Firefox ignores gnome theme's specific menu bar text color

[Cardy]

Binary package hint: mozilla-firefox

Mozilla's applications such as Firefox or Thunderbird uses GTK, but ignores gnome theme's specific menu bar text color. And some nice themes (Murrina Aero for exampe) with dark main menu bar background looks ugly with black menu items text. It will be good to use gnome theme colors by default, which can be overrided by userChrome.css.

[wenzlicker (wenzlicker)]

I have the same problem. It would be nice if there was a "Don't use theme" option for firefox.

[Steven Weller (suweller)]

It could be me but it sounds like you are referring to:

[Menu] Edit -> [Menu Item] Preferences -> [Tab] Content -> [Button] Colors

Uncheck 'Use System Colors'

I am using Divinorum-Orange at the moment, typing in a black textbox with white letters without ever having touched userChrome.css

PS If you feel the need to still fiddle with colors and other FF settings here is a good place to start: http://www.linnhe2.free-online.co.uk/firefox/chrome.html

[Brett Alton (brett-alton-deactivatedaccount)]

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.3) Gecko/2008101315 Ubuntu/8.10 (intrepid) Firefox/3.0.3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.3) Gecko/2008101315 Ubuntu/8.10 (intrepid) Firefox/3.0.3

I first submitted this at Launchpad.net under Ubuntu[1], but was referred here for better integration upstream.

I attached a screenshot[2] of the problem, juxtiposing Abiword (a program that fully conforms to the GTK+2/GNOME theme selected) and Firefox 3.0.

I tried changing my theme around, including the fonts and Firefox seemed to have troubles picking up the fonts, even after a reboot. The only other program that does this is OpenOffice.org. Pidgin, GIMP, Abiword, gEdit, etc., all conform to the selected theme properly.

[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox-3.0/+bug/287275
[2] http://launchpadlibrarian.net/18784000/firefox.png

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Try a GNOME-based Linux distro such as Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, etc.
2. Run Mozilla Firefox 3.0
3. Change the theme, including the fonts
Actual Results:
Firefox changed its theme quite diligently, but failed to fully realize the selected theme and its fonts

Expected Results:
Firefox would fully adhere to my GTK+2/GNOME theme.

The major problem Firefox seems to have is not so much the theme but the fonts in specific.

[Tchalvak (tchalvak)]

In a related accessibility problem, with a dark theme it fails to change the text of dropdown menus (all the other chrome pretty much seems to work) the light colored text suggested by the system. As a result, you get dark dropdowns with dark text when using a dark theme (in ubuntu 8.10, Gnome 2.24, Firefox 3.0.4).

[Brett Alton (brett-alton-deactivatedaccount)]

(In reply to comment #1)
> In a related accessibility problem, with a dark theme it fails to change the
> text of dropdown menus (all the other chrome pretty much seems to work) the
> light colored text suggested by the system. As a result, you get dark
> dropdowns with dark text when using a dark theme (in ubuntu 8.10, Gnome 2.24,
> Firefox 3.0.4).

So you're saying Firefox assumes a light theme and prints dark text there every time? I've seen that too.

[Tchalvak (tchalvak)]

I searched around some more and found this: as a more complete acessment of the theme problem:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=437366

In summary, it's respecting one part of the system theme (the dropdown box chrome) and not another part (the dropdown box text), according to what they're saying.

[FaberfoX (faberfox)]

This is also happening on Jaunty with the just added New Wave theme and daily firefox 3.1
Can be fixed editing userChrome.css but needs to be redone for every theme change.

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

Thank you for the bug report. However I am unable to reproduce this issue.
Please file this bug upstream at:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org

[pablomme (pablomme)]

I'm attaching a screenshot exemplifying the problem. Firefox 3.1b3 (Shiretoko) displays black text on a dark background, and Nautilus uses white instead, which is way more readable. The theme is "New Wave". Firefox 3.0 does the same thing.

Ideally, one would not have to tweak config files by hand; Firefox should use the system theme be default.

[pablomme (pablomme)]

Forgot to mention, I'm running Jaunty installed from alpha 4, fully updated to post-alpha 6.

[pablomme (pablomme)]

Hold on, with the "Dark room" theme the menu font becomes white as it should, so Firefox does honour theme settings. Possibly the "New Wave" theme (among others, I suppose) does not define certain UI elements?

If you compare side by side, the menubar font in Firefox is larger than that in Nautilus, so the menubar font is not the correct class in Firefox. This could be fixed by redefining the menubar text in Firefox as whatever GTK class it should be, or by completing the theme to assign colours to whatever GTK class the current Firefox menubar is.

[pablomme (pablomme)]

Well, there's even more. Package gnome-themes-ubuntu, which provides the "New Wave" theme (and two more) includes a file "/usr/share/themes/New Wave/userChrome.css", which says:

"This file fixes the New Wave Firefox/Thinderbird [sic] issue with unreadable text in the menubar"

So this issue is certainly known by theme developers. Copying/linking the said file into ~/.mozilla/firefox*/*.default/chrome/ fixes the problem. It'd be better if this file was soft-linked/unlinked on theme change, though.

And ideally, there shouldn't be a need for a workaround at all, either on the Firefox side (other programs manage just fine) or on the theme side ("Dark room" manages just fine).

As a side note, I have my Firefox bookmarks on the right of the menus, to save vertical space. The provided CSS does not prevent the bookmarks from being rendered in black text over dark background. "Dark room", again, works fine in this regard (text is white)... which is a pity, because I like "New Wave" better.

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

Please dont change bugs back to "new" as it makes find the bug a bit harder.

[Dusan Maliarik (dusan-maliarik)]

it not just dropdown boxes, firefox isn't using GTK Toolbar, nor imitating it. Try with any theme that has different styling for toolbars, Dust for example. Looks like it is drawn with plain color picked from theme.

see screenshot

[Dusan Maliarik (dusan-maliarik)]

Created attachment 370040
Firefox not imitating GTK Toolbar

[Dilomo (ankere)]

I'm the developer of New Wave and I can certainly say Firefox ignores theme settings. Other dark themes display proper menubar because their menus are dark with white font. With New Wave only the menubar is like that and the menus are light. On the other hand if you use the theme New Wave Dark Menus it will be fixed. Recenly I developed a firefox theme that fixes this and adds some more tweaks to the tabs and Organzie bookmarks window. See Bug #335496 for more details.

[Ari Torhamo (ari-torhamo)]

I too would very much like to have the menu font colour changed to white. The black one is almost undreadable and most applications seem to consistently go with white - even VLC, which isn't a native GTK application. The more I use New Wave, the more I like it. The incompatible menu font colour is the only (and not so small) negative thing that comes to my mind. Hopefully this can be fixed to 9.40.

Thanks to everyone who's working on this :-)

[Tom Harris (tom-harris)]

Has anyone reported this upstream?

[Martin Konecny (martin-konecny)]

I found this bug posted upstream at
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=461530

[Michele Costantino Soccio (michelinux)]

This bug also occurs with other not-really-native-gtk apps, like OpenOffice.org

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

This fix will not be applied to 3.0 upstream nor by us.

[Mozilla-bugs-trk (mozilla-bugs-trk)]

Confirmed still having this issue here, in firefox 3.0.x and the 3.5b4pre. It's easilly the most annoying thing I run into under firefox.

GTK or gtk-like widgets in a page (drop-downs, text entry fields, submit buttons, etc) should always obey the current color scheme, whether that scheme is defined by the page or by the "system colors", if that's where the current page is getting its colors. Anything less than that is a major accessibility annoyance.

[Faaborg (faaborg)]

Thomas Wood who works on the gnome themes writes:

>While we're on the topic of GTK/Firefox integration however, I would
>like to raise a pet bug of my own. It seems that Firefox will use the
>text colour for the menubar items from the menu item object. However,
>when the items are not selected, they should use the fg colour from the
>menubar, since non-selected menu items are transparent. This causes
>problems in themes where the menu bar is a different colour to menu
>items, and can cause the menu items in the menu bar to become invisible
>because of the mismatch in colours.

[Ventnor-bugzilla (ventnor-bugzilla)]

I can do this. It'll hopefully be possible for 3.5.

[Ventnor-bugzilla (ventnor-bugzilla)]

Created an attachment (id=381902)
Patch

This does it. New Wave (which is the most awesome theme I've ever seen, even though its incomplete) shows this bug, and it's a default Ubuntu theme.

[Ventnor-bugzilla (ventnor-bugzilla)]

m-c is open for general checkins, right?

[Dao (dao)]

(In reply to comment #3)
> m-c is open for general checkins, right?

no, you need explicit approval for m-c or for 1.9.1.

[Dao (dao)]

http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/dd109d204029

[Faaborg (faaborg)]

This bug's priority relative to the set of other polish bugs is:
P1 - Polish issue that appears in the main window, or is something that the user may encounter several times a day.

[thos (thos)]

Thanks for fixing this Michael, much appreciated! We're going to try and include this patch in Moblin, as we are affected by this issue with our theme as well.

[thos (thos)]

The menubar problems have been fixed by bug 496454.

[nachiket (nachiket)]

Any explanations??? The last response needs clarification.

This bug is still present in Karmic.

[Stephen Boddy (stephen-j-boddy)]

Someone has actually submitted a fix for this - see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=496454

Only thing is... I can't figure what ruddy version the patch got assigned to. [mutter]svn... bzr... git... hg... grrrrrrr[/mutter]

[Stephen Boddy (stephen-j-boddy)]

If you try the latest 3.6 rc (Namaroko) the issue is corrected.

[James M. Cooper (jmichc)]

This bug is present again/still present in Maverick. (Presently 1 day before final release.)

What a completely annoying bug.

I have tried everything to remedy this, including editing userChrome.css, but the thing reverts back once FF is restarted.

FF needs to have some independent settings for these things, good grief.

[George-carstoiu (george-carstoiu)]

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:2.0b13pre) Gecko/20110315 Firefox/4.0b13pre

Brett, can you still see this issue?

Also can you please check on the latest Firefox 4 RC available here:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/RC

[George-carstoiu (george-carstoiu)]

Brett, any new information on this issue?

[Ari Torhamo (ari-torhamo)]

I'm not experiencing this bug any more on Ubuntu 10.10. At least it's not present with the default themes, including New Wave, which used to suffer from this.

[Ansus (neptunia)]

Still have this problem, Firefox 15.