692062 - No indication of focus vs. unfocussed selection in message list and folder list of main 3pane

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 686959

(Thunderbird :: Theme, defect)

Description

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Using Earlybird 9.0a2 2011-10-01 on Win7

I've always wondered why the whole UI of the new greyish-bluish theme for windows felt so wrong (apart from having stolen the color from my buttons). I think I've found the reason now: in some of our most important UI components (folder and message list), TB doesn't visually respond to changes of focus, at all. The net result is that you can have as many as 3 different spots that all indicate they are currently focused. Happy guessing! What a shame, and how on earth can such things go unnoticed when somebody updates the theme? Emotions aside, here's how:

STR

1) main 3pane view (with view > folders > all; pop3 acct)
2) click on folder from folder list, e.g. inbox (1st focus)
3) click on a message from message list (moving focus)
4) Ctrl+Shift+K to quickfilter (moving focus again)

(alternatively, and worse for the experience, just tab your way through the whole UI and have a good guess where the focus is!)

Actual Results

* after 2): folder has correct indication of selection + focus (on win7):
solid blueish border for focus, and blueish background for focused selection - ok
* after 3): no visual indication that folder is now de-focused, adding another indication of selection + focus for message (iow, both folder and message look exactly the same, i.e. selected and focused, with solid blueish border and blueish background) - wrong
* after 4): no visual indication that folder and message are now de-focused (both are still fully focused), adding a 3rd focus indication: text cursor [and blue selection] in quickfilter textbox. That's 3 concurrent visual indications of focus: folder pane, message list, and quickfilter. Happy guessing, especially between folder list and message list... - wrong again

Expected Results

*after 3): folder item is visually de-focused (like in OS theme, e.g. Windows Explorer): light-*grey* solid border, light-*greyish* backround color (selected, but not focused)
*after 4) message list item is visually de-focused (and folder item, too): light-*grey* solid border, light-*greyish* backround color (selected, but not focused)

For visualization of the correct behaviour, do same STR in TB 3.1.15 (and yearn back for times where focus indication was still as clear as solid-blue background on white with dotted borders, turning into light-grey background without borders when de-focused, but still selected)...

OS file manager (windows explorer) shows how to do this correctly according to the theme for win7 (when fixing this, pls take colors, borders, shading from there).

This is for the visual indication of focus only, we'd probably need to check programmatic focus indication for screen readers etc. as well.

I'm not sure how this intersects with Bug 370663, which looks more like a big meta bug from which we need to fix the details bit by bit, so marking this bug dependent as one related detail.

This bug is a nuisance and totally confusing as current focus cannot be visually identified for main UI components -> major

Comment 1

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Can somebody confirm this behaviour on Windows (just in case there's something odd with my install)? What about other OS?

Comment 2

[Blake Winton (:bwinton) (:☕️)]

Mac is better, although it would be nice if the folderpane and messagelist had the same non-active colours for the selected item.

Comment 3

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

We're already planning on doing this in bug 686959 (see comments 20-24).