the aero glass menubar and aero glass toolbar makes the menus and the primary toolbars almost impossible to read. This area should not be glass or the menu items and buttons should be styled differently.

And the same goes for the message compose window.

The picture posted for the link Wayne added resembles the problem also seen with high-contrast themes (bug 608792), so that's essentially an issue for all desktop themes which have a dark background. On http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_5.0_-_New_Features_and_Changes/Themes are a couple of more examples showing the dominance of the background, but with lesser impact on the readability of menu and label items.

Matching GetSatisfaction user report at http://gsfn.us/t/2bnpz

Similar feedback: * http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=2239181 * http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=2239667

Absolutely, the whole TB5 Aero theme needs more thinking. It looks like nobody thought it well because it looks real bad.

I can confirm this bug on Windows 7 & Vista. Affects the main window, Address Book and New Message window. Account Settings and Options seem to be unaffected. Installing any "Persona" add-on works as a temporary fix for the main window but the theme for aero really must include a background fill or graphic as the other windows are unreadable. This is particularly humiliating for me as I've been championing TB at my company and now I look like a fool... thanks Mozilla.

.. and another GetSatisfaction user report at http://gsfn.us/t/2bqvm

... and mine, although its more the monochrome icons that suck: http://gsfn.us/t/2brg3

Richard has created an add-on which removes the glass effect, available from https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/addon/noglass/ which also has a switch for some colorized buttons (see bug 668336 for that discussion).

Just to clarify, the add-on is a workaround but not a solution. I've stopped counting how many topics on this issue were posted in the GetSatisfaction forums over the last few days...

The noglass is a great short term solution until someone Fix the whole glass mess.

I can't believe that this didn't stop TB5 being released. I installed first on a Windows XP box, and it worked fine. Hardly any different from TB3, but it still worked. When I then installed on Vista Business, I thought it had installed wrongly. The menus were all black on black, and fuzzy. I've now got it working on Vista by running in XP compatibility mode, but this is hardly an approach I can suggest at work! It just makes Mozilla look unprofessional, and gives strength to the M$ lovers. Like Mark, I'm feeling like a fool at work. At this rate I'll end up looking for another mail client. I agre with rsx11m that the add-on is a workaround, not a fix. The program is clearly broken at the moment.

We're working on a fix, but I wanted to come here to mention that when you customize the toolbar or menubar, the main pane is drawn as a background window, which makes this quite a bit worse than I originally thought.

(In reply to comment #13) > We're working on a fix, ... Who is working on a fix? It is still not assigned to anyone.

As a temporary measure, why not just increase the opacity of the buttons on the main toolbar? That should be pretty easy to do, and wouldn't be very disruptive to the layout either.

The feedback is overwhelming. For weeks... And there are some quick ways to solve the problems: 1) Follow Jim Porter (increase opacity) and rsx11m (colorized buttons, look at Bug 668336), so the new theme will become more usable. 2) Offer users an option to use the old TB 3 theme, because the old theme is still there, just hidden. These two modifications should solve ALL problems. PS: Not very quick solution, but copying the Firefox Button would be very nice in the future (this would be a Thunderbird button off course), if it's possible. I'm just thinking aloud.

In Bug 569400 comment #87 and ff we elaborated already less transparent buttons. :bwinton should I try this approach again?

Sure, let's try that and see how it looks. Thanks, Blake.

This Add-on adds only a less transparent button background color. It simulates a button on the light blue toolbar background. Only the main window buttons are changed by this Add-on, so you can open the AB or Composer to check the difference side by side.

That seems better. Can we make the menu bar do something similar? Thanks, Blake.

Comment on attachment 547159 [details] Button opacity test xpi (Oops.) Yeah, that seems better. Can we do something similar for the menu? One thing I just noticed is that I can't seem to make the menu show up all the time when I run trunk. That should _really_ be fixed, and soon, so that people don't complain about it. Thanks, Blake.

Added for main window menu more opacity from 0.3 to 0.5. Is this enough? 0.3 is the default of Firefox. For TB the menu is more important than for FX, so this makes sense to make it better readable.

This patch is based on the test xpi. It reduces the transparency when running under Aero. With personas enabled the old transparency is used like Firefox. PS: This is my first patch created with TortoiseHg :)

Comment on attachment 547780 [details] [diff] [review] Change opacity for buttons and menu bar under Aero Much more readable! Great work as usual!

Comment on attachment 547780 [details] [diff] [review] Change opacity for buttons and menu bar under Aero Review of attachment 547780 [details] [diff] [review]: ----------------------------------------------------------------- The code seems fine (if a little hard to read) to me. r=me. Thanks, Blake.

Could we put a comment in there explaining what the code is for? At some point, we're probably going to remove this (when we have tabs-on-top), and a comment would help to find this code later on.

Sure, or we could use this bug to find the code. :) (Did you want to just add the comment as you checked it in, Jim?)

Comment on attachment 547780 [details] [diff] [review] Change opacity for buttons and menu bar under Aero Nomming, cause it's css-only, and fixes a big problem for Windows users.

(In reply to comment #27) > Sure, or we could use this bug to find the code. :) I just worry that this bug will get lost in the archives. > (Did you want to just add the comment as you checked it in, Jim?) Sure, I can do that.

Should I add a /* lesser transparency on Glass background */ to the definitions?

(In reply to comment #30) > Should I add a /* lesser transparency on Glass background */ to the > definitions? That's probably reasonable. The CSS can get pretty complicated with this sort of stuff.

I added before the new rules a /* lesser transparency on Glass background */ Carrying over the review and approval flags.

Comment on attachment 548808 [details] [diff] [review] Patch for check-in with additional comments This needs two new patches I believe, one for Aurora, one for Beta. Richard, how soon would you be able to do the one for beta? I was hoping to start building the next 6.0 beta in a few hours.

Comment on attachment 549147 [details] [diff] [review] Patch for comm-beta Great, thanks.

Checked the respective patches into aurora and beta: http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/comm-beta/rev/6273281cb5b8 http://hg.mozilla.org/releases/comm-aurora/rev/46ae0f621bf0

I've just downloaded Thunderbird 6.0 Beta, and on my Vista box, with standard windows Aero theme, this is certainly not fixed. It's not as bad when it's not maximised, though it's still unclear. As far as I can see, if the program isn't maximised, and you move it around the screen, some of the background seems to show through the buttons themselves, not just the space around them, which is inevitably going to make them unclear, especially when the background isn't even. Presumably this isn't meant to happen. I can't find any other program which does this, even Word 2007, which is usually a good guide to how not to do UI. When the program is maximised, the menu in particular is still completely unusable, not just difficult to see. It's still black text on a black background with a fuzzy grey cloud round each word. This bug is marked RESOLVED FIXED. My experience suggests that status is wrong.

Which beta did you download? The patch here is not included in 6.0b1, which is currently available for download. You have to use the 6.0b2 candidate builds. http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/nightly/6.0b2-candidates/ And yes, the fix here only reduces the transparency of the button to increase their visibility, it doesn't remove the aero-glass effect entirely.

Sorry about that, I was using 6.0b1. I've upgraded to 6.0b2, and I'd say that the top buttons (Get Mail, Write, etc) are now readable, so the bug is fixed for them (though I have to say they are still hugely worse than version 3). However, on my screen at least, the menu is still unreadable, so that isn't fixed. They are still black writing on a black background when maximised, the only thing that has changed is the little grey cloud which surrounds them is now slightly less fuzzy. That's not enough to make it fixed. If you're trying to copy Firefox, why not copy their menu style, black on white (at least on this box)? Thunderbird's menus look especially poor next to Firefox (5.0) at the moment. I know they have the orange button, but the actual menu is far, far more visible.

To show that this bug is not fixed, as the menu is still virtually impossible to read.

Hi, TB6.0b2 does not solve the problem. When Thunderbird is an inactive window, the menu bar is unreadable, in TB5 and in TB6.0b2. It looks as bad as in TB5. There is imho no improvement in this situation. I still cannot read the menu bar. An inactive TB windows occurs all the time.

Comment on attachment 549979 [details] How my TB6.0b2 looks on Vista when maximised Matthew, I assume that you took this screenshot with Thunderbird not having focus, or do you see this even when the window isn't just maximized but also clicked into to get focused? The menus show up with black font on locally grayed background when focused on Windows 7 (default aero desktop theme with solid black desktop color), but turn equally fuzzy white on black when a different window has the focus. I have to agree with the previous posts that this looks a bit odd, and also makes it hard to identify the menus in an unfocused window on more structured backgrounds. Unless there is an easy fix for this I'd suggest to open a follow-up patch with target TB 7.0 to also cover the menubar-items for the -moz-window-inactive case.

I'm not in front of the computer I took this screenshot with, so I'm not sure whether it was active or not. To be honest, it never occurred to me that the menus would change depending on whether the window had focus or not. From memory, the normal state of the menus is black on black with a bit of fuzzy grey to stop it being totally invisible, which I think is what rsx11m refers to as a 'locally grayed background'. If this was properly grey, rather than fuzzy, it might not look so bad, but it needs to be quite light to make black letters work. Given the volume of people posting to the getsatisfaction.com website about this, I'd suggest you get it properly fixed before Thunderbird 7.0, or you'll lose loads of users who need to be able to read their menus. Why not make TB6 revert to the TB3 theme until this one is properly fixed? You'll make an awful lot of friends.

Is this seriously not going to be fixed until TB 8? This is catastrophic. My first reaction on upgrading to TB 5 was "Yikes! They totally broke the UI! How do I downgrade?" I don't think I'm unusual at all in this regard. It shouldn't be hard to fix- you can fix the problem in two fairly simple steps: 1. Revert to the TB 3/4 theme 2. Institutionalize everybody who thought defaulting to a theme which makes the whole UI transparent was a good idea (they're dangerous to themselves and others and need supervisory care)

(In reply to comment #48) > Is this seriously not going to be fixed until TB 8? The patch is already checked in to aurora (7.0) and beta (6.0), so no, that's not correct.

But is the mentioned patch included on tb 6.0 beta 2? Because a couple of comments ago the screenshots show that nothing have been fixed. I don't think this is so hard to implement just disable the whole transparency thing. It does not work, it feels so weird. By the way I encourage anyone to install the NoGlass plugin it will get rid of the whole glass thing.

(In reply to comment #50) > But is the mentioned patch included on tb 6.0 beta 2? Because a couple of > comments ago the screenshots show that nothing have been fixed. I don't believe 6.0 beta 2 has been released yet, but nightlies on the 6.0 branch should have this. The screenshots aren't a case of "nothing" having been fixed, but of a related issue: namely, that the menubar is hard to read when Thunderbird is *not* the focused window. However, the toolbar should be easy to read now, as should the menubar when the window is focused. For what it's worth, Firefox (5.0, anyway) has the same issue if you have the menubar enabled, so a change to Thunderbird here should probably also be ported to Firefox. I'm going to reopen this, since we should handle the "Thunderbird isn't focused" case better. That said, to make it easier for contributors to follow the discussion so that nothing gets lost in the shuffle, it would be much appreciated if people could refrain from comments not related to implementing the necessary remaining changes. If you have questions about this bug or would like to discuss more general theme issues, please direct your comments to mozilla.dev.apps.thunderbird.

yes sorry pre beta 2 I think it is the nightly, it is more than just the menu it is the whole top portion that people are complaining the buttons are hard to read, menu bar hard to read, transparency on the top portion make everything look out of place. I can't say about FF since I do not use it. Anyway it was marked as fixed but it is clearly not fixed yet. Glad it was reopened.

(In reply to comment #51) > I don't believe 6.0 beta 2 has been released yet, It can be downloaded from https://www.mozilla.org/thunderbird/all-beta.html now for anybody interested, it apparently was released some time today. > If you have questions about this bug or would like to > discuss more general theme issues, please direct your comments to > mozilla.dev.apps.thunderbird. The respective GetSatisfaction thread is http://gsfn.us/t/2bnpz but a bit hard to navigate due to its 268 replies and 70+ merges from duplicates thus far.

The issue seems to be that transparency usually is reserved for the window title only. I've tried to find another program on my Vista computer which extends transparency to the menu and/or toolbar buttons, and didn't find a single one. The simple fix therefore is to remove transparency entirely from the buttons and menus. It doesn't appear to be typical for the platform (which is apparently why transparency was introduced), and it clearly is causing problems. Can anyone give any good reason why this simple fix shouldn't be applied? (By the way, although it's not usually visible, Firefox's menus do share this fault, so the fix should be applied there also)

(In reply to comment #54) > The issue seems to be that transparency usually is reserved for the window > title only. I've tried to find another program on my Vista computer which > extends transparency to the menu and/or toolbar buttons, and didn't find a > single one. Explorer, IE, the Start menu, MS Office/Paint (sort of: the save/undo/redo buttons are in the titlebar), the Desktop Gadget Gallery, etc. Note, this is under Windows 7, since I skipped Vista entirely. These also don't have a menubar as such, but we'll be replacing the menubar with a Thunderbird button once we have stats on which menu items people use most frequently.

(In reply to comment #51) > (In reply to comment #50) > > But is the mentioned patch included on tb 6.0 beta 2? Because a couple of > > comments ago the screenshots show that nothing have been fixed. And yes, the patches here did go into TB 6.0 Beta 2. And yes, stuff has been fixed; probably not the amount of stuff you were hoping for, but *this* bugs scope is now fixed, since its patches have landed. > I'm going to reopen this, since we should handle the "Thunderbird isn't > focused" case better. > One BUG per ISSUE please, if you keep this open and do tangential work here, will make tracking changes/fixes near impossible, the patches here landed, so the scope of this bug is fixed. if there is more work we need more bugs.

The scope of this bug is that 'menubar and primary toolbar buttons are impossible to read with aero-glass effect'. The patch only addresses the primary toolbar buttons, the menubar remains unreadable. I suppose you could argue that it's not actually impossible to read the menu, but it remains extremely difficult to read. Also, the bug doesn't specify 'only when focussed', so surely this bug is only fixed when the menu is fully readable in all states. Are any other relevant bugs already opened? If so, they would usefully be referenced here.

(In reply to comment #55) > (In reply to comment #54) > > The issue seems to be that transparency usually is reserved for the window > > title only. I've tried to find another program on my Vista computer which > > extends transparency to the menu and/or toolbar buttons, and didn't find a > > single one. > > Explorer, IE, the Start menu, MS Office/Paint (sort of: the save/undo/redo > buttons are in the titlebar), the Desktop Gadget Gallery, etc. Note, this is > under Windows 7, since I skipped Vista entirely. These also don't have a > menubar as such, but we'll be replacing the menubar with a Thunderbird > button once we have stats on which menu items people use most frequently. Skipping Vista was a good move. However, not all of us were that fortunate/clever, and have to live with it. If you're replacing the menubar with a Thunderbird button, why not back out the Aero theme until the Thunderbird button is ready? Then you probably won't have so much negative reaction. That's exactly what Firefox did in V4. What you've got now is a bit like a half decorated house, you can see that it's going to be better in the end, but in the meantime it's horrible to live with.

For reference, hiding the menu bar and offering the application button with a selection of menus on Windows 7 is bug 650170. It is my understanding that the menu bar won't be de-facto removed, similar to what Firefox did with their 4.0. Per comment #56, someone please file a follow-up bug on the menu-bar issue in inactive windows.

(In reply to comment #55) > Explorer, IE, the Start menu, MS Office/Paint (sort of: the save/undo/redo > buttons are in the titlebar), the Desktop Gadget Gallery, etc. Note, this is > under Windows 7, since I skipped Vista entirely. These also don't have a > menubar as such, but we'll be replacing the menubar with a Thunderbird > button once we have stats on which menu items people use most frequently. Explorer: The titlebar is Aero transparent but the menu options aren't. IE: Titlebar has transparency but if I enable the Menu bar it is solid. Paint: Here some icons exist IN the titlebar which is aero transparent, I don't know why. BUT, the icons have colour which makes the more visible and the ribbon menu is solid. (I don't know what the "Desktop Gadget Gallery" is) Anyway, suffice to say, all your examples are a different use-case. None of them have transparent MENUS, none of them have black icons! Your argument doesn't stand up. Finally, if you are adding a "Thunderbird button" then leave the new skin as it was until that is ready! However, the whole "button" thing is another of my annoyances... supposedly making my life easier by making me click MORE times and move my mouse cursor further to get something done which takes longer to do and removing several menu items in the process.... yeah, that's so much easier! I fail to see the logic in that one too.

Must agree with Lufferov. On Vista at least, the worst I can find in other applications is Explorer, where the row which shows the location is transparent. I have failed to find a single application with transparent menus, other than Firefox, and even then you have to move away from the default to see them. Interestingly, Firefox recognised this fault in March, in Bug 645426, see comments 11, 12 and 14, which culminated in the problem being referred to as 'pretty ugly', which I think most of the people here would agree with. I'm running 6.0 Beta 2 on Vista, and the problem is very obviously not RESOLVED FIXED, it's still BROKEN. To quote Mik Wells in the Firefox bug:- "It's an OS level effect which is being "incorrectly" applied to UI elements (the Menu Bar). Normally, the Aero effect is only applied to the Title Bar and window borders. I know of no other Windows 7 application which applies the Aero effect to the menus and/or toolbars " To make things worse, not one of the Add-Ons which fixes this problem (NoGlass, IgnoreAero or xpDefault) is available to install using Thunderbird's Add-On manager. Anyone trying to find a fix within TB will fail, and probably end up giving up and finding another client with readable menus. Please fix this properly, don't just mark it as fixed.

This specific bug is *technically* fixed even if the problem itself isn't entirely resolved, thus commenting here won't make any difference whatsoever. The points stated in comment #60 and comment #61 are partially covered in either bug 667241 on reducing the amount of aero glass used in the toolbar area, and/or bug 668336 working towards the inclusion of an alternative theme with the default installer which could include the functionality of the NoGlass add-on to remove the glass effect and introduce icon colors instead. As for the issue of the menu bar being still fuzzy when the window doesn't have focus, as suggested in comment #59, this could be covered in a follow-up bug specific for that problem or within the scope of bug 667241. Again, declaring this bug "fixed" doesn't imply that nothing else can be done in another existing or new bug. That's just how bugzilla works.

Complete rubbish, nothing about this bug is *technically* fixed at all. This bug specifically relates to "menubar and primary toolbar buttons are impossible to read with aero-glass effect"! They are still impossible to read and this bug is therefore NOT fixed! Bug 667241 references the empty space in toolbars, that's not relevant to this bug. I agree that bug 668336 does cover the lack of colour in icons though. Are you suggesting that another bug should be opened to address the issues this bug report has failed to address, despite the fact it will be for EXACTLY the same thing?

I said it could be covered as part of bug 667241 or bug 668336, depending on what they end up doing there. The description of this specific bug 667248 is: > the aero glass menubar and aero glass toolbar makes the menus and the > primary toolbars almost impossible to read. This area should not be glass or > the menu items and buttons should be styled differently. Note the "or" part on "styled differently" which is what has been implemented here, though incomplete and missing a case for inactive menus. That patch has landed for the 6.0 milestone, thus you'd file a follow-up bug incremental to what was done here, and/or to get rid of the glass effect entirely to mirror the discussion in Firefox bug 645426, thus addressing the first suggested solution. I've filed at least in one occasion two follow-up bugs to my initial report until all aspects were addressed, so there's nothing unusual about it.

I still have to respectfully disagree with you. The 'or' clause you mentioned which is that "the menu items and buttons should be styled differently" can only be considered fixed if it solves the first part regarding readability. I would argue that even with the changes made in the patch, the items are still not readable to an acceptable level. Therefore it is not fixed!

There is no disagreement, further work is needed, but such can't be done here. Per comment #56, make a list of specific items that yet need fixing and create bugs for each item which isn't covered elsewhere already. Then, post here which bugs you've opened so that they can be confirmed (I can't confirm Vista-only bugs unless they also affect Windows 7, given that I'm not using Vista myself).

A new bug should be opened with the title "Make the entire glass thing disappear and don't touch the UI until the UI developer has Windows to test things before pushing into production". I think that will cover all request :-)

There is now bug 677345 on the fuzzy menu bar when the window is not focused.

I'd like to remind everyone on this bug about the Bugzilla etiquette <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html>. Bugs are for discussing technical points about issues, not complaining about the way they're dealt with. I suggest you check out <https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird/CommunicationChannels>: if you want to have a general discussion about the issue, there are other channels to do that. Thanks, jonathan

Current Beta Build seems to fix this Bug. The opacity is now increased in focused and unfocused TB window. The huge overall theme problem is still not fixed: - no colors - weird delete button - current Glass theme looks pretty bad furthermore: - accessibility problems (high contrast theme) - no TB Button - too much wasted space some problems are related to each other most of the problems came with TB 5.0 and were absolutely unnecessary

I've created bug 692100 to deal with the specific fact that the menubar is still extremely difficult to read (though no longer impossible I suppose). This seems rather silly, but this bug has been marked fixed without fixing the problem properly, so it seems the only way to go.

Comment on attachment 549147 [details] [diff] [review] Patch for comm-beta Adding approval flag that was mistakenly removed. dkl