Arch Linux

Try using a different GTK2 theme or if you really like the one you have, you'll have to edit it.

I'm not sure that's the correct answer. When I look closely at Thunderbird, it's not even using a solid color for the folder pane background. Different pixels are different colors. (Try zooming in on the image I posted and you'll see what I mean.) So seems like it's using either some kind of gradient, or perhaps a background image to render that color. I can't imagine that could be coming from my theme.

This is really puzzling. I have no idea what color setting Thunderbird is picking up. There's nothing else on my system that displays in that color.

OK, found a little bit more of a clue. It's not using a background image. Apparently it's displaying the folder pane in some sort of calculated color gradient based on my KDE "View Background" color setting in combination with one or more other colors. (I wasn't able to pin down which one(s).) When I change my "View Background" color from midnight blue to black, the folder pane color changes from an off-blue color to gray. (See: http://www.darose.net/Thunderbird-24.0.png vs. http://www.darose.net/Thunderbird-24.0-alt.png)

Is there no way to restore the previous behavior where folder pane displayed in a solid color?

FYI - received some instructions for a fix in a private email exchange with one of the Thunderbird UI engineers:

"install the ChromEdit extension for Thunderbird here: http://webdesigns.ms11.net/chromeditp.html. That extension allows you to override parts of the UI with CSS.

So after you've installed it, open it up from "Tools" -> "ChromEdit Plus" -> "ChromEdit" and in the "userchrome.css" tab, paste in the following code:

#folderTree, #listPaneBox {
background-image: none !important;
}

And that's it, click "save" and then "restart" and everything should be back to normal. "


BTW, for the record, description of what "broke" is in the following blog post. (Section "6. Folder Pane should have the "sandstone" image overlaid on the background color."):
http://infinite-josiah.blogspot.com/2013/02/thunderbird-ui-concept.html

david - thanks for the help and research, but no need for the add-on.. simply (creating and) putting the css into userChrome.css will do.