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<big><font size="-1"><big><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">Hey
everyone,<br>
<br>
one of the things that has been pointed out to me recently
as not-really-pretty is that Thunderbird shows too much
glass in its Windows 7 Aero theme. Currently, it looks like
this (114 pixels of glass high):<br>
</font></big></font><br>
</big><img src="cid:part1.01050402.09020401@mozilla.com" alt=""><br>
<big><font size="-1"><big><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"><br>
<br>
In the longer-term, I think this will be mitigated by moving
to tabs on top, and putting the toolbar into the tabs, but
that doesn't help us in the short-to-medium term.<br>
<br>
So I've come up with a few things that I think we can do
while we're waiting for the big change.<br>
<br>
<br>
The first pair of ideas is to set the default toolbar format
to text-beside and small icons, and to hide the menu, as per
Firefox, IE, Windows Finder, and others. That would look
something like this (with 79 pixels of glass high):<br>
<br>
</font></big></font><img
src="cid:part2.00010803.09050808@mozilla.com" alt=""><br>
<font size="-1"><big><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"><br>
<br>
This seems better, but I think we could do more. I'm hoping
that we can get all the way to (54 pixels of glass high):<br>
<br>
</font></big></font><img
src="cid:part3.08010908.04090600@mozilla.com" alt=""><br>
<font size="-1"><big><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"><br>
But that could cause problems with extensions that put their
buttons in the tab bar. I've spoken with Philipp about
having Lightning move its buttons up to the toolbar, and
he's happy to make that change, but there are a few other
extensions that I know about that use the same area.<br>
<br>
An alternative proposed by JB was to make the toolbar
non-glass, and leave glass only for the titlebar and
borders. I'm not a huge fan of that, because I like the
glass look (just not so much of it), but it's definitely
worth considering.<br>
<br>
So, my proposal is to set the toolbar format and hide the
menu for TB 6, and look into auto-hiding the tab bar for
TB7, with the plan of backing it out if it causes problems.<br>
<br>
I would appreciate any comments from add-on authors who are
using the tab bar area on how this would affect them
positively or negatively, as well as comments from anyone on
other quick-and-easy options to make the glass area less
distracting while we wait for the tabs-on-top to land.<br>
<br>
Thanks,<br>
</font></big></font><font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"
size="-1"><big>Blake.</big></font><font face="Helvetica, Arial,
sans-serif"><br>
<small>-- <br>
Blake Winton Thunderbird User Experience Lead<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:bwinton@mozilla.com">bwinton@mozilla.com</a><br>
<br>
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