Thunderbird 14.0 scrollbars have a wrong background [regression]

[Felix Möller]

I have updated to Thunderbird 14.0 via the update manager recently. However, there is some issue with the scroll bars. They have a background that does not fit at all.

Have a look at the attached screenshot.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Fabien Cortina (fabien.cortina)]

I updated to Thunderbird 14 this morning via system updates and the scroll bars are dark gray.
I tried logging out and back in and it did not affect the color.

[Nick Shrine (nick-shrine)]

Likewise, scrollbars after updating to thunderbird 14.0 on Ubuntu 12.04 are screwed.

[Pete Chown (pc-metathinking)]

On my system, the scrollbars are unusable because the slider is the same colour as the background. They seem to respond to clicks and drags in the expected way, but of course you don't know where to click or drag if you can't see the slider!

I am running KDE; perhaps that is the reason why I am affected by this bug in a rather different way to the other posters.

[J Knight 84 (jonnyvice)]

I am using a fresh install of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on a spare laptop and am seeing this in both Unity and Unity 2d. The regression seems to have occured on my other machine after the update to Thunderbird 14 as others have described here.

It is not present in Firefox 14.0.1 which I currently have installed so I don't think Xulrunner is the issue (or else we'd see it in Firefox as well).

[Felix Möller (felix-derklecks)]

I switched to Quantal recently and there this bug does not occur.

[John Lloyd-Jones (john-lloydjones)]

I have the same symptoms as #5: the slider in invisible, but does respond to mouse clicks and drags. I am running aa new installation of Precise with the KDE desktop. Note that the symptom didn't appear on another laptop that had been upgraded from Oneiric. Thunderbird is a clean install of 14 -- not upgraded from previous versions. Firefox has no issues.

[Ansgar Lampe (ansgar-lampe)]

Same problems as #5 and #8, running KDE. Workaround for this on KDE (at least for me) is to switch GTK+ Apperance (in System Settings -> Application Appearance) to anything except oxygen-gtk. Perhaps this helps.

[Pete Chown (pc-metathinking)]

@Ansgar: Thanks, that workaround works for me too.

I'm surprised this bug isn't being given a much higher priority. Thunderbird is one of the most popular applications on Ubuntu, and KDE users with default settings will now find that it has no scrollbars. This kind of bug gets Linux and Ubuntu a bad name, because people see it as soon as they try the system out. Imagine you were trying to convince an organisation to switch from another OS to Linux, so you gave them a system to play with. When they try out email, the first thing they are going to notice is that they have no scrollbars. 'Err, yeah, there's some kind of work-around for that,' you say, and then you'd watch them decide to stick with Windows and Outlook.

[Miklos Juhasz (mjuhasz)]

Thunderbird 15 has the same issue.

[J Knight 84 (jonnyvice)]

Might this bug also need to alert the maintainers of the murrine engine and/or light-themes packages?

This bug only seems to manifest itself via Thunderbird, but Thunderbird renders other gtk2 themes fine (such as Clearlooks when switching over to the Adwaita theme).

That leads me to believe the actual bug is in the aforementioned packages with Thunderbird perhaps only exposing a deficiency in the gtk2 theme rendering for the default Ubuntu themes (as it does not happen with other themes).

[Andrea Cimitan (cimi)]

Bug in overlay scrollbars, already fixed in trunk, waiting a release

[Ali Najafi (alinajafi)]

It’s not just about the background color of scrollbar!
I’m working on changing gtk-2.0 scrollbar to something like overlay scrollbar these days, and found that this version of Thunderbird (with round corners of tabs) does not follow the gtk-2.0 color scheme for ACTIVE mode too (ACTIVE mode is when you hold the mouse button on the slider to slide it).

[L a r r y (l-m-kuck)]

Mine is a fresh install of Ubuntu 12.04, using Unity 2D Desktop, and from the start I have had the issue showing in the first poster's screenshot. The up-arrow and the down-arrow are the same color as the scroll-bar background, and are thus invisible to the eye, the slider itself is light-colored and can be dragged as is expected.. The invisible arrows also work as expected if one is careful to avoid clicking on the background of the scroll bar. Clicking on the background works as expected provided one takes care not to click instead on either arrow.

My Thunderbird is up to version 15.0.1.

My Firefox scroll bars have both a light scroll slider and top-and-bottom arrows as should Thunderbird. If anything, my Firefox scroll bar background is a little too light, making very little contrast between it and the slide controls. By the same token, only worse, the Ubuntu Unity color scheme makes no distinction between the title bar and the menu bar under it, and makes no distinction between active and inactive windows either. These issues are for information only, and due for a report under a different bug report.

I would welcome the dark color of the Thunderbird scroll bar background together with light controls, or switch them vice versa, and do the same in Firefox.

[eddie-s (eddie-s)]

With Thunderbird 16.0.1, on Ubuntu 12.04 and KDE, I have invisible sliders as in #5, #8, etc.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Arzon (a-andrieut)]

I had the same problem, but know it is solved if I don't use the "oxygen-gtk" style in GTK+ styles.
Try for instance "human-clearlook" for the applications that use GTK styles.
There must be a problem with "oxygen-gtk".

[drx (drx)]

Same here with Ubuntu 12.04 and Thunderbird 16.0.2

[Marcos Roriz (marcosrorizinf)]

Any fixes guys? I have the same bug on Ubuntu 12.04 and Thunderbird 17

[kh_citizen (khcitizen)]

same issue for Qt: 4.8.1 KDE: 4.8.5 (4.8.5). Had to change GTK+ widget style from default "oxygen-gtk" to something else in order to see
the scrollbar

[Pete Chown (pc-metathinking)]

It seems this bug occurs because of a bad interaction between Thunderbird and the overlay scrollbars. (If you aren't sure what I mean by overlay scrollbars, see this screenshot -- http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_1QSDkzYY2vc/TXAXguJ5WdI/AAAAAAAADS0/9205Attwbhc/s550/unity-overlay-scrollbars.png -- you've undoubtedly seen them.)

If you remove all the overlay-scrollbar packages (overlay-scrollbar and liboverlay-scrollbar*) your Thunderbird scrollbars will start working again. Even better, your other applications will be back to having normal scrollbars again.

It is possible (apparently, I haven't tried it) to turn off overlay scrollbars for individual applications. If Canonical are determined to keep the overlay scrollbars in general, please at least turn them off for Thunderbird, then this annoying and long-standing bug can finally be closed.

[Ali Najafi (alinajafi)]

As Pete Chown mentioned, this bug isn’t related to Thunderbirf itself; I faced this bug with Opera as well, however it never occurs in Ubuntu 12.10 Qantal or 13.04 Raring.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Adolfo Jayme Barrientos (fitojb)]

Thunderbird now uses GTK+ 3 and is no longer affected by this.