A million little questions

Discuss application theming and theme development.
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mcdavis
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Re: A million little questions

Post by mcdavis »

patrickjdempsey wrote:Yeah, something it depended on was removed. They are working on a fix now.


Thanks.

I really should stop expecting things to go smoothly LOL. Hurdle-jumping and obstacle-vaulting are just what it is and how it is, all part of the game.
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ehume
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Re: A million little questions

Post by ehume »

Now I am in a real pickle. My page control buttons are blacked out. I can control theme by taking aim and left-clicking where they should be. But otherwise, all you see is a black rectangle.

Image

Frank's themes do not have this problem; OTOH, they simply color the background. The latest beta of Nightlaunch does not have this problem; yet it seems to use a background image, the way my themes do.

Why is Firefox doing this, and how can I fix it? I am tired of supplying my own windows controls; I would simply like to use what the OS provides. How do I do that?
Last edited by ehume on June 14th, 2014, 6:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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mcdavis
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Re: A million little questions

Post by mcdavis »

ehume wrote:Now I am in a real pickle. My page control buttons are blacked out. I can control theme by taking aim and left-clicking where they should be. But otherwise, all you see is a black rectangle.

Image


googleusercontent.com is refusing to serve me that image (403 - Forbidden). I've tried with and without NoScript but no luck .. is there any way you could put that somewhere else?

I'm guessing the answer has to do with -moz-appearance on #titlebar-buttonbox and #titlebar-buttonbox-container. Also, for elements that overlap those buttons, I only put a background image on #main-window, otherwise I get the black box.
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LoudNoise
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Re: A million little questions

Post by LoudNoise »

For what little it may be worth, I get half black box buttons fairly often using the default theme on both Windows and Linux. I have yet to figure out what is causing the problem. It also happens on a machine that has no extensions and is only occasionally used
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Re: A million little questions

Post by patrickjdempsey »

Sounds like HWA issues... but who knows, the default theme is seriously a maze now.
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ehume
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Re: A million little questions

Post by ehume »

My screenshot.

Also -- I had inadvertently left sharing off. Please let me know if it shows up now.

mcdavis: Thanks for the hunches.

Loudnoise: I feel your pain.

patrickjdempsey: what is HWA?
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mcdavis
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Re: A million little questions

Post by mcdavis »

LoudNoise wrote:For what little it may be worth, I get half black box buttons fairly often using the default theme on both Windows and Linux. I have yet to figure out what is causing the problem. It also happens on a machine that has no extensions and is only occasionally used


Same here. I get that with the default theme if I shift desktop mode sometimes, like from Basic to Glass.
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Re: A million little questions

Post by mcdavis »

ehume wrote:My screenshot.

Also -- I had inadvertently left sharing off. Please let me know if it shows up now.


Yes, it works now.
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Re: A million little questions

Post by ehume »

I had commented out the -moz-appearance of my windows controls a few years ago, and put in substitute windows control icons of my own. But now that area is black.

I have

Code: Select all

window {
  -moz-appearance: none !important;
  background-image: url('chrome://global/skin/background.gif'); /* no !important */
}


in global.css. There isn't any overlapping image code in my browser.css (BTW -- you must put phenomenal time in on your theme code).
Last edited by ehume on June 14th, 2014, 6:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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ehume
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Re: A million little questions

Post by ehume »

So I commented out that background code, and I get a nice white background now.
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Re: A million little questions

Post by mcdavis »

ehume wrote:So I commented out that background code, and I get a nice white background now.


I can't tell, did you get the result you wanted? I take it that means the black box is gone.

Also, since Patrick isn't around at the moment .. HWA = hardware acceleration of drawing the Firefox UI and content.
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Re: A million little questions

Post by mcdavis »

ehume wrote:(BTW -- you must put phenomenal time in on your theme code).


At least a couple hours a day since .. well, you know since when. Since forever, it feels like. I took a couple weeks around Christmas to help my sister move her family to California (her husband's job had moved, he was already out there) and it was a welcome vacation to spend all day every day sorting, packing and hauling stuff around, really pretty hard physical labor, but with almost zero mental demand. But since then, basically every day.

At this point, anything I add to the front of my mental desk pushes something else off the back. I can imagine so much more than I can personally achieve, it's very frustrating. So, I've been working through the implications and mechanics of how to let other people help. I need a staff LOL.
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ehume
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Re: A million little questions

Post by ehume »

mcdavis wrote:
ehume wrote:(BTW -- you must put phenomenal time in on your theme code).


At least a couple hours a day since .. well, you know since when. Since forever, it feels like. I took a couple weeks around Christmas to help my sister move her family to California (her husband's job had moved, he was already out there) and it was a welcome vacation to spend all day every day sorting, packing and hauling stuff around, really pretty hard physical labor, but with almost zero mental demand. But since then, basically every day.

At this point, anything I add to the front of my mental desk pushes something else off the back. I can imagine so much more than I can personally achieve, it's very frustrating. So, I've been working through the implications and mechanics of how to let other people help. I need a staff LOL.

Your code reflects the truth of what I believe: coding for Firefox themes is a full time job.

When I commented out my code to get a white background, the black bar remained.

When I first ran into this, I did a global compare of Fx 29.01 vs 30, and made the changes I found there. I still have the problem.

Ironic that clearly this was done outside of css, so I can't get at it. Ironic too that for something that once was so customizable, it requires a full time job to keep up with it. I may give up.
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Frank Lion
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Re: A million little questions

Post by Frank Lion »

ehume wrote:Frank's themes do not have this problem; OTOH, they simply color the background

Nope, I use images there, just not ones that you are used to.

ehume wrote:When I commented out my code to get a white background, the black bar remained.


Comment out this in your global.css -

Code: Select all

window {
  -moz-appearance: none !important;
  background-image: url('chrome://global/skin/background.gif'); /* no !important */
/*  background-color: pickSomething;*/
/*  background-image: none;*/
/* above two lines for testing colors */
}


Also change this -

Code: Select all

window,
page,
dialog,
wizard,
prefwindow {
  -moz-appearance: none !important; /*window;*/
  background-color: white; /* -moz-Dialog; */ /* need a color */
  color: black; /* -moz-DialogText; */
  font: message-box;
}


..to this -

Code: Select all

window,
page,
dialog,
wizard,
prefwindow {
 window;
  background-color: -moz-Dialog;
  color: -moz-DialogText;
  font: message-box;
}


Now in line 61 of your browser.css (you could add it to global.css as well, if you wanted, change this -

Code: Select all

#navigator-toolbox {
  -moz-appearance: none;
  background-color: transparent;
  border-top: none;
}


...to this -

Code: Select all

#navigator-toolbox {
  -moz-appearance: none !important;
  background-color: #FFFFFF !important;
  background-image: url("chrome://global/skin/background.gif") !important;
   color: #000000 !important;
  border-top: none !important;
}


....and see if it makes things better in that id="titlebar-buttonbox" area. Even if it doesn't, your theme will now be less open to breakings elsewhere.

ehume wrote:coding for Firefox themes is a full time job..

My 4 new Firefox ones on AMO take up around 3 hours a month. Most of that is little improvements, rather than bugs.

I've also just made 2 brand new themes for SeaMonkey.

It's all about how you approach these things.
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patrickjdempsey
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Re: A million little questions

Post by patrickjdempsey »

Guys, some of you might find this code interesting. In my quest to create a baseline "unstyled" theme for Australis I discovered how to pull the tabs out of the titlebar. Doing this should pretty much eliminate problems with the window control buttons, as well as wonky height problems with the tab strip after showing the menu: viewtopic.php?p=13608911#p13608911

Code: Select all

    /* PJD - AUSTRALIS TABS AND TITLEBAR FIX */
    #titlebar-content {
       margin-bottom: 40px!important;
    }
    #titlebar {
       margin-bottom: -40px!important;
    }
    #TabsToolbar {
       margin:unset!important;
    }
    #TabsToolbar .titlebar-placeholder {
       display:none!important;
    }
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