645989 - Gradient wrong when tabs are on top and tab bar hidden

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 618770

(Firefox :: Theme, defect)

Description

[Loic Nageleisen]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0

I like the "container" consistency of Fx4 tabs on top. I also like using standalone windows and not overusing tabs, because Exposé just rocks my world. In that context, showing the tab bar is a waste of space, so I tell the tab bar to hide itself when single-tab. Yet when the tab bar is hidden i.e a single tab is present, there is a clear jump in color between the titlebar and the toolbar. It seems that the primary intent is to have a uniform gradient there, but that case was overlooked when designing the theme and the toolbar is simply drawn there as if there were tabs drawn above, which relies on the tab bar being drawn to provide a separation line.

Three possible out-of-the-blue solutions (I really don't know how themeing works in Fx, so feel free to ignore):
- have the Mac OS X theme updated so that the gradient matches both the tab bar and the toolbar. Essentially a visual hack, probably painful to come up with so that all gradients match and don't look out of place while maintaining contrast between tabs and the titlebar.
- have the theme draw a variation of the toolbar whose gradient matches the titlebar when the tab bar is hidden. Certainly the best result.
- have the theme draw a separator "line" between the titlebar and the toolbar (like there is when the tab bar is not hidden between the toolbar and the tab bar). Probably will make the thing look crowded or generally bad.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Set tabs on top ON
2. Set always show the tab bar OFF
3. Have a window with a single tab open, so that the tab bar is hidden
Actual Results:  
Shocking jump in color between the titlebar and the toolbar.

Expected Results:  
Smooth gradient between the title bar and the toolbar (coherent with other Mac OS X applications)
OR
Separator line (less appealing and pixel consuming)
OR
Whatever else visually appealing.

Both cases below produce visually appealing results:
- have tabs on top and tab bar always shown
OR
- disable tabs on top and have tab bar not always shown

This might be fixed when Fx4 eventually brings tabs on top in the titlebar on Mac OS X, but it might be a long way before then.

Comment 1

[Markus Stange [:mstange]]

Nice bug report!