657262 - Consider using ThreeDShadow instead of ThreeDDarkShadow for the border for the location bar and search box in Windows Classic

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox :: Theme, defect)

Description

[Kai Liu]

Attachment: Before and after

In bug 560755, the border for the location bar and search box was changed to ThreeDDarkShadow because the previous setting, a partially transparent black border, did not show up on a black background.

The downside of using ThreeDDarkShadow is that in most classic color schemes, it produces a completely black border, which is very jarring and inconsistent with the rest of the style of that upper region of the browser: no other border is nearly that dark, and it really stands out like a sore thumbs (especially when it is juxtaposed with the borders of the adjacent toolbar buttons).

As a compromise, I think we should use ThreeDShadow instead.  Its color more closely matches that of the original partially transparent black, and it is still visible in a black high-contrast scheme.  It doesn't stand out as much in HC, but none of the other borders do either (e.g., look at the border of tabs in black high-contrast), and most importantly, it still remains visible.

Attached is a screenshot showing the before-and-after of this proposed change:

* Normal classic: Note how incongruous the black border looks when juxtaposed with the nearby toolbar button borders and tab borders.

* High-contrast classic: The border is still visible, and although it does not stand out as much as before, none of the other borders in that region of the interface--tabs, buttons, etc.--do either.

* Themed: Just a sanity check to show that this is indeed a classic-only change.

Comment 1

[Kai Liu]

Attachment: example showing that a gray-on-black text box is not unprecedented

This is just to show that there are already other prominent bits of text-input UI that use a gray border in a black high-contrast scheme...

Comment 2

[Kai Liu]

Attachment: trivial patch

Comment 3

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to comment #0)
> It doesn't stand out as much
> in HC, but none of the other borders do either (e.g., look at the border of
> tabs in black high-contrast)

(In reply to comment #1)
> Created attachment 532546 [details]
> example showing that a gray-on-black text box is not unprecedented
> 
> This is just to show that there are already other prominent bits of
> text-input UI that use a gray border in a black high-contrast scheme...

The theme doesn't really adjust to the OS theme at all there. Obviously not great examples -- we want to do better than that if we can.

Comment 4

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/f388d1d334ab

Comment 5

[Simona Badau, Desktop QA]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:6.0a1) Gecko/20110519 Firefox/6.0a1

Verified the change with the help of before/after image.