Tab titles are currently rendered with a text-shadow. Especially in the case of inactive tabs where the background is darker, this leads to text that is blurry and tiring to read. In Firefox 4 we've switched to using DirectWrite by default. DirectWrite text rendering is much more subtle than Cleartype GDI rendering, so when a text shadow is placed on it the text tends to get washed out. I would strongly recommend removing the text-shadow from tab title text. Bug 594324 has a lot of background info related to this.

The first screenshot on this page also shows the problem: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Projects/New_Theme/Timeline Note how the inactive tab "Bug 569255" looks washed out.

This is what I get when I apply the patch. Looks like it might be inheriting a rule: http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/themes/winstripe/browser/browser-aero.css#117

Indeed, I thought we already prevented the text shadow from being inherited, but we intentionally don't do that for personas.

Comment on attachment 491697 [details] [diff] [review] patch v2 Looks good!

Awesome, thanks Dão!

Hmm, browser.css still has this: #toolbar-menubar:not(:-moz-lwtheme), #TabsToolbar[tabsontop="true"]:not(:-moz-lwtheme), #navigator-toolbox[tabsontop="false"] > #nav-bar:not(:-moz-lwtheme), #nav-bar + #customToolbars + #PersonalToolbar[collapsed="true"] + #TabsToolbar[tabsontop="false"]:last-child:not(:-moz-lwtheme) { background: transparent !important; color: black; text-shadow: 0 0 .5em white, 0 0 .5em white, 0 1px 0 rgba(255,255,255,.4); } So active tab titles still have shadows. The appmenu button also has #appmenu-button { -moz-appearance: none; background: -moz-linear-gradient(rgb(247,182,82), rgb(215,98,10) 95%); background-clip: padding-box; border-radius: 0 0 4px 4px; border: 1px solid rgba(83,42,6,.9); border-top: none; box-shadow: 0 1px 0 rgba(255,255,255,.25) inset, 0 0 0 1px rgba(255,255,255,.25) inset; color: white; text-shadow: 0 0 1px rgba(0,0,0,.7), 0 1px 1.5px rgba(0,0,0,.5); So it has a shadow.

(In reply to comment #9) > So active tab titles still have shadows. I'll file a new bug on this. > The appmenu button also has [...] So it has a shadow. Yeah, it's supposed to have a shadow.

OK thanks, I just need to know which display list optimizations we're going to need for the long term :-)