597769 - Consolidate urlbar overlink transitions

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect)

Description

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Attachment: patch

Comment 1

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

Comment on attachment 476583 [details] [diff] [review]
patch

I'd very much like to make this simplification, and my original proof-on-concept patches worked like this, but unfortunately I found that it causes the origin URL to noticeably and unacceptably flicker.  Don't you notice it too?  Transitioning the text color rather than the opacity was the best-looking approach I could find.  (See bug 587908 comment 78.)

Comment 2

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Comment on attachment 476583 [details] [diff] [review]
> patch
> 
> I'd very much like to make this simplification, and my original
> proof-on-concept patches worked like this, but unfortunately I found that it
> causes the origin URL to noticeably and unacceptably flicker.  Don't you notice
> it too?  Transitioning the text color rather than the opacity was the
> best-looking approach I could find.  (See bug 587908 comment 78.)

I didn't notice it with this patch, no. It may be platform-specific, but I'm not sure I see why using transparency in the color instead of on the node would make a difference.

Btw, my motivation here was bug 451833. color:transparent doesn't affect the ranges created by the value formatter.

Comment 3

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

Comment on attachment 476583 [details] [diff] [review]
patch

(In reply to comment #2)
> I didn't notice it with this patch, no. It may be platform-specific, but I'm
> not sure I see why using transparency in the color instead of on the node would
> make a difference.

Maybe.  For me, on OS X, it definitely looks bad.  I can only guess why: node opacity isn't smart about subpixel rendering of whatever text the node might contain, while text color is.

I hope we can find a way to simplify this so that it looks good everywhere and doesn't block your bug, but this patch causes noticeable flicker.  Perhaps we should ask a graphics or layout person to either help us with the opacity flicker or support color:transparent for value formatter ranges.

Comment 4

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Does applying a persona make a difference for you?

Comment 5

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

No, the flicker still occurs.

Comment 6

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Then it wouldn't be subpixel vs. grayscale rendering, I think, since opacity on the textbox should already disable subpixel rendering: http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/themes/pinstripe/browser/browser.css#52
So maybe there's something wrong with the timing functions. I can see how there would be artifacts if there's too much overlap between the fade-out and the fade-in.

Comment 7

[Drew Willcoxon :adw]

OK.  That was my thought too.  I played around with lots of combinations of timing functions, and I'm still not sure why linear functions on both fade in and out didn't look good, but maybe you can find a solution.

Comment 8

[Markus Stange [:mstange]]

(In reply to comment #6)
> Then it wouldn't be subpixel vs. grayscale rendering, I think, since opacity on
> the textbox should already disable subpixel rendering

Opacity doesn't disable subpixel rendering in this case. I'm not completely sure why, but maybe we detect that the text is still on top of opaque background inside its opacity surface, so we still enable subpixel rendering because we can.