Focused/unfocused selection colors are confusingly similar

[Jackson Hemmings]

Problem occurs with: Ambiance, Radiance, Clearlooks, DarkRoom, Dust, Elementary, Glossy, Human, Human-Clearlooks
Does not occur with: New Wave

For example, open a Nautilus window and select an icon. Switch focus to the desktop by clicking on it. The window is not active but the icon in it retains the "selected items" color. It appears as though it is still selected and that it can be modified by keyboard shortcuts. By clicking on an icon on the desktop it changes color to be selected an now it appears that two items are selected.

Several times I've deleted things by accident due to this, especially when I was new to GNOME. I would have several windows open with items selected. I would see the item I want selected and hit the delete key to remove it, only to realize that I had some other window focused where I had deleted something else.

In Windows selected items in unfocused windows turn gray. I think it also adds another visual clue as to what window is focused besides just the title bar.

Firefox and Thunderbird deliver the behavior I expect (probably because they are only faux GTK apps). Select some text in Firefox and then focus to another window and you will see that the selected text turns gray, indicating it is not active. Try that in gedit or evince and the text will remain blue.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report. The issue is an upstream one and it would be nice if somebody having it could send the bug the to the people writting the software (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME)

[Martin Mai (mrkanister-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

This is rather a feature than a bug. The user selection should not be destroyed just by un-focusing the application, so that you can return to where you have stopped. Therefore marking as wishlist item. Feel free to forward it to the developers of the software by following the instructions Sebastien gave.

[Martin Mai (mrkanister-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

Not a paper cut since it is something more fundamental.

[Yazen Ghannam (yghannam-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

Hello Jackson,

Could you please upload a screen shot? I've tried to reproduce the issue but it seems that selected text and icons do turn gray when not in focus for me. Also, can you please give the version of Ubuntu and GNOME that you are using. Thank you.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to New. Thanks again!.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

This is a valid bug, but it is a bug in various themes rather than in Nautilus.

For example, in DarkRoom, Elementary, Human-Clearlooks, and Shiki-Dust, the focused selection color is exactly the same as the unfocused selection color, which is nasty.

In Ambiance, Radiance, Clearlooks, Dust, Glossy, and Human, the focused selection color is very nearly the same as the unfocused selection color, which is bad.

In Mist, the focused selection color is exactly the same as the unfocused selection color, but the text color is different, which is weird.

New Wave is the only theme I have installed where this bug does not exist at all: the focused selection color is peach while the unfocused selection color is grey.

The problem also occurs in Ubuntu Software Center: it is difficult to tell which pane is focused, because the selected row in the navigation pane looks so similar regardless.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Fixing this would involve making the focused selection color substantially more colorful than the unfocused selection color -- for example, aubergine vs. grey, or orange vs. grey.

Unfortunately, the Light themes appear to be using the selection color to color buttons. For example if I set the selection color to aubergine, all buttons go purple too. Fixing that might be difficult enough to take this out of the realm of a papercut.

[Sense Egbert Hofstede (sense)]

Setting the status to Confirmed as this issue is ... confirmed. I'm waiting with Triaged until the status is determined, but I leave that to the people responsible for the theme, as they are more capable of determining the priority of bugs in the theme.

[Edwin Grubbs (edwin-grubbs)]

Not only is it difficult to tell the difference between an active and an inactive window, the border is practically nonexistant, so overlapping windows can look like a single window. See screenshot.

[Danielle Foré (danrabbit)]

Marking invalid in papercuts. This is definitely a big bug and a usability issue, but it isn't within the scope of the papercuts project. Papercuts are small usability bugs that can be fixed by one person relatively easily. Properly fixing this bug would require the coordination of several individuals and it is unknown how long it would take to fix.

[John Faulkner (johnnyuk)]

I was looking for information on a very similar issue and google brought me here. I think the reason nobody's posted a screenshot is because it's quite difficult to grab one as print-screen causes it to lose focus. With a time delayed shot, however, I grabbed one and figured I may as well post it.

This happens with all selections across GTK including standard text boxes. I'm pretty sure it's just a GTK colour value tweak and really is a small papercut issue, though I honestly don't know enough to be sure.

This is using the clearlooks theme on Ubuntu 10.04LTS and has caught me out several times. Please let me know if I'm mis-informed or if this is in the wrong place.

[Andrea Cimitan (cimi)]

Still a bug?

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

The Nautilus use case still seems to be a "problem" but I'm not sure design would see it that way.

If anyone would like to continue with this bug we should assign it to ubuntu-ux for further input first.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

ubuntu-ux was a dummy project for the purpose of getting the opinion of Canonical’s platform design team. That team no longer exists. My view on this, however, is the same as it was when I commented in April 2010.