665871 - Use monochrome graphics for the toolbar graphics

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: Theme, defect)

Description

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Attachment: mockup

As blogged here: http://www.andreasn.se/blog/?p=172

As seen in the attachment it would be nice to use monochrome icons for the icons.

Comment 1

[rsx11m]

While it may look "cool", I have some doubts based on experiences with the monochrome Windows-aero icons as stated in bug 668336 comment #4.

Comment 2

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Attachment: first cut at patch

Only one size of the icons so far, still some doubts about how to do the disabled states.

Comment 3

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

Attachment: Patch in action

This is how it looks with bug 666227 (awaiting check-in) together.

In normal state the icons are almost not visible. Maybe you can make two svg files for every icon. One with fill="MenuText" for normal state and one with fill="ButtonText" for hover state. Then the icons have the same color as the button-text.

color: #000; for disabled state does not look so good. See the tag button and the delete button on the right which is also disabled.

Comment 4

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Two states could work, but that also means we're ending up with an awful lot of files (something I've been warned about not to do before as it's increases startup times). Every approach I've tried to color these on the fly have gone nowhere however.
I was pointed to bug 619500 the other day that was related to being able to do -moz-image-region for svg's, something that is currently impossible.

Comment 5

[rsx11m]

Comment on attachment 550035 [details]
Patch in action

Just for context, you've created this screendump using a white-on-black desktop theme? Do the icons look any better on any other desktop theme, with or without your proposed change of the picked color? As for the disabled buttons, using any hard-coded colors is obviously bad as it won't adjust to the desktop colors a user may choose, so the fixed #000 sure is bad.

(comment #4)
> Two states could work, but that also means we're ending up with an awful lot of
> files (something I've been warned about not to do before as it's increases
> startup times).

I thought that was the main reason for introducing the single omni.jar package. Anyway, it won't help much if the application starts up a few microseconds earlier if the theme doesn't work...

Comment 6

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

Attachment: Patch under Clearlooks

(In reply to comment #5)
> Just for context, you've created this screendump using a white-on-black
> desktop theme? Do the icons look any better on any other desktop theme, with
> or without your proposed change of the picked color?

The screenshot was made with the default Ubuntu theme and with bug 666227 applied. With themes with the same background- and text color for menu and window, like Clearlooks, this works already well. See the screenshot.

But this changes are IMO made basically for the integration of TB in Ubuntu. And then it should work with the default theme.

Comment 7

[rsx11m]

Thanks for the additional screenshot, that's better though the black icons look rather sad to me and make it difficult to realize that they are actually buttons to click on. Anyway, as a minimum, I'd recommend to also test against the KDE4 default theme to see if there is any negative impact for users preferring that desktop environment on Linux (it's hard to predict what users actually run...).

Comment 8

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Attachment: part 1 - address book

This is patch 1 of 3.
New patch based on what's currently in Ubuntu.
Address book part.

Comment 9

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Attachment: part 1 - address book

part 1 - address book (v2, fixes a small typo in jar.nm)

This is patch 1 of 3.
New patch based on what's currently in Ubuntu.
Address book part.

Comment 10

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Attachment: part 2 - compose window

This is patch 2 of 3.
New patch based on what's currently in Ubuntu.
Compose window part.

Comment 11

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Attachment: part 2 - compose window

part 2 - compose window (v2. bunch of path errors)

This is patch 2 of 3.
New patch based on what's currently in Ubuntu.
Compose window part.

Comment 12

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Attachment: part 3 - main window

part 2 - main window

This is patch 3 of 3.
New patch based on what's currently in Ubuntu.
Main window part.

Comment 13

[Chris Coulson]

Attachment: 563822: part 3 - main window (for tabs-on-top)

Note that part 3 doesn't work properly with tabs-on-top anymore, as the toolbar isn't styled like the menubar. I've updated it to work properly, although the coloured icon in the tab feels a bit weird now

Comment 14

[Chris Coulson]

Attachment: Monochrome toolbar icons in the main window with tabs on top

Comment 15

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

Attachment: new approach, new patch

New approach, new patch. This uses a combined svg so that we won't end up with so many individual files. Something weird is going on with the reply all and forward buttons, but I'm working on that. Address book and compose coming up.

Comment 16

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

Comment on attachment 640707 [details] [diff] [review]
new approach, new patch

First this patch doesn't apply on trunk. With the human diff tool ;) I could make it work.

This looks good so far. Instead of background-position: ...px top, center bottom; you could also use background-position: 384px; This is shorter and also works (MDN says: If only one value is specified, the second value is assumed to be center).

With Ubuntu Ambiance theme with the dark background the icons on tabbar-toolbar are almost invisible. I think a second SVG with fill=-moz-menubartext is needed to look good.

On tabbar-toolbar the disabled buttons have no reduced opacity.

Comment 17

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

Andreas did you forget about this one ?

Comment 18

[Andreas Nilsson (:andreasn)]

No, just got caught up in other things. New patch coming!

Comment 19

[M Lopez-Ibanez]

Why not make this a theme, so the user go back to Thunderbird's default theme? 
Make it the default in ubuntu if you wish, but let KDE or individual users use the actual default theme if desired.

Currently, I need to apply the work-around in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunderbird/+bug/1004841 for every thunderbird update in Kubuntu.

Comment 20

[Jackson Sul]

So it seems that Ubuntu was applying these patches to get (mostly) monochrome icons in Thunderbird for a while. They have now ceased and reverted back to the old theme, since there are so many non-monochrome icons now. (See https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunderbird/+bug/1347124)

Will these ever be updated and added to?

Comment 21

[M Lopez-Ibanez]

(In reply to Aibara Iduas from comment #20)
> Will these ever be updated and added to?

Hopefully not as a patch. Ubuntu (or you!) could create a theme and make it the default in Ubuntu (and/or make it available in addons.mozilla.org).

This does not seem to be a mozilla bug at all, but I cannot close it.

Comment 22

[Jackson Sul]

(In reply to M Lopez-Ibanez from comment #21)
> Hopefully not as a patch. Ubuntu (or you!) could create a theme and make it
> the default in Ubuntu (and/or make it available in addons.mozilla.org).
> 
> This does not seem to be a mozilla bug at all, but I cannot close it.

Perhaps I wrongfully assumed that Thunderbird, like Firefox, was supposed to have a consistent icon theme across platforms. I thought Thunderbird on OSX and Windows used monochrome themes (maybe I'm wrong about that too?), and that therefore the Linux version should follow suit.

Comment 23

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

This is fixed by bug 1150627.