929279 - Starred messages (with black star) much harder to see in Thunderbird 24

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Theme, defect)

Description

[David Foster]

Attachment: Thunderbird Star Comparison.jpg

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_7_5) AppleWebKit/536.30.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0.5 Safari/536.30.1

Steps to reproduce:

Star a message.


Actual results:

A black star appears by the message. It is difficult to distinguish from the new-message indicater and medium black dots that appear when there is no star.

This new behavior first observed in Thunderbird 24.0.1. Screenshot attached.


Expected results:

A yellow or other kind of distinct colored star appears by the message. The additional color serves to make the star stand out from the new-message and no-star states.

This old behavior last observed in Thunderbird 17.0.8. Screenshot attached.

At that time there was actually call for *more* constrast in bug 764348, not less.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Do you see this also in safe mode?
https://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/kb/safe-mode

Comment 2

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: grayscale icons are perfectly fine for things that don't move around much (e.g. toolbar buttons), but for things whose position varies or which represent state, we should use color. If we do it that way, the color actually stands out and lets people identify things more quickly. Star icons in the thread pane are a good example of this.

Comment 3

[Dave Brondsema]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #1)
> Do you see this also in safe mode?
> https://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/kb/safe-mode

Yes this issue is present in safe mode too.

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

I failed to mention that I searched last 8 months of fixed and open bug reports, and didn't find what might have affected this.

Comment 5

[David Foster]

Confirmed that this issue is present in safe mode.

This issue is present on a fresh install of Thunderbird 24.1.1 in a clean OS X 10.7.5 VM. I just checked.

Comment 6

[rsx11m]

Best guess for regression cause: bug 781333
http://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/5a0c56e7e9a7#l47.137

this patch switched the dedicated flaggedmail.png icon with the monochrome column version of threadpane-col.png, thus apparently causing the change in style.

Comment 7

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

The monochrome icons have been introduced by bug 781333.

Comment 8

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

Attachment: Give back the yellow star

This patch gives the yellow star back on normal Mac and on Retina Mac.

Comment 9

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

Josiah, what do you think, should I also add the orange Junk icon instead of the monochrome? Then Junk is also better identifiable. This could then fix also bug 845377.

Comment 10

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

Attachment: Give back the yellow star and make Junk orange

This one adds a orange Junk icon like we have for Windows and Linux.

I'll let you decide through ui-r+ and - which one should be used.

Comment 11

[Josiah Bruner [:jsbruner]]

Comment on attachment 8351633 [details] [diff] [review]
Give back the yellow star and make Junk orange

Review of attachment 8351633 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

So I'm fine with the colored icons actually and I think we should color the junk icon too. However, the star icon when not in retina mode looks a little fuzzy and doesn't look as sharp as I'd like it to be. If possible, we should try to clean it up a bit. r+, but ui-r- because of the start icon.

However, I understand it's possible we can't really fix it, and since we like a designer, we may have to land it as-is.

Comment 12

[Josiah Bruner [:jsbruner]]

Comment on attachment 8351552 [details] [diff] [review]
Give back the yellow star

Review of attachment 8351552 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Let's use the other patch.

Comment 13

[Josiah Bruner [:jsbruner]]

Attachment: Screenshot of the star.

Comment 14

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

Attachment: New patch

As I remember I used the star from flag-col.png. Now I scaled the flaggedmail.png star down and this looks better. I also added a new flag-col.png which should look sharper.

Comment 15

[Josiah Bruner [:jsbruner]]

Comment on attachment 8356167 [details] [diff] [review]
New patch

Review of attachment 8356167 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

That looks a lot nicer, yes. Thanks!

Comment 16

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/ffe3d8c378ad

Comment 17

[rsx11m]

This is wanted on the branches, I'd assume. Are you going to set the respective requests?

Comment 18

[rsx11m]

Ping for requesting approval-comm-esr24 per recent http://gsfn.us/t/49vmi comment, or does this not qualify for the branches?

Comment 19

[Richard Marti (:Paenglab)]

Comment on attachment 8356167 [details] [diff] [review]
New patch

[Approval Request Comment]
User impact if declined: It's harder for the user to see the starred and junk messages.
Testing completed (on c-c, etc.): On c-c since a month.
Risk to taking this patch (and alternatives if risky): Low, only CSS and image change.

Comment 20

[rsx11m]

Comment on attachment 8356167 [details] [diff] [review]
New patch

This is only needed on beta and esr24, it implicitly landed on aurora with the last merge = https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/comm-aurora/rev/ffe3d8c378ad

Comment 21

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/comm-beta/rev/1a30ff535cab

Comment 22

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/comm-esr24/rev/29eb1bad3a82