Address bar dropdown suggestions BG now transparent! (Linux)

[earther]

Greetings mozillaZiners!

I haven't been here for years because I've been enjoying my old FF setup like a pair of warm, cozy slippers. But I am now slowly setting things up on Devuan Chimaera (Debian Bullseye).

Dropped my trusty profile into 91.11.0esr (64-bit) and it's now working. Things were going OKish when I noticed that the background on the drop-down below the URL bar that provides URLs from history etc. is transparent. That makes it impossible to read anything when the page has content on it.

I cannot say whether it has been this way from the beginning - it's only been a few days and my attention has not been much on the internet - or whether it broke along the way because I have been making so many changes on so many applications over the past week. In a distant memory, I seem to have encountered this once before but can't grab on to any useful info. That happens at 80 . . .

Sooo . . . how can I get on opaque background on that element? There has to be a way to fix this with some clever css.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[DanRaisch]

Moving to Firefox Support.

[jscher2000]

I don't think it should be transparent by default. That would be weird.

Do you have a userChrome.css file that makes any modifications to that drop-down?

[earther]

Thanks for the response.

Do you have a userChrome.css file that makes any modifications to that drop-down?

I imported my previous profile which does contain modifications to userChrome.css. Just checked and the files are identical. Then I searched for possible word connections to this behavior and nothing popped up. I did briefly put this into /home/user/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css but it didn't quite do what I wanted so I removed it:

Code: Select all

/* fix text color and shadow of xfce panel clock on dark background*/
#clock-button label { color: #dadada }
#clock-button:hover label { text-shadow: none }

/* fix background and border color for xfce panel clock plugin */
#clock-button:hover, #clock-button:checked {
	background-image: none;
	background-color: transparent;
	border-top-color: transparent;
	border-left-color: transparent;
	border-right-color: transparent;
	border-bottom-color: transparent;
	box-shadow: none
}

I also reinstalled Firefox and it made no difference.

I remember that there are troubleshooting things to do like turning off extensions etc. so I will poke that a bit later. If you have any other ideas, I'd appreciate your letting me know.

[jscher2000]

Do any of your rules have selectors containing "urlbarView" or "urlbar-results"?

[earther]

Do any of your rules have selectors containing "urlbarView" or "urlbar-results"?

Only these 2 contain urlbar and one is commented.

/* make Address url toolbar same size, any smaller and icons are corrupted */
#urlbar {
height: 24px !important; /* default size of normal toolbars */
}

/* #urlbar > #urlbar-icons > #rss-button
{
display: none !important;
} */

I'm about ready to take a deep troubleshooting dive . . .

[Grumpus]

Check about:config and see if the system or Firefox theme is being used.
browser.display.use_system_colors default is F

[earther]

Check about:config and see if the system or Firefox theme is being used.
browser.display.use_system_colors default is F

Hey Grumpus . . . it's been a while . . .

It was set to True. I toggled it, x-killed FF, logged out and in and no change. Any other ideas? I still have to do more trouble-shooting like trying new profile etc.

For the moment I will just have to use that feature on a blank page.

Having to behave for the machine is annoying . . .

[Grumpus]

Aside from this item which is marked by an ashcan in my system: extensions.activeThemeID which is a string value: default-theme@mozilla.org there is a long list of theme items when searching for theme.
Some of these have the integer setting but if it's not in the Knowledge Base I haven't found it.
There is the old KB accessible and the new https one: Knowledge Base
Switching some of the integer values in current Firefox or some of the TF may have effect but may also need a close and start.
Take paper notes and you can copy the entire about:config beforehand as a text file as a just in case.

[earther]

@Grumpus . . . I am not using a FF theme. I eat my own dogfood! I use the default theme(s) that I have created for the official default Devuan Xfce desktop releases. They are a customized version of Clearlooks-Phenix. Apart from that, I am only using 2 extensions - stylus and uBlockOrigin and yes, I disabled them and it made no difference.

But here's a thought . . . the profile I imported is from 68.9.0esr (32-bit) and I put it into 91.11.0esr.(amd64). Maybe I need to start doing some diffs and eliminating some cruft. Not quite sure how I could delete the xul extensions that are no longer in use. Can I just delete or are they in a DB somewhere? I no longer see them listed in my FF extension list.

Maybe I'll start with creating a new profile to compare. If I break it, I'll reinstall and start over . . .

All this used to be so easy but my 80 year old brain is struggling . . .

[Grumpus]

Only two extensions you might want to start from a clean slate, excepting your home version themes unless they are 32bit as well..
You might want to place your active theme(s) in about:config and see if that works.
There's been a great deal of moving things out of users hands with newer versions with little or no , "We decided to do it this way," notifications.
Maybe the simplicity of Xfce is part of the problem. 64 is supposed to run 32 but it may be missing some of the plumbing in 32.
You could always go rogue and use Linux Mint, Ubuntu or Linux Cinnamon. Watch out for Snap and Flatpak, sometimes the old ways are better.
Currently FF 102.0.1 is active and after dumping the unnecessary things from the OS and FF it may be more useful.
Can't really say, this box was born in 2013.

[therube]

Check about:config and see if the system or Firefox theme is being used.
browser.display.use_system_colors default is F

I'm thinking that is going to be OS dependent (cause default is True on Windows).

[dickvl]

Maybe try a different Linux theme.

[earther]

Thanks for the ideas. I have been using color variations of the same custom theming for the Xfce desktop through 4 Devuan releases and it has always worked just fine with firefox. It did work OK in "safe mode" but that doesn't tell me where the problem is. There is a lot of obsolete cruft in many places. I looked though all the options in about:config.

Can I just delete obsolete .xpi files etc? Or will that leave stuff hanging elsewhere and possibly causing trouble?

I need to read the documentation more carefully. The way I used to do it is now failing.

[Grumpus]

The .xpi files are the installation files for the apps, extensions, etc. Some, if you can identify they are no lnger used (define the app, ext.) can be deleted.
Open your file manager as root (offline and look in the /usr/lib list for Firefox. Most are stored under features though some are under other folders.
Doesn't hurt to explore.
Hard to determine which .xpis go with which app due to naming in some cases.