Firebug no longer respects OS theme colors.

[or...@mgmiller.net]

Hi,

We're in a studio (vfx) environment where color is very important, therefore we use dark gui themes and natural lighting to avoid affecting our color perception.  It is a bit difficult some times because it's all the rage these days to skin apps.

In the past firebug mostly respected the OS theme, but recently has become far worse, shipping a all-white-background theme.  It is a big enough problem when each application decides to go it's own way, but now we have a plugin to an app doing the same as well.  It's not clear when this trend became acceptable or encouraged, but it is a huge regression for those of us who would like to configure our themes in a single OS location.    :(

Any ideas on how to mitigate this white theme?  We're not looking for a "dark theme" per se, merely one that respects the settings of the OS without configuration.  We're on a recent linux with GTK if it matters.

-Mike

[Sebastian Zartner]

Hi Mike,

there were long discussions in the past whether to use system colors or self-defined ones and about theming of Firebug in general. See some threads within this discussion group. Also there are some issues related to coloring and theming, e.g. issue 791, 1705 and 2704.

While I argued for using OS theme colors in the past, I now believe it's better to use self-defined colors. There are mainly three reasons for this:

1. There's different support of system colors between the different OSes.
2. We have syntax highlighting and other parts within the UI, which need more/different colors than the ones available as system colors.
3. Mixing system colors with self-defined ones for text and background may result in bad color contrasts as just one color is predictable. (That's why the panel background uses a white color now.)
   

That being said, there are still a few places in Firebug 2.0 where system colors are used. These may be replaced by self-defined colors in the future.

But note that Firebug is completely customizable via CSS and Jan 'Honza' Odvarko describes in his blog how to do that. So you can apply your own theme to Firebug using system colors or dark colors.

If you want to help to create a theme, which has better support for system colors, you should have a look at the code of the next Firebug version and create a patch for it.

Sebastian

[or...@mgmiller.net]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

Thinking about it a bit more, I suppose there are two types of widgets to consider.  First are panels and buttons and such.  Seems like these should follow OS settings just as Firefox does.  Can't think of a good reason not to.

Next, there are the areas where syntax highlighting occurs, which as you mention become problematic.  Unfortunately we are slammed here with work so learning how and writing themes for every plugin to a tool we use is not a good use of time.

So, I'm trying to think up a "quick" way to mitigate the problem, and these came to mind.

1.  Have a menuitem that selects either light or dark value foreground colors for highlighting which can be manually toggled to the one that gives the best contrast.  Or...
2.  A similar menuitem that allows us to configure the background color at least to bring it down from #FFF.  100% contrast black-on-white may make sense for a tax office, but not the studio or night-owls.

Thanks for considering.

[or...@mgmiller.net]

Or

3.  Have a menuitem/checkbox to "just use the OS theme," unselected by default, but let's the user choose their own destiny. 

Cheers,

[Sebastian Zartner]

Hi again,

Thinking about it a bit more, I suppose there are two types of widgets to consider.  First are panels and buttons and such.  Seems like these should follow OS settings just as Firefox does.  Can't think of a good reason not to.

Next, there are the areas where syntax highlighting occurs, which as you mention become problematic.  Unfortunately we are slammed here with work so learning how and writing themes for every plugin to a tool we use is not a good use of time.

For what it's worth note that Firebug is mainly done by volunteers working on it in their spare time. Of course it's not expected that people work on it during their normal work time.
 

So, I'm trying to think up a "quick" way to mitigate the problem, and these came to mind.

1.  Have a menuitem that selects either light or dark value foreground colors for highlighting which can be manually toggled to the one that gives the best contrast.

The Firebug Working Group is currently working on integrating Firebug into the built-in DevTools, which the side effect that Firebug can reuse their light and dark theme.

3.  Have a menuitem/checkbox to "just use the OS theme," unselected by default, but let's the user choose their own destiny. 

Ok, that's something that can be considered for the panel toolbars and buttons (but not the panel contents) as you say above.

Sebastian