Andy: Stop using fixed-size fonts in the conversation chrome

[protz]

The conversation mockup uses fixed sizes everywhere: there's a lot of 12px in the CSS, 18px for line-heights, etc. This is nice for mockups, but this raises serious concerns for the real implementation. The biggest one is that if the user has requested bigger fonts (say, 20px instead of the standard 16/17px), then this won't scale the conversation chrome up, which is a problem :-).

What I'm doing to ensure message bodies scale up with the pref consists in just adding a 75% font-size instead of 12px. That's pretty much what we want for all platforms.

[asadotzler]

(commenting here per Jonathan Protzenko's suggestion on twitter)

Here are my font settings: http://grab.by/8fLY I have my monospaced font set to 14 pt Consolas and to get a roughly matching sized proportional Times New Roman, I have to set it at 22 pt.

So, my monospaced font (which I use for all plaintext emails) looks like this for my bugmail http://grab.by/8fMk

and my proportional font looks like this for most other mail http://grab.by/8fMq

The sizes are comfortable for me at the resolution I run but I shouldn't have to set them like that and there appear to be unintended consequences with the size of the labels in the "reply" buttons.

[protz]

We're considering implementing separate font pickers because that thing is getting out of control, and pick up whatever the default is in the first place.

I'll prepare a build with clarkbw's patch that makes everything proportional and gets rid of fixed-width fonts. Although not perfect, it might help.

The issue with the buttons make me feel like you have zoomed in the conversation view through the Ctrl-+ and Ctrl-- keyboard shortcuts. Could you try resetting the zoom with Ctrl-0?

[protz]

http://jonathan.protzenko.free.fr/conversations-asa.xpi

Here's a build that might help...

[thomasstache]

Is there any update on the font front? For me the default fontsize of the messages is tiny, much smaller than the message list pane. I would really appreciate a bigger default size, or the option to configure it to my liking...

[protz]

Changing the display preferences in Preferences > Display > Formatting
will increase the size of the font in your messages as well.

On Thu 24 Mar 2011 06:56:13 PM CET, thomasstache wrote:

Is there any update on the font front? For me the default fontsize of the messages is tiny, much smaller than the message list pane. I would really appreciate a bigger default size, or the option to configure it to my liking...

[thomasstache]

Oh, indeed it does - but only after restart. That shouldn't be technically necessary, or is it?

And as visible in Asa's old screenshots, it increases the size of the button text disproportionally, while the size of the buttons seems to be fixed (they don't grow, but text spills out of them). It would be great if you could slip some improvements into one of the next versions... ;)

[protz]

Yeah, right.You're welcome to contribute if you know how to do so :-)

On Thu 24 Mar 2011 09:14:09 PM CET, thomasstache wrote:

Oh, indeed it does - but only after restart. That shouldn't be technically necessary, or is it?

And as visible in Asa's old screenshots, it increases the size of the button text disproportionally, while the size of the buttons seems to be fixed (they don't grow, but text spills out of them). It would be great if you could slip some improvements into one of the next versions... ;)

[aquatix]

Is it just me, or aren't monospace fonts showed at all currently? Using 2.0alpha5 in Miramar 3.3a3 on Windows 7. (I don't see a plugin setting anymore either)

Having monospace fonts for plain text font would be nice, as now server status messages, mailing lists etc are shown "weirdly" using the regular proportional fonts.

[protz]

We don't use monospace by default. There's an option in the contact
tooltip (hit "+") for that.

On Tue 19 Apr 2011 01:27:25 PM CEST, aquatix wrote:

Is it just me, or aren't monospace fonts showed at all currently? Using 2.0alpha5 in Miramar 3.3a3 on Windows 7. (I don't see a plugin setting anymore either)

Having monospace fonts for plain text font would be nice, as now server status messages, mailing lists etc are shown "weirdly" using the regular proportional fonts.

[aquatix]

Oh right! Totally missed that, but it's exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for the fast reply!

It's a bit hidden though, so you might want to make a note or something about it in the preferences window (or somewhere more logical). Thanks for the great addon!

[aquatix]

Sorry for spamming, but this of course doesn't quite work on a mailing list :(

Is it possible to set 'monospace' for a mailing list (think debian-announce, bugtraq and similar). Otherwise, I would have to set every sender to the list to be shown in monospace individually...

[protz]

I think you can file a new bug for that, as a feature request, and
assign to me. That makes sense that if the sender is a mailing, we
could add a "message from this mailing list in monospace".

On Tue 19 Apr 2011 01:44:53 PM CEST, aquatix wrote:

Sorry for spamming, but this of course doesn't quite work on a mailing list :(

Is it possible to set 'monospace' for a mailing list (think debian-announce, bugtraq and similar). Otherwise, I would have to set every sender to the list to be shown in monospace individually...

[protz]

For the record, the information about the monospace thing will be
included in the next version of the Thunderbird FLOSS manual, in the
chapter about Thunderbird Conversations. Preview version here
http://flossmanuals.net/thunderbird/_v/1.0/thunderbird-conversations/

On Tue 19 Apr 2011 01:44:53 PM CEST, aquatix wrote:

Sorry for spamming, but this of course doesn't quite work on a mailing list :(

Is it possible to set 'monospace' for a mailing list (think debian-announce, bugtraq and similar). Otherwise, I would have to set every sender to the list to be shown in monospace individually...

[protz]

http://jonathan.xulforum.org/files/gcv-nightlies/201105112206-master.xpi (for those subscribed to the issue)

[asadotzler]

While this makes things mostly better, I think there's still an issue. You seem to be setting the message body font to some fraction of my Thunderbird font size setting for proportional fonts. I cannot read the text at that size so I've jacked up the Thunderbird font size to a much larger than normal value.

Also, I've turned on monospace fonts for certain senders and your fraction that's applied to proportional fonts isn't applied to the monospace fonts.

That results in a situation where when I get a monospaced message, it's HUGE! If you're going to apply this fraction to my default font sizes, can you please apply it to fixedwidth/monospace as well?

Finally, this whole "cranking the message body font size down" seems wrong to me. If you want the body text to be smaller, then why not just tweak that Thunderbird pref for the user. Right now someone that knows font sizes has no clue what to do in the Thunderbird preferences because there's this hidden transform done on their font size number. If you need to make the headers larger than the body text, override the header styles with a 150% multiplier rather than overriding the body with 50% multiplier.

[protz]

Thanks for the feedback.

• I can't change the default font size in Thunderbird, because it makes everything wrong: content tabs (e.g. Google Calendar), the start page, and possibly other areas... so I prefer not to mess with that ; plus, if I make the default font smaller, all HTML newsletters that rely on the default font being roughly 16px will appear way too small ;
• I'm reasoning in terms of defaults : take Linux, the default font proportional is 16px / DejaVu Sans, and the default for monospace is 12px / DejaVu Sans Mono. So the conversation chrome is 75% of the default font size, and the proportional message bodies are 75% of the default font size. The monospace message bodies are not shrinked, because for most people this would mean having a terribly small monospace font.

Does that make sense?

[lkraav]

can i get a reference to the "16px / DejaVu Sans is Linux default" claim? i'm currently loving DejaVu Sans Condensed and Mono right now for all my platforms, and would like to know more about this.

i just e-mailed you a screenshot in which i basically point out the same things as aza in his previous comment, but i hadn't read it with thought before. either way, the current non-configurable 75% approach is definitely not a good one for me, it breaks all consistency in overall look and feel.

[protz]

http://mxr.mozilla.org/comm-central/source/mozilla/modules/libpref/src/init/all.js#1728