Comment 43

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

Verified fixed with Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:2.0b10pre) Gecko/20110116 Firefox/4.0b10pre

Comment 49

[Soumya Deb [:Debloper]]

(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?

-----------------------------------------------------
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.
-----------------------------------------------------

Wrapping up the entire world with leather is an overkill; wrapping the feet is enough to save it from dust - we call 'em shoes.