where userChrome.css? or another way to change url color?

[Lew Rockwell Fan]

I thought it would be easy but I've spent all day trying to change my nav-bar/url-field/whachamacallit and the separate search box to black bg & white fg. NOT dark gray and light gray - black and WHITE. I've tried literally dozens (maybe a hundred by now) styles, themes, and color tweaking extensions. Is there a userChrome.css file somewhere? Do I need to make it, and if so where? Is there some other approach? The hard part is to get the font white. I've found lots of things to turn the bg black or some acceptably dark color, but I've gotten fg to turn red, black or corpse-gray, but never white. FWIW, this is under Lubuntu 17.10, 64 bit, on an Acer laptop with an AMD cpu. Normally I use a stripped down 16.04LTS built from the Ubuntu mini.iso with X and Openbox, but I'm on a different system atm. I know mainstream Ubuntu Full Bloat Bells & Whistles Edition went with Wayland for a release or 2, but this seems to be X:

$ ps -wweo args|grep -i xorg
/usr/lib/xorg/Xorg -core :0 -seat seat0 -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -nolisten tcp vt7 -novtswitch

And Openbox still is hidden under the LXDE as in the past apparently:

$ ps -wweo args|grep -i openbox
openbox --config-file /home/me/.config/openbox/lubuntu-rc.xml

So, looks like this is still fundamentally Openbox under X.

This is 27.7.2 (64-bit) run as a portable by executing the palemoon file in the expanded archive. I thought I'd try it that way to see if I could run it from a separate file system available to more than one 64 bit linux system.

[tired_eyes]

userChrome.css should be placed in $YOUR_PROFILE/chrome/userChrome.css. If "chrome" directory doesn't exist, create it manually. Profile folder can be quickly found by hitting Help -> Troubleshooting Information -> Profile Directory -> Open directory

[Lew Rockwell Fan]

Ah! Thanks. I should have thought of that. I thought I had code to turn the url and search boxes text white, but it didn't work. Anyway, this gets me half way there. Now to find what to put there.

I can not for the life of me understand why people like gray so much. Low contrast, hard to read, and looks like it's long dead & moldy. Could be the problem is I have something over-riding my color settings, in order to de-emphasize the part of the url that is not the domain name. I wouldn't mind that if it used something bright and legible like #FF0000 or #FFFF00 but this dark gray on "black" (that due the limits of the monitor is really a darker gray, so I have in actual fact, dark gray on darker gray - which, for me, is just . . . terrible).

[Walter Dnes]

There's an "Advanced Night Mode" extension for Pale Moon https://addons.palemoon.org/addon/advanced-night-mode/ It makes things easy on my old eyes. Here's what this thread looks like under it...

[SpockFan02]

Make sure that your userChrome.css file starts with

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@namespace url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul");

. Then, add this:

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#urlbar { background-color: #000000 !important; color: #FFFFFF !important;}

. The color: part is required to be able to see the text in the address bar, but it still doesn't make it fully white; there must be some magic hackery making it behave the way it does.

[Lew Rockwell Fan]

Thanks, Walter. That is, indeed, a good product. I used it for a couple of months. AFAIK, & correct me if I'm wrong, it just addresses page colors, & can't change the text color in the url and search boxes, as your pic indicates.

For page colors, I prefer "Page Colors & Fonts Buttons" after changing my color settings in the native prefs (tools, prefs, content, colors). If only the button would change colors to indicate on or off & remember a separate on/off state per site, it would be nearly perfect. As is, it is on or off for every tab & stays that way until you toggle it again.

Stylish is also good, but it is a colossal PITA to set up. The best way in my opinion is to install a bunch of global styles & turn then all off. Then, one site at a time install likely looking styles for that site. Then experiment with them all separately and in combination. See how they work with the page color toggle button (because it might be on or off when you go there next). If you want to use one of the global styles on that page, copy it and change the copy to work for that page only. Global Amoled Red is a style you'd probably like, but if you just turn it on globally, you'll be forever toggling it, because there are too many high transparency buttons and such that disappear. And if you are going to be toggling it all the time, you might just as well use "Page Colors & Fonts Buttons" instead. Global styles are most useful, imo, to use as models to make styles for individual sites. If Stylish ever gets to the point that you can right click on a tab and experiment applying combinations of styles to the page, and then save the setting for that page without having to copy and edit styles (and the built in editor is horrible), it will be great. As is, you STILL wind up having to toggle it on and off all the time.

What I'm looking for is a way to eliminate the horrible low contrast colors in the url bar (ideal would be white fg with bg colors: black for the domain and dark red or dark green bg for the rest of the url, depending on the protocol - but anything I can f'n READ would be an improvement. Also, I want white on black for the search box, or maybe different dark bg colors depending on what engine was set.
= = = = = = =
Mr. Spock, you posted while I was editing. Studying what you wrote now.

[Lew Rockwell Fan]

Yes, Mr. Spock - magic hackery indeed. I think it has to do with de-emphasizing the non-domain part of the url. I think there is a place in about:config where that can, maybe, be turned off, but I haven't found it. And what I'd actually rather do, is change the color it uses to do that, or, better yet, give the color management of the bg there to one of those green-for-good-https/red-for-otherwise extensions, of which there is more than one. Dark red, dark green, dark blue, even dark brown, would be ok for the non-domain bg. I'll settle for white on black all the way through though.

[riiis]

You can change url color and background easily with Persona/Light Theme Maker (for the following example, white text (#ffffff) on black background (#000000)):

Persona/Light Theme Maker does not color the tabbar, titlebar, or statusbar. For that purpose, select any complete theme or lightweight theme (I used the Blue Blau Bleu lightweight theme. Apply lightweight themes using either Persona/Light Theme Manager or ThemeTool). To increase visibility of toolbar icons, bookmarks, and active tab, the example also uses the Active Tab More Visible and Active Toolbars More Visible extensions.

[coffeebreak]

I think it has to do with de-emphasizing the non-domain part of the url. I think there is a place in about:config where that can, maybe, be turned off, but I haven't found it.

You may be thinking of: browser.urlbar.formatting.enabled
(when set to its default value: true )

[Lew Rockwell Fan]

Thanks, riiis. Your first pic illustrates exactly what I'm trying to change FROM though. It is only notionally #FFFFFF on #000000. Only the domain portion in the middle actually has white text. The rest is gray, and to my eyes, not even much lighter than the bg on a led backlit lcd monitor, where "black" is itself, in fact, a darker gray.

Vision differs more than most people realize. Even in the 70s it was known that "color blindness" was an egregious misnomer in most cases (Any of you with ground pounding military experience probably know what I'm talking about with respect to camy that is only camy to most), and in the last few years it has become known that there is a wider variety in both the number of retinal cell types and their peak sensitivities than was commonly believed even a decade ago. So to you, I bet that pic looks high contrast, but to me it's pretty bad.

[INSERTED HOURS LATER: The following is a mistake, but rather than hide the evidence of my stupidity, I'll leave it in because somebody might fall into the same trap & this illustrates it. I'll insert the explanation at the end.]
That probably is the about:config value I was thinking of, and it would probably fix this, but no wonder I couldn't find it - it isn't in my system. I tried to create it & I couldn't. I went through the motions but it never gave me an opportunity to set the value. And when I finished, it wasn't there. I've never had that happen before. I have created about:config entries and then not been able to remove them, but never had the creation fail. Not sure what to make of that.

Added later:
Aha!!!! Figured out the invisible about:config setting. Works fine when I TYPE it in. I guess the font used in the pref lines in my about:config isn't a monospace one and there was an extra space there every time I copied it in, though I'm darned if I can see it there. I copied it in to a text editor to confirm that was the problem. So it didn't show when I searched for " browser." and it wouldn't let me create a non-compliant preference name. Both puzzles solved. OK!!!! Now I have true, legible, white on black! Thanks!

[riiis]

Only the domain portion in the middle actually has white text. The rest is gray, and to my eyes, not even much lighter than the bg on a led backlit lcd monitor, where "black" is itself, in fact, a darker gray.

Perhaps more like the following example (Used Persona/Light Theme Maker "Pitch_Red" theme and "Glass Red" lightweight theme):

Use the Better URL Bar extension to increase the font size in the location and search bars, and to make the URL uniformly visible. Note that the option--"Allow domain highlighting in the URL bar"-- this option should be UNCHECKED.

[coffeebreak]

but no wonder I couldn't find it - it isn't in my system. I tried to create it & I couldn't. I went through the motions but it never gave me an opportunity to set the value. And when I finished, it wasn't there.

It's in there, shouldn't need to be created. Maybe you made a typo...?

See if copying this helps...

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browser.urlbar.formatting.enabled

[riiis]

It's in there, shouldn't need to be created. Maybe you made a typo...? See if copying this helps...

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browser.urlbar.formatting.enabled

The "Better URL Bar" extension, "Allow domain highlighting in the URL bar"option, toggles the "browser.urlbar.formatting.enabled" preference in "about:config" (true or false). Thus, manual changes to about:config, of this preference, would no longer be necessary. And, "Better URL Bar" provides other features to increase visibility of the location and search bars, such as increasing the font size.

[Lew Rockwell Fan]

@ riiis
Thanks. You've mentioned several extensions I'll play with. The key was toggling that pref. The key to finding it was realizing I was pasting in a leading space I couldn't see. I'm used to 20 point monospace fonts. Once I got that turned off, all the other methods (and others not touched on) then worked as expected.

@ coffeebreak
Thanks. You must have read my previous post before I revised it.

Maybe you made a typo...?

Nah. A copyo. I'm a fumblefingered, near-sighted, idiot & couldn't see the leading space I was copying. Repeatedly. 'Cause it was a wee, bitty space, barely the width of an lower case, sans serif, proportional font l. <---That's a lower case L, as in "What in L was I thinkin'?"


Thanks, all, for many good suggestions. I'm a happy camper now.