748682 - Personas look like they're behind a foggy glass

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Eric Moore]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; rv:12.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/12.0
Build ID: 20120417165043

Steps to reproduce:

I am using Thunderbird 12.0 under Vista with the Personas 1.6.2 extension and the default theme. All other extensions are disabled. Vista is using the Windows Aero theme.

If you select a persona it is displayed as if you're looking at it through fog. With some personas such as green marble you won't notice this because the persona wasn't a clear image in the first place. With others such as gazing frog you do, it is very noticeable.  

If I have two or more tabs the tab that has the focus looks like foggy glass while the other tab looks fine and there is a horizontal band to the right aligned with the tabs that is displayed correctly (everything below that is like I'm looking through a foggy glass at it). The foggy glass effect also makes it harder to see the text in the menu toolbar and buttons.

The background image in the address book or a compose message window is fine. I see this problem in the main window or if I open a message in a window. I do not have this problem with 3.1.20, though I notice it uses the persona only in the main window. The same problem also occurs with 11.0.1 and 14.0a1 (daily). 

The problem is in chrome://messenger/skin/primaryToolbar.css , it does not remove the background image gradient when a persona is present. That is actually C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\omni.ja\chrome\classic\skin\classic\aero\messenger\primarytoolbar.css

I can work around this problem by adding the following to the optional userChrome.css file:

.mail-toolbox:-moz-lwtheme,
.contentTabToolbox:-moz-lwtheme {
  background-color: transparent!important;
  background-image: none !important;
}

#mail-toolbar-menubar2:-moz-lwtheme {
  background-color: transparent!important;
  background-image: none !important;
}
 
#searchInput:-moz-lwtheme:not([focused="true"]),
.remote-gloda-search:-moz-lwtheme:not([focused="true"]) {
  opacity: .85;
}





Expected results:

It should have displayed a background image like what I see if I use the same persona with Firefox 12.0.

Comment 1

[Roland Tanglao needinfo please :rolandtanglao, :mohnkuchen, :adobo, :sinigang, :roland]

hi eric:
do you mean personas plus 1.6.2
i.e.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/personas-plus/versions/

?

If so this isn't compatible with Thunderbird 12 unless I am missing something.

I know that you can hack any extension to force compatibility, is that what you did?

Comment 2

[Eric Moore]

Yes. For some reason it identifies itself in "tools -> add-ons" and "help -> troubleshooting information" as just Personas 1.6.2. If you click on "More" by the add-on in "tools -> add-ons" the web page in the tab also calls it Personas 1.6.2 and claims it was updated Sunday April 15, 2012. I have no idea why that tab and what you see if you look at the version information at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/personas-plus/ disagree.

I used to use the "add-on compatibility reporter" add-on to bypass version checking to make it (and some other add-ons I like to use) work. When Thunderbird 10 was released I switched to the Disable Add-on Compatibility Checks add-on to do that since "compatible by default" required the add-on to support at least version 5. The config editor shows that both extensions.checkCompatibility.12.0 and extensions.checkCompatibility.nightly are false.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/checkcompatibility/?src=ss

I haven't tried it for a couple of versions of Thunderbird, but the last time I checked I could display a persona without the Personas Plus add-on, I just couldn't switch personas if I do that.

Comment 3

[Roland Tanglao needinfo please :rolandtanglao, :mohnkuchen, :adobo, :sinigang, :roland]

Hi Eric

So you hacked an incompatible add-on from Mozilla Labs to make it compatible and you are surprised when it doesn't work, did I get that right :-)  ?

I guess then the next step is to find the author of the add-on from Mozilla Labs and CC: them on this bug.

Comment 4

[Eric Moore]

No, I did not hack it. It is quite common to use a extensions.checkCompatibility.N.N setting to let you use an older add-on. The Disable Add-on Compatibility Checks add-on is just a convenient way to do that. 

I don't view this as different than relying upon "compatible by default" since it worked for version 5.0 and several versions after that. I'm under the (perhaps mistaken) impression that the fault is in Thunderbird, not the Personas Plus add-on, due to edits made to primarytoolbar.css. 

As a sanity check I exited Thunderbird, removed my edits to userChrome.css and started Thunderbird 12.0 in safe mode. It displays the persona, but the bug (fog etc.) is back. My impression is that Gecko 
version 1.9.2 (used in Firefox 3.6 and Thunderbird 3.1) added built-in support for personas and the add-on is only needed to let you manage/change personas.

Comment 5

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

Eric, are you using Firefox with Tabs on bottom? Then FX has no toolbar gradient with Personas. With Tabs on top, FX has also the same gradient like TB.

Comment 6

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Roland, with Thunderbird you can have personas enabled even without the Personas Plus add-on. Its a bit of a difficult route, but it is perfectly possible.

Comment 7

[Blake Winton (:bwinton) (:☕️)]

So, the reasoning behind the extra shading is to show the difference between the area in the tab, and the area outside of tabs, and based on http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2301433/Screenshots/GlassTab.png it really seems to me like Firefox 12 does the same thing.

Furthermore, Personas Plus hasn't worked since Thunderbird 4, and as far as I've been told, won't be updated in the future, since the persona switching code is in the core product now.

I did take a look at the userChrome.css change you suggested, and while I'm sure you prefer the way it looks, it did not seem to me to be the right thing to display for most of our users.

To sum up, thank you for your bug report, but this change was intentional, and I don't feel we should revert it at this time.  If there are other things that you feel don't work as well as they should, I encourage you to file more bug reports in the future.

Thanks again,
Blake.

Comment 8

[Eric Moore]

"Eric, are you using Firefox with Tabs on bottom? Then FX has no toolbar gradient with Personas. With Tabs on top, FX has also the same gradient like TB."

I was. I changed it to tabs on top. However, my point is that Thunderbird's appearance degraded. The "toolbar area" on Firefox and Thunderbird are still different enough that using the same gradient as Firefox does can have quite a different impact.

"So, the reasoning behind the extra shading is to show the difference between the area in the tab, and the area outside of tabs, and based on http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2301433/Screenshots/GlassTab.png it really seems to me like Firefox 12 does the same thing."

I agree with that reasoning. However, I am not sure you fully understand what I am complaining about. Forgive me if I seem overly concerned with how polished Thunderbird is.

The picture you have of Firefox 12 looks okay and matches what I see once I configure "tabs on top" (which I normally don't use). Both fog the selected tab and make the other tabs distinguishable against the background. So far so good.

The fundamental difference is that Thunderbird fogs the full width of the screen for both the menu bar and the main toolbar while Firefox only fogs the full width of the screen for the address bar. 

On my PC (ignoring the selected tab) over 2/3 of the Thunderbird "toolbar area" is fogged while only 1/3 is fogged on Firefox. On Thunderbird the fogging is very noticeable because so little of the fogged area is covered by buttons or edit fields. If you are configured to use "icons and text" like I do (rather than "icons beside text" like you did) for buttons the fogging is more like 3/4. The fogging in Firefox is not very noticeable because you mainly see it in the gap between the address bar and the search field, which is only about three inches across when you are full screen. That is why the old CSS code to not use the gradient when there is a persona made a big difference for Thunderbird, and little difference to Firefox.

Why am I making such a big deal about personas? Because the number of themes that work with recent versions of Thunderbird has always been small and keeps diminishing due to the "rapid development process" and the fact that if you rely upon "compatible by default" to use an older add-on many themes (unlike extensions) seem to have bad side effects. I'd prefer to use a real theme but personas don't break, and hide problems like the poor implementation of the glass effect (if you're using windows Aero). 

"Furthermore, Personas Plus hasn't worked since Thunderbird 4, and as far as I've been told, won't be updated in the future, since the persona switching code is in the core product now.

It works, you just need to bypass version checking. It seems a shame they couldn't at least release one more version so that people can rely upon "compatible by default".

How do I use the "persona switching code is in the core product" without using that add-on? I'm not aware of any built-in menu commands or settings that support that. If you could explain how to use it I'll use it instead and write up how to do that in a KB article (for MozillaZine).

Comment 9

[Blake Winton (:bwinton) (:☕️)]

(In reply to Eric Moore from comment #8)
> "So, the reasoning behind the extra shading is to show the difference
> between the area in the tab, and the area outside of tabs, and based on
> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2301433/Screenshots/GlassTab.png it really seems to
> me like Firefox 12 does the same thing."
>
> I agree with that reasoning. However, I am not sure you fully understand
> what I am complaining about. Forgive me if I seem overly concerned with how
> polished Thunderbird is.

Not at all.  It's nice to have people who are concerned with the polish discuss Thunderbird's state in a calm manner.  :)

> The picture you have of Firefox 12 looks okay and matches what I see once I
> configure "tabs on top" (which I normally don't use). Both fog the selected
> tab and make the other tabs distinguishable against the background. So far
> so good.
> 
> The fundamental difference is that Thunderbird fogs the full width of the
> screen for both the menu bar and the main toolbar while Firefox only fogs
> the full width of the screen for the address bar. 

Right, which is due to Thunderbird's decision to be more like Windows Explorer, and put the menu inside the tab content, to make it much more readable in Aero Glass mode.

We _could_ move the menu bar out of the tab when the user has selected a different persona, but that seems like it would be really irritating and confusing.

I suppose another way to fix it would be to force the tab colour to the default, and only apply the theme to the pieces above the tabs…  I'm not sure I like that, though.

> On my PC (ignoring the selected tab) over 2/3 of the Thunderbird "toolbar
> area" is fogged while only 1/3 is fogged on Firefox. On Thunderbird the
> fogging is very noticeable because so little of the fogged area is covered
> by buttons or edit fields.

Hmm, this is an interesting point.  Perhaps we should put more things (or larger things) on the main toolbar…

The other thing that should mitigate much of this is the upcoming removal of the menu bar, in favour of a menu button.  (If you have thoughts on the 5-7 things we should include in it, I would love to hear them, but please email them to me, since they're totally irrelevant to this bug.)

> "Furthermore, Personas Plus hasn't worked since Thunderbird 4, and as far as
> I've been told, won't be updated in the future, since the persona switching
> code is in the core product now.
> 
> It works, you just need to bypass version checking. It seems a shame they
> couldn't at least release one more version so that people can rely upon
> "compatible by default".

Yes, I misspoke there.  I meant to say that it hasn't been supported since version 4, and likely wouldn't be updated.

> How do I use the "persona switching code is in the core product" without
> using that add-on? I'm not aware of any built-in menu commands or settings
> that support that. If you could explain how to use it I'll use it instead
> and write up how to do that in a KB article (for MozillaZine).

Finding personas is a little more complicated than I think it should be.  (You need to go to "Tools » Add-ons » See all themes » Personas".)  But once you've installed a couple, you can go to "Tools » Add-ons » Appearance", and switch between them.

Thanks,
Blake.