Annoying Firefox issue

By bjoswald
in Tips, Tweaks & Customization

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Grand Master

bjoswald

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I'm having an annoying issue with Firefox lately that's frustrating the hell out of me. Whenever I use a dark theme, Firefox wants to match Firefox's dialog boxes to those colors. I have tried unchecking the options in the Content > Colors section of the browser, but it doesn't help. Pages either look worse than they did before or they had no effect. Any suggestions?

FWIW, I'm using Linux Mint 7 - Gnome and Firefox 3.0.14.

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Neowinian

JSinger

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I'm having an annoying issue with Firefox lately that's frustrating the hell out of me. Whenever I use a dark theme, Firefox wants to match Firefox's dialog boxes to those colors. I have tried unchecking the options in the Content > Colors section of the browser, but it doesn't help. Pages either look worse than they did before or they had no effect. Any suggestions?

FWIW, I'm using Linux Mint 7 - Gnome and Firefox 3.0.14.

A little more information about your setup would help you get better quality advice. For instance, are you referring to Firefox themes or linux themes? Do you have the same issue with any other apps that displays content with objects containing numerous 'color-spaces' (Such as a word processor document with a variety of embedded charts and images)? What video hardware and its settings for your desktop? If you're running in a high resolution with a 16 bpp, your desktop may be starved for colors since that would only allow for 4096 colors on a 1,920,000 pixel surface. Even 24 bpp only offers 524,288 when using an alpha channel (which is fairly certain).

Or it could be a backwards compatibility issue if you're trying to theme Firefox 3.0.x with Firefox 3.5.x compatible themes.

In any case, try to ensure your display is setup for 32 bpp (16,772,216 colors + 8 bit alpha) and the theme you're installing is designed for the Firefox version you're running (by either moving to Firefox 3.5.x or finding a pre-3.5 dark theme). Even if you have to reduce the resolution of your desktop to get 32 bpp color, you'll at least be able to isolate the issue to hardware/settings vs a Firefox issue.

HTH

~js

Grand Master

bjoswald

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  • Author
Posted
A little more information about your setup would help you get better quality advice. For instance, are you referring to Firefox themes or linux themes? Do you have the same issue with any other apps that displays content with objects containing numerous 'color-spaces' (Such as a word processor document with a variety of embedded charts and images)? What video hardware and its settings for your desktop? If you're running in a high resolution with a 16 bpp, your desktop may be starved for colors since that would only allow for 4096 colors on a 1,920,000 pixel surface. Even 24 bpp only offers 524,288 when using an alpha channel (which is fairly certain).

Or it could be a backwards compatibility issue if you're trying to theme Firefox 3.0.x with Firefox 3.5.x compatible themes.

In any case, try to ensure your display is setup for 32 bpp (16,772,216 colors + 8 bit alpha) and the theme you're installing is designed for the Firefox version you're running (by either moving to Firefox 3.5.x or finding a pre-3.5 dark theme). Even if you have to reduce the resolution of your desktop to get 32 bpp color, you'll at least be able to isolate the issue to hardware/settings vs a Firefox issue.

HTH

~js

Sorry I wasn't specific enough. Here's some extra information that might help: For starters, I'm referring to dark GTK themes. If I switch from, say, Clearlooks to Darklooks, and then open Firefox, all my text boxes and such match the colors of the theme or are completely dark. My panels and windows and such are fine. My resolution is 1400x1050, and, as far as I know, I'm using the highest color setting possible.

I guess what I'm trying to say is: Firefox is trying to adapt to the colors of my GTK theme, but only does so for text boxes, which is really annoying. I'm trying to get websites (I'm assuming that's what controls the colors) to use the page default instead. But no matter which option I select, I'm stuck with the theme's defaults instead.

Neowinian

jets0n

Posted
Posted (edited)
I'm confused - what are you trying to say here?

Shiretoko was just the codename for Fx3.5 during development.

He's running Mint, more or less equal to Ubuntu Jaunty. He can get FF 3.5, but it's still called Shiretoko (no official branding available). FF 3.5 will be the default in Karmic (9.10) and the release of Mint after that.

@OP - brentaal seems to have hit the nail on the head, good luck :p

Edited by jets0n
Enthusiast

robz0rz

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Posted
Sorry I wasn't specific enough. Here's some extra information that might help: For starters, I'm referring to dark GTK themes. If I switch from, say, Clearlooks to Darklooks, and then open Firefox, all my text boxes and such match the colors of the theme or are completely dark. My panels and windows and such are fine. My resolution is 1400x1050, and, as far as I know, I'm using the highest color setting possible.

I guess what I'm trying to say is: Firefox is trying to adapt to the colors of my GTK theme, but only does so for text boxes, which is really annoying. I'm trying to get websites (I'm assuming that's what controls the colors) to use the page default instead. But no matter which option I select, I'm stuck with the theme's defaults instead.

There is no "page default" for dialog boxes on those pages where you are experiencing this. The page designer must have assumed all the people visiting the page will have a default white background set for those text boxes. Firefox has its own sets of defaults, which on Linux it extracts out of the current gtk theme. If you want though, oyu can overwrite these changes using the userChrome.css file. Take a look at brentaals link, it seems to have some good information. If that doesn't help you maybe check out the ArchWiki article on Firefox

Grand Master

redvamp128

Posted
Posted (edited)

Since you didn't like shiretoko-- and ubuntuzilla didn't work- your could try the ppa build

PPA for Ubuntu Mozilla Daily Build Team

https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-mozilla-daily/+archive/ppa

Though the thing about this one is that it is the nightly build of firefox which I would say is 98% stable with each build.

daily (or even multiple builds per day) for various mozilla projects and branches.
Edited by redvamp128
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