687462 - Theme on Honeycomb makes Firefox visually less pleasing than it needs to be to blend in with other apps

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Henri Sivonen (:hsivonen)]

Steps to reproduce:
 1) Run Nightly on Honeycomb
 2) Compare with apps from Google

Actual results:
Firefox on Honeycomb uses a flat gray navigation bar with the location field border and the back/forward arrows consisting of plain lines. This makes the appearance of Firefox similar to the appearance of the stock browser. However, the result is also visually less pleasing than the appearance of Firefox on Mac, Windows 7 or even Ubuntu, because the stock browser is the opposite of shiny (maybe to avoid competing with Apple's designers where Google's designers believe they can't win?).

Expected results:
Expected Firefox not to follow the stock browser's visual design concept further than other Google apps do. The Settings app and the Calendar app have a subtle gradient in their top-of-the-screen bar. Their menu icon in the top right corner also uses subtle shading unlike Firefox's. Also, they have a colored app icon in the top bar, which could be taken as a license to make the back and forward arrows in Firefox slightly richer visually.

Comment 1

[Lucas Rocha (:lucasr)]

Madhava, Ian, Brian, any input here?

Comment 2

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

I would suggest that Henri keep watching the nightlies, as we're continuing to add polish and fades on a daily basis. 

However, also bear in mind that part of our design philosophy is to reference styling that is native to the OS wherever possible, so Firefox on tablets will never look exactly like its desktop counterparts.

Comment 3

[Martijn Wargers (dead)]

Now, it's difficult for me to see the difference between the navigation bar and the website, because they are both white.

Comment 4

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

(In reply to Martijn Wargers [:mw22] (QA - IRC nick: mw22) from comment #3)
> Now, it's difficult for me to see the difference between the navigation bar
> and the website, because they are both white.

Not any more. The toolbar is a light gray.

Comment 5

[Martijn Wargers (dead)]

Yes, sorry, I should have mentioned it is light gray. But I hardly see the difference with the white background on a website. This is on the Asus EE Transformer.

Comment 6

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

Invalid? Henri, try out a recent Nightly?

Comment 7

[Henri Sivonen (:hsivonen)]

(In reply to Aaron Train [:aaronmt] from comment #6)
> Invalid? Henri, try out a recent Nightly?

If trying out a more recent build makes a bug go away, that's FIXED rather than INVALID, right?

Yes, the latest nightly looks better (round back button, shading in the menu button at top right).

The navigation bar's background is still flat gray instead of the kind of subtle gradient that Calendar, Settings, Alarm, Video, Contacts, (non-Gmail) Email, Music Hub (maybe Samsung-only), Music Player, My Files, Social Hub (maybe Samsung-only) and World Clock have.

I'd like to keep this bug open for the gradient, because it's a part of comment #0 that hasn't been fixed yet.

Comment 8

[Mark Finkle (:mfinkle) (use needinfo?)]

> I'd like to keep this bug open for the gradient, because it's a part of
> comment #0 that hasn't been fixed yet.

I don't think we plan on any gradient in the actionbar. That could very well be a Samsung theme feature. On my Acer A500 honeycomb, which is stock Android, I see no gradients in the actionbar.

Since we don't plan to add any gradient to the actionbar, I am closing this bug FIXED.

Comment 9

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

Henri, just chiming in to say yes, the gradient is part of a Samsung-added theme, and not a stock Android UI style. 

So in other words, we don't plan to add a gradient to the firefox header