798866 - Stub Installer: checkboxes do not use themed controls

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Installer, defect, P5)

Description

[Sean Stangl [:sstangl]]

Attachment: Example snapshot

Theme-specific controls on Windows are missing; instead, "Windows Classic" controls are used, which look extremely outdated, out-of-place, and plain bad.

Instead, we should make the installer fit into the local Windows theme.

Snapshot attached.

Comment 1

[Sean Stangl [:sstangl]]

Additionally, the bold, oversized "Make Nightly my default browser" text does not follow the theme either.

Comment 2

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

Just the checkboxes, the buttons are correctly themed.

Comment 3

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

That is a workaround to allow us to control the text color of the control. If we were to go with the local Windows theme we could do this but it would require using the background colors specified by the theme so we wouldn't be able to specify that color as well as other colors. We should be able to override the WM_PAINT message and paint it ourselves but that would add complexity and increase the stub installers size.

cc'ing UX folk to get their input on the above

Comment 4

[Jared Wein [:jaws] (please needinfo? me)]

Note that the attached screenshot appears to be in a higher DPI mode, possibly 150% or 200%. I noticed this because the application close buttons are much larger than a 100% DPI view.

Comment 5

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

Can we use WS_EX_TRANSPARENT for the checkbox control to get it to blend properly?

Comment 6

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

(In reply to Jim Mathies [:jimm] from comment #5)
> Can we use WS_EX_TRANSPARENT for the checkbox control to get it to blend
> properly?
Not without controlling WM_PAINT (see comment #3)

Comment 7

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

(In reply to Robert Strong [:rstrong] (do not email) from comment #6)
> (In reply to Jim Mathies [:jimm] from comment #5)
> > Can we use WS_EX_TRANSPARENT for the checkbox control to get it to blend
> > properly?
> Not without controlling WM_PAINT (see comment #3)

I guess I don't understand what we are doing here. The checkbox should render correctly if common controls manifest is loaded into the exe. They can be transparent so the background shouldn't be an issue. If the text is the problem you could place a new label next to the checkbox instead. It looks like we are already handling text color / boldness in other labels.

Comment 8

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

(In reply to Jim Mathies [:jimm] from comment #7)
> (In reply to Robert Strong [:rstrong] (do not email) from comment #6)
> > (In reply to Jim Mathies [:jimm] from comment #5)
> > > Can we use WS_EX_TRANSPARENT for the checkbox control to get it to blend
> > > properly?
> > Not without controlling WM_PAINT (see comment #3)
> 
> I guess I don't understand what we are doing here. The checkbox should
> render correctly if common controls manifest is loaded into the exe. They
> can be transparent so the background shouldn't be an issue. If the text is
> the problem you could place a new label next to the checkbox instead. It
> looks like we are already handling text color / boldness in other labels.
NSIS handles it internally and we would need to override it because of that

Comment 9

[Robert Strong (they/them - no direct email)]

It's unlikely that I will get to work on this in the next two weeks, so unassigning myself for now.