Many menu icons are not visible in Firefox

[Michał Gołębiowski-Owczarek]

Binary package hint: firefox

Many menu icons in Firefox/Thunderbird are not visible (e.g. those in File and Tools menu), as well as icons in menus added by extensions (as Firefox Sync and Video DownloadHelper). The same behaviour exhibit official Mozilla Linux builds.

However, this issue is not caused by Linux or GNOME themselves as my Arch Linux VirtualBox doesn't experience this problem.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: firefox 3.6.6+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.10.04.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-23.37-generic 2.6.32.15+drm33.5
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-23-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: wl
Architecture: amd64
Date: Tue Jul 13 01:50:01 2010
FirefoxPackages:
 firefox 3.6.6+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.10.04.1
 firefox-gnome-support 3.6.6+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.10.04.1
 firefox-branding 3.6.6+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.10.04.1
 abroswer N/A
 abrowser-branding N/A
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release amd64 (20091027)
SourcePackage: firefox

[ChadH (chadh)]

Do you have a theme or icon pack installed?
Did the icons appear before your upgrade?

[Steve McGrath (smcgrath23)]

I believe this is a result of the recent decision by the Gnome developers to disable menu icons in GTK applications. See for example bug #464893

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

Yes, this is because icons were disabled in menus a couple of releases ago, and is completely normal behaviour

[Michał Gołębiowski-Owczarek (mgol)]

I don't get it. Icons help with understanding which position what means. Visual recognition is far faster than looking for names. Any other OS I know use menus icons, including other Linuxes.

Anyway, thanks for redirecting to another bug; at least now I know how to re-enable this feature...