White text hard to read against light background in USC

[Christopher Kyle Horton]

Now that the Salience theme uses all white text, this makes it hard or impossible to read in certain situations. In the Ubuntu Software Center, package names and descriptions are white text against a light gray background

[Christopher Kyle Horton (christhehorton)]

The desired solution in this case likely will come from somehow making the theme treat content areas as light areas with dark text instead, similar to how Ambiance does it.

[[e-mail] (cbowman57)]

This isn't a theme fix per se, but I suppose a package could be installed via script, it's an edit to the usc gtk properties..
http://fav.me/d4px76r

[Christopher Kyle Horton (christhehorton)]

I think it would be preferable to have a fix to the theme itself, instead of requiring users to modify the files for packages on their systems to make them fit the theme and not the other way around.

I noticed that some themes like Ambiance have a gtk-3.0/apps/ folder with individual css files to be used for each application. Maybe we should look into that and try crafting a similar solution specifically for the Software Center.

Could something similar be done for Firefox?

[[e-mail] (cbowman57)]

Ok, USC doesn't adhere to the GTK theme apparently, so unless you create a special .css to patch, which I'm sure is possible but is beyond my skill set.

A method to create a fix for firefox might require somebody that's good with html to find a stylish theme that fits and adapt the code into a firefox apps fix. I applied my fix to it today & got black text entry with white lettering, and worked inside FB chat, but G+ chat was still white on white. I was looking for an easy solution but didn't find one.

If you have someone on the project good with html it might be possible to use stylish to find a good theme & adapt that code to the firefox fix.

[[e-mail] (cbowman57)]

Ignore my redundancy. I thought I'd deleted that line.

[[e-mail] (cbowman57)]

I'm attaching the gtkrc just to show how it incorporates the fixes.rc. If USC is still gtk-2.0 this might be the answer to that problem.

The big problem with firefox is that it uses the base color for the navigaion bar, and a couple other places that are inconvenient.

Look it over

[[e-mail] (cbowman57)]

Salience already has an /apps directory so it could in there instead of /styles

[Christopher Kyle Horton (christhehorton)]

AFAIK the USC currently uses GTK+3 for its theming, but I'll take a look.

Salience does have an Apps directory in gtk-2.0, but it doesn't have one in gtk-3.0 just yet. That'll be added with the Terminal fixes I have not committed yet.

[Aditya V (kroq-gar78)]

Looks like malys-revolt 0.5 fixes this bug somehow. USC looks perfect, all in black. Also, I'm pretty sure it uses GTK 3.

[Aditya V (kroq-gar78)]

Also seems that when you take the focus off of USC, the font is fine. I think we need to create a separate CSS file for it. Screenshot attached.

[Christopher Kyle Horton (christhehorton)]

I agree on the separate CSS suggestion. Of course, the text should always be black and not gray. But that *is* much more readable than straight white.

[Christopher Kyle Horton (christhehorton)]

This bug is now specifically for the USC. I decided to split off the Firefox text entry issues as bug 1025902.

[Aditya V (kroq-gar78)]

Trying to fix this, but how do I get the name of the object so I can put it in the CSS file? (e.g. how did you get TerminalScreen instead of TerminalWindow?)

[Christopher Kyle Horton (christhehorton)]

Wish I knew; it would certainly make fixing a lot of these bugs much easier. I found out about the TerminalScreen entry by taking a peek at how Ambiance did it, and deciding on my own settings for it.

Maybe we could find clues in /usr/share/software-center/ui/gtk3 ?

[Christopher Kyle Horton (christhehorton)]

I just created a branch specifically for trying to fix this. I'll look through the Software Center code and see if I can do anything like I did for gcalctool in the round & glossy branch.

[Christopher Kyle Horton (christhehorton)]

Related bug I just stumbled across: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/software-center/+bug/1030617

[Christopher Kyle Horton (christhehorton)]

I've got it mostly fixed in that branch now, but other issues remain (such as invisible text when submitting a review). I might need a bit more time to polish it yet, but feel free to check out the branch and see the improvement for yourself.

[Christopher Kyle Horton (christhehorton)]

A workaround which involves modifying system files is here (thanks to Iain Closs for the suggestion on Google+): http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/?content=154109