change font size in thunderbird inbox

[Scooter Pie]

I have installed several themes for visually-impaired users, but none
of them change the font size of the message list in the inbox...and I
don't see any way of doing it in the options.

How is it done, or can it be done?

[Aaron Leventhal]

Are you using a Thunderbird theme or a system theme? It
should follow the system theme. In other words, set it
through Windows or Linux desktop preferences.

- Aaron

[Scooter Pie]

Thanks Aaron, I was referring to Thunderbird themes in my first post. I
discovered that userchrome.css can be used to change the look of the
folder tree (for example). And most of the links I found on this topic
refer to a very elusive userchrome-example.css -- elusive because
google returns lots of pages that mention this file, but none where you
can download the file.

I think what I require is the name of the selectors in userchrome.css
that control the message list and folder tree.

[Aaron Leventhal]

I think there's a theme developer's newsgroup -- they might
know.

In the meantime if you're VI yourself and want it to work,
try using the system theme to set your Tbird theme. You can
still use a separate theme, but at least the font size
should inherit from the system theme unless the Tbird theme
explicitly sets it.

- Aaron

[Scooter Pie]

Thanks A.

I'm not VI myself, but my VI friend got to the answer before I did! I
had created userchrome.css in my thunderbird profile folder, and added
a selector like this:

treechildren:-moz.....(args) {font-size:150%!important}

which only affected the root folder for each email account. I was
trying to identify the right selector for the message headers, but my
VI friend -- whose not techie -- simply added "treechildren
{font-size:150%}" and hey presto...

So problem solved and hats off to my friend, eh?

[Aaron Leventhal]

Yes. I'm just surprised your friend wants a different font
size in Thunderbird than in the rest of his system.

[Frank Hecker]

Aaron Leventhal wrote:
> Yes. I'm just surprised your friend wants a different font size in
> Thunderbird than in the rest of his system.

Well, on Mac OS X there is no easy way to specify the size of system
fonts--at least, I couldn't find such a way. (The "Universal Access"
preferences allow you to configure text zooming, but not to change the
size of the default fonts. This is on 10.4.7, incidentally.) Note that
Apple's native browser and email applications (Safari and Mail.app)
allow (require?) that font sizes be set directly in the application.

Note also that it's possible that a person might want different size
fonts for different parts of the application. For example, Apple's
Mail.app email program allows you to specify font sizes for three types
of text independently: "Mailbox font" (used to display the names of mail
folders), "Message list font" (used to display message subject, sender,
etc., in the message list pane), and "Message font" (used to display the
message body).

This is very handy, since a user would presumably put a higher priority
on reading the message itself than on reading the message list, and a
higher priority on reading the message list than reading the folder
names (which he/she probably has memorized). However Mail.app apparently
doesn't let you specify the font size for the message headers displayed
before the message body; I can't find a preference that allows you to
change that.

I think the best way to address this problem in a cross-platform way
would be to fix Thunderbird to act more like Mail.app.

Frank

--
Frank Hecker
hec...@mozillafoundation.org