Supernova changed highlight colors for the UI elements, can I get them back to the system default?
Manjaro 23.0.0 Thunderbird 115.0.1
Before the update to Supernova, Thunderbird light theme used the system color for the UI elements highlight. In my case, green. Now it is blue everywhere, which irritates my eyes. I attached before and after images, so you have an idea. Can I get back the green?
All Replies (15)
Hello there We have read the message. We try to help you
Thunderbird s new family color is Yellow.
Greetings Firefox volunteer
Modified
Just a comment: With Supernova, one of the goals was rewriting a lot of old code. With that, some components have changed, including some aspects of the display. All I can offer is a request for patience as supernova continues to experience future updates. Thank you. (And I have no authority of any kind here. My comment is just that, nothing more.)
david сказал(а)
All I can offer is a request for patience as supernova continues to experience future updates.
Absolutely, I am not rushing anyone.
Modified
Hello there ojetko
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-customize-toolbars
Greetings Firefox volunteer.
Modified
googlethunderbird сказал(а)
The option to give the toolbars or interface a different color or to change it to your default value has already started.
Did you read my post? I don't need changing the toolbar color, or the color of the whole interface.
Hello there
Supernova changed highlight colors for the UI elements, can I get them back to the system default? '
No there is not one update supernova add-on that sounds like that.
https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-us/thunderbird/extensions/?sort=updated
Oké thank you for using thunderbird
Greetings Firefox volunteer.
Modified
There are currently no plans to add back support for linux system colors.
There are too many variations of linux and often user's colors choices interfere with the proper operation of Thunderbird, which causes support requests and bug reports.
Wayne Mery сказал(а)
There are too many variations of linux and often user's colors choices interfere with the proper operation of Thunderbird, which causes support requests and bug reports.
I am a senior software engineer. This sounds like a fundamental flaw in the design of Thunderbird because 99.99 % of Linux applications do just fine presenting to the user GUI with the system defaults. Even those that are multi-platform and have user themes do fine, like VS Code. You must have done something really weird and wrong in this new Thunderbird. I hope you won't repeat the story of Netscape.
When I say Linux variations, I of course mean Linux desktops.
We do fine with the desktops but accepting all possible color variations has in the past been extremely problematic and frustrating for users. Even if one attempts to code a solution with very significant investment in developer time, there is no foolproof coding which will guarantee to work across all desktops. Therefore the future direction is add-on themes installed in Thunderbird which are guaranteed to work.
The code is available for your inspection - suggested patches will be duly considered.
I should add, even more problematic and time consuming is devising automated tests to cover the code.
Linux desktops in reality have just two variations that define look & feel: GTK and Qt.
Since it sounds like a design flaw, I don't think patches will solve it.
Let's put this aside, it is what it is.
If this is the path you chose, I think it would be extremely useful to create a tool that could generate a Thunderbird theme from themes available in the system. For example, generate a theme from GTK's Matcha-light-pueril. I think most of the users would want their email clients look like everything else in their system, not like a colorful parrot. Can you create a ticket for this?
I feel the developer's decision a huge mistake and extremely disappointing. Almost all applications on Linux simply use the GTK standard and have no problems with it, and even applications that exist for Windows, Linux and Mac manage this. Including the current Firefox 116.
I use the KDE desktop and here it is not simply that Thunderbird 115 is the only one of my numerous applications that does not match the colours of my desktop. What is worse is that some parts of the UI continue to appear in the system colours, such as the task list in the today pane. This makes it look really awful.
What is completely absurd, however, is that there is still a topic called "System theme - auto", thus raising unfulfillable hopes among users :(
This problem has also been discussed in Bugzilla here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1843646
Rochusberg сказал(а)
I feel the developer's decision a huge mistake and extremely disappointing.
They decided to repeat the story of Netscape. It's a classic “never do it”, used in the preface to Merrill R. Chapman's “In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters”. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/
aleca has just responded to the closed issue on Bugzilla. They still say things that sound like they have to add code for every color when GTK and Qt exist. A lot of these customizations can't be done with "more CSS variables". Just surveying the GUI apps (excluding games) on my Linux machine, 34/41 use GTK or Qt. I advise the developers to do their own survey of their Linux GUI software. I'm pretty sure freedom is also a very big aim. We should have the freedom to choose between Supernova or our actual system theme. If the user's theme does not respect accessibility then the user does not want to conform with AAA standards. Such colors shouldn't be forced on everyone. In the meantime, I'll use 102 until it breaks.