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wtf is with the thunderbird 5 theme?

Mo-updates?
Mo-updates?

Holy crap, you can’t see anything on the menu. The new theme is complete garbage. I’ve been using thunderbird for 8 years and for the first time I want actually considered switching. WTF is with switching to some aero theme by default with the latest upgrade? At least I’m not the only person who hates the new thunderbird theme, so hopefully the devs will fix it. I think I need to remember an old saying – If it ain’t broke, don’t update it.

And while I’m complaining about Mozilla products – wtf is with this rapid [and buggy] release schedule. I really can do without updates and restarts every few days. I don’t need new features/redesigned layouts/new themes every two weeks. I would love a browser that is stable and that follows web standards. Is that too much to ask? And with all of these updates, how are add-on devs supposed to keep up?

I’ve supported Firefox and Thunderbird for years, but the last few months are making me start to question my loyalty.

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UPDATE: I added this as a comment, but figured I’d add to the post too. How I made thunderbird useable again (see full instructions in the comment) – update userChrome.css to include the following:
/* disable Aero transparency for toolbar and menubar */
window, page, dialog, wizard, prefwindow {
background-color: -moz-Dialog !important;
}


#toolbar-menubar {
-moz-appearance: -moz-win-browsertabbar-toolbox !important;
}

5 replies on “wtf is with the thunderbird 5 theme?”

I absolutely agree. And probably, code-wise, TB5 is identical to TB4, yet the “themes” don’t “work” because they are not “compatible with the version”.
That said, there are less than 20 themes for TB5 for windows, out of which exactly 2 do not suck so much as the default one.

Only workaround I found is running Thunderbird in Windows XP compatibility mode. No problems or slowdowns whatsoever, and the theme is back to “readable”.

Shame on you, Mozilla, shame on you.

I changed userChrome.css to solve it temporarily. The easiest way is to (if you can see it) select help from the top nav and then click troubleshooting information. Then, under “Application Basics” on the line that reads “Profile Directory” click on the button that says open containing folder. When it brings up windows explorer, look for the folder called “chrome” (if it doesn’t exist, create one). In the “chrome” folder, look for userChrome.css (again, if it doesn’t exist, create it). Use your favorite text editor, like notepad++, to add the following to userChrome.css:

/* disable Aero transparency for toolbar and menubar */
window, page, dialog, wizard, prefwindow {
background-color: -moz-Dialog !important;
}

#toolbar-menubar {
-moz-appearance: -moz-win-browsertabbar-toolbox !important;
}

Thanks so much for the workaround. That transparency has been a bit annoying for me since the start, but today Thunderbird has updated in my PC and the tab area was completely transparent, not blurred transparency, I could see my browser tabs below Thunderbird tabs and everything was just a big mess… WTF are you doing, Mozilla??

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