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When changed to Dark theme, forms have black text on black background

Posted: 2018-04-21, 03:06
by mocambo
Hi !

When changed theme to Maia Dark all form elements on Palemoon displayed black text on black background. In same time Firefox forms are readable.

How can it be fixed ?

Thank you !

Re: When changed to Dark theme, forms have black text on black background

Posted: 2018-04-21, 10:19
by Isengrim
I'm not terribly knowledgeable about themes on Linux, but I know with the Mint Y Dark theme text coloring seems to render fine, so my guess is that it's an issue with the particular theme you're using.

Re: When changed to Dark theme, forms have black text on black background

Posted: 2018-04-22, 00:31
by mocambo
Isengrim wrote:I'm not terribly knowledgeable about themes on Linux, but I know with the Mint Y Dark theme text coloring seems to render fine, so my guess is that it's an issue with the particular theme you're using.
Forms elements renders wrong also with Adwaita-Dark, official Xfce-dusk themes. These are very popular and well developed themes too. Same time in all cases Firefox shows white text on dark background as expected. Palemoon default theme is linked against Firefox default theme. Strange.

I use Manjaro Xfce.

Does anyone have experiences with that ?

Re: When changed to Dark theme, forms have black text on black background

Posted: 2018-04-23, 04:56
by Walter Dnes
I don't know if you'd accept a Pale Moon add on, leaving the rest of your desktop in standard mode. The Advanced Night Mode addon makes things easier on my eyes. It's at http://addons.palemoon.org/addon/advanced-night-mode/ Here's a screenshot.

Re: When changed to Dark theme, forms have black text on black background

Posted: 2018-04-23, 23:01
by mocambo
Walter Dnes wrote:I don't know if you'd accept a Pale Moon add on, leaving the rest of your desktop in standard mode. The Advanced Night Mode addon makes things easier on my eyes. It's at http://addons.palemoon.org/addon/advanced-night-mode/ Here's a screenshot.
Thanks ! This addon is the one option.

Little investigated around - the dark theme problem in Palemoon is inherited from Firefox. Firefox (and now also Palemoon) seem to be the only browser which leaks system theme colors to web pages.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1283086

Re: When changed to Dark theme, forms have black text on black background

Posted: 2018-05-09, 16:35
by Lew Rockwell Fan
FWIW, I've tinkered with colors quite a bit, and overall I've had the best results by setting the desired colors in PM's native prefs and using a light-fg/dark-bg system theme in addition. I use the "Page Colors and Fonts Buttons" extension with the buttons placed on the menu bar for the occasional page I suspect of not displaying correctly. In the past I've had good results using stylish to tweak specific pages, but it doesn't seem to work anymore (which I just started a thread about).

Re: When changed to Dark theme, forms have black text on black background

Posted: 2018-05-13, 16:15
by Artemis3
Actually it is the other way around. Firefox and derivatives have always respected the GTK theme, it is not a "leak" into the browser but an intended behavior.

The reason why some pages fail, is bad coding practice. Some web authors "assume" default colors, and don't define them. The No.1 mistake is assuming default fg is black and default bg is white. So often, they "forget" to define one.

The common mistake is an input dialog, if your theme is dark and calls for a dark background in the input dialog, but the web author failed to define proper fg and/or bg colors, it may result in black on black input boxes.

Chrome et al simply gave up to bad coding practices, and forcibly use black fg and white bg, which in turns breaks your desktop theme experience.

For example: If you don't define either color, it will probably look correctly white fg and black bg on firefox (when using a dark GTK theme), but black fg and white bg on chrome. But, if you are a lazy author and only defined the fg color as, say "dark gray", (because black isn't your thing), but didn't bother to define bg as well, you get the dreaded black on black.

Having dealt with this accessibly issue for years, i got in the habit of always having Stylish or one of its derivatives with various dark global styles ready.

Before you think Chrome did the right thing, think for a moment who the users of dark themes are. The least they want is some shiny thing blasting white to your poor eyes, ie. the url bar or the blank/home page. So you don't want white backgrounds burning your eyes in those input boxes either, like chromium rudely does.

I would love it if the browser had a "night mode", like Xombrero, where you "turn off the lights" by just pressing a key (s one tab, S all tabs), similar to this Advanced Night Mode addon, which only misses the key binding.

Re: When changed to Dark theme, forms have black text on black background

Posted: 2018-08-07, 03:18
by mocambo
Ok, Artemis3, I've got your point and thank you for that. Things are much clearer now.

But what regular user can do now ? The problem for simple user still exists however we name it. I have retoric question - are the browsers made for standards (for developers) or for users ? As this kind of "bad coding practice" seem to be massive, therefore I think the solution could be somehow regulated by browser side - hardcoded into browser or in the form of add-on.

For now i'm a satisfied Advanced Night Mode user. But sometimes I still wake at the middle of night and remember that the problem still sits somehwere there in the browsers. ;)
Artemis3 wrote:Actually it is the other way around. Firefox and derivatives have always respected the GTK theme, it is not a "leak" into the browser but an intended behavior.

Re: When changed to Dark theme, forms have black text on black background

Posted: 2018-08-07, 06:01
by Mercury
I use a dark classic theme on Windows and ran into similar problems. I'm not sure if this will be a complete fix for your Linux issues, but you can use acustom userContent.css file to set color defaults for pages that make stupid assumptions. I'll paste mine below. I haven't touched it in years and it works almost everywhere.

Code: Select all

body:not([bgcolor]):not([background]) { background-color: #FFFFFF; -moz-appearance: none;}

body:not([text]) { color: #000000; }

textarea, input, select, *[cols] {
	color: #000000;
	background: #FFFFFF;
	background-color: #FFFFFF;
	border-top-color: #FFFFFF;
	border-left-color: #FFFFFF;
	border-bottom-color: #404040;
	border-right-color: #404040;
	-moz-appearance: none;
}
input[type="submit"], input[type="button"], input[type="reset"], button {
	color: #000000;
	background-color: #D4D0C8;
	border-top-color: #ffffff;
	border-left-color: #ffffff;
	border-bottom-color: #404040;
	border-right-color: #404040;
	border-style: outset;
	border-width: 1;
	-moz-appearance: none;
}
input[type="radio"] {
	-moz-appearance: none;
}
input[type="checkbox"] {
	color: #000000;
	background-color: #D4D0C8;
	border-bottom-color: #ffffff;
	border-right-color: #ffffff;
	border-top-color: #404040;
	border-left-color: #404040;
	border-style: inset;
	border-width: 1;
	-moz-appearance: none;
}
This gives classic Windows colors, mostly. Advanced Night Mode can be used on top.

Re: When changed to Dark theme, forms have black text on black background

Posted: 2018-08-23, 00:46
by Gordon Dry
I have this problem with selected text in forms and marked text in every theme incl. the default one.
Text is black, selection is black...

When I enable "Advanced Night Mode" then marked text is okay, selected text in forms is still black on black.

This is since I upgraded Pale Moon to 28.0.0

How the heck do I solve this?

Re: When changed to Dark theme, forms have black text on black background

Posted: 2018-08-25, 11:19
by Lew Rockwell Fan
It is also possible, at least in Openbox under Ubuntu (more or less a lighter version of Lubuntu) to assign specific themes to specific programs. I've done this but I don't recall the details off the cuff. I seem to remember modifying some config files and creating a new directory. So if you want to run Ambiance on most things, but Cleanice on PM, and Crux on thunar, you can. Duckduckgo can tell you all the details.

Re: When changed to Dark theme, forms have black text on black background

Posted: 2018-09-20, 13:18
by Gordon Dry
Just tried PM 28.1.0 to see if this is fixed - nope.

Have to go back to 27.9.4 again.

Re: When changed to Dark theme, forms have black text on black background

Posted: 2018-09-20, 14:02
by Moonchild
Gordon Dry wrote:Just tried PM 28.1.0 to see if this is fixed - nope.

Have to go back to 27.9.4 again.
Unless some clear report is made about what exactly the problem is in which circumstances, exactly, there is nothing to work on, and nothing to "magically be fixed". Just because there's a new release doesn't suddenly means something that was not worked on resolves itself.

Re: When changed to Dark theme, forms have black text on black background

Posted: 2018-09-20, 17:16
by fillerup
i can confirm that on Linux, when opening PM by double clicking the executable, it picks up my current GTK theme (or Qt, not sure, i'm on KDE) and tries to apply it, to disastrous result. opening PM through terminal and everything is fine again

Re: When changed to Dark theme, forms have black text on black background

Posted: 2018-10-04, 07:20
by Lew Rockwell Fan
Since I posted in this thread in May, I've experimented with Stylem quite a bit. It's great. Make that Tony-the-Tiger GRRREEEEEAAAT! I'm picky about this sort of thing and I've been editing themes. What's working well for me is a single dark global theme with additional site specific themes for the sites that don't work well with the global theme. It would be easier to use if the themes allowed exclude lists, but with a little tinkering you can make it work pretty darn well.