69053 - Do not default to using system colors

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: Preferences, defect, P2)

Description

[dhagberg]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux 2.2.17-21mdksmp i686; en-US; 0.8)
Gecko/20010215
BuildID:    2001021503

On several sites (my.yahoo.com, results of ebay searches, auctions.yahoo.com)
text within colored sections are unreadable.  This is caused by new default
setting of Preferences->Appearance->Colors Use System Colors.  Using Darkness
GTK theme which is causing a pale color to be used inside of light colored
"headers". 
The rendering of the colors is correct, but maybe this attribute should not
default to on.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
Set gtk theme to darkness.  Go to my.yahoo.com or results page of ebay auction.

Actual Results:  colors are washed out.

Expected Results:  Not default to the setting of using system colors.  This
attribute did not exist in Milestone 7 and may cause confusion.

Comment 1

[R.K.Aa.]

Related: RFE Bug 68867 "Using a Mozilla-specific .gtkrc file should be possible"

Comment 2

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Changing summary to what this bug is really about.  Setting status to new, since
I also think this is not a very good default, at least on Linux (where the
concept of system colors is not really familiar to most users).

Comment 3

[Warner Young]

On Win98, build 2001021508, the Use System Colors checkbox seems to have the
reverse effect.  Unchecking it seems to force system colors, while checking it
ignores system colors.

Comment 4

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-5, no longer working on Mozilla)]

I think we should do this, because many web pages (unfortunately) depend on
having color defaults of black text on a light background, and not all users
will have system colors that match these defaults.  I think the default prefs
should work because many users won't know how to fix them (although the users
with dark system colors are more likely to be the ones who would, but not
necessarily).

mpt and attinasi, what do you think?

Assigning to myself.

Comment 5

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-5, no longer working on Mozilla)]

*** Bug 79979 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 6

[Marc Attinasi]

I agree that the default should setting should be OFF for 'use system colors'.
Also, I would suggest that the default colors be black text on white background,
as boring as that sounds.

Comment 7

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-5, no longer working on Mozilla)]

Attachment: patch (not yet tested)

Comment 8

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-5, no longer working on Mozilla)]

I posted to n.p.m.ui and n.p.m.style to see if others agreed with this change:
<URI: news://news.mozilla.org:119/[e-mail] >.

Comment 9

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-5, no longer working on Mozilla)]

I tested the patch on a fresh profile -- it does what I expected.

Comment 10

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

If this is only a problem with GTK, why aren't you turning the default off only
on Unix?

From a Mac OS point of view, at least, having to set default page colors twice
-- once in Mozilla's prefs, and once in the Internet control panel for every
other Web browser or e-mail program -- would be (and is) quite annoying.

As for changing the default background color, that is bug 63032. I think the
usability-maximizing color (i.e. the one at which people can read text the
fastest) is probably #EEEEEE or thereabouts. I'd be *extremely* surprised if it
was white.

Comment 11

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-5, no longer working on Mozilla)]

> If this is only a problem with GTK, why aren't you turning the default off 
> only on Unix?

It's not only a problem with GTK, it's also a problem with Windows and probably
with Mac as well.  Windows can have themes that specify dark on light, and IIRC
there exist such themes for laptop displays.  Does the Mac get the default :link
and :visited colors from the user preferences and are those preferences really
specifically for Web pages?

> From a Mac OS point of view, at least, having to set default page colors twice
> -- once in Mozilla's prefs, and once in the Internet control panel for every
> other Web browser or e-mail program -- would be (and is) quite annoying.

Does Mozilla get the :link and :visited colors from the Internet control panel?
 If it does (and if the preferences are really for web pages), I think it would
be reasonable to change the default back to using system colors for Mac only.

> As for changing the default background color, that is bug 63032. I think the
> usability-maximizing color (i.e. the one at which people can read text the
> fastest) is probably #EEEEEE or thereabouts. I'd be *extremely* surprised if 
> it was white.

If it's not white, it's probably due to unusual contrast/brightness settings on
the monitor or unusual ambient lighting, no?  I would think the cases where it
would be white are certainly the mode and I would expect also the median.

Comment 12

[Marc Attinasi]

[s]r=[e-mail] for the patch (ID=38764) - nice and simple :)

Comment 13

[Ben Goodger (use ben at mozilla dot org for email)]

sr=[e-mail], if there is a real need to get this to use the mac system
colours, we should just set this pref the other way in the mac specific
preferences file. 

Comment 14

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-5, no longer working on Mozilla)]

I just had a quick chat with some of the local Mac users who I could find
(sdagley and pinkerton) and they seemed to think doing this change would be
reasonable for Mac as well.

In my opinion, if we're going to use the system colors for web pages by default,
we should also be using system colors for :link and :visited.  If Mac has the
capability to specify the link colors, then we should implement using link
colors before switching back to "Use System Colors" by default for Mac.  This
patch is also safer than the current approach -- it will give a default that
works at least reasonably well on all configurations, unlike the current
approach which gives a default that works very badly on a minority of
configurations.

Comment 15

[Robert O'Callahan (:roc) (email my personal email if necessary)]

a=roc on behalf of drivers

Comment 16

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-5, no longer working on Mozilla)]

See bug 67771 for Mac issues.

Comment 17

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-5, no longer working on Mozilla)]

Fix checked in 2001-06-19 15:43 PDT.

Comment 18

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

vrfy fixed [both new and existing profiles] on the three main platforms [system
colors checkbox no longer selected], using 2001.06.21.xx comm bits.