Custom font color and selecting other font colors in Beta 68.0b4

Thunderbird Beta
#1

This might be two separate issues, or they might be related.

  1. Customized Font Color for Composing Emails doesn’t work. I have set it up to use BLUE color for my emails. It worked in my previous regular version of Thunderbird. But in Beta 68.04b, it always ends up being a black font, unless I change it manually every time. My customized font color set in Tools - Options - Composition doesn’t have any effect.

  2. Selecting a different font color on the fly now demands an extra click, which seems totally unnecessary. When I select a different font color, I am first presented with only two options:
    a) Use the previously selected color, or
    b) Click on a black band. When I click on the black band, the system then presents me with all the other color options. Why demand that additional click to select another color? Why not simply display all the color options right away as soon as I click on the font color? I am clicking on the “Font color” in order to select a different color, so why not immediately display all the available colors? That’s the way it has always worked in the past. Inserting an intermediate step is unnecessary and irritating.

It’s very nice to have the option to simply select the previously used color. But that option could simply be added to the window that displays all the other color options.

1 Like
#2

I second that, the Font Color dialog introduced at some point in beta is not as user friendly as before and it requires the extra click every time a new color is required.

#3

The option to use the previously selected color is there if you click the “Last-picked color” button which should be filled with that color.

#4

Hi Walt, that’s right - but that only applies to “last-picked color”, whenever we need a new color there is the need to go through extra steps once in the “Text color” dialog (it’s actually two extra clicks, not just one as emilio2000 pointed out):

  1. click “Choose a color”
  2. click again on the color wheel
  3. click “Select”
  4. click again on “OK” to close the “Text color” dialog

From the usability point of view we should have the “last-picked color” and the color wheel available in a single dialog. Taking this further, would be event better if we have the option to predefine a small set of colors.

I’m not sure what is the use case for @emilio2000, but for us it’s highlighting responses when replying with inline comments within the original message body (that’s what some clients expect and are used to). In our case that’s usually using 2 colors in a message, which means the extra clicks that may not be a big issue on a desktop, but on a laptop with a touchpad having to move the pointer between several dialogs is really troublesome.

#5

Just to clarify why I need to change
text colors for almost every email. There might not be such a
need for it if other things worked better in Thunderbird.

  What I would really like is

for ** the text of older quoted emails to remain unchanged in its
original color.** I use BLUE for all my own outgoing text.
Most other people use BLACK. A lady I know uses PURPLE. When we
are in an email “conversation”, quoting each other’s messages, it
is then obvious at a glance who said what. Well, at least that’s
how it SHOULD be. But it doesn’t seem to work that way.

  Someone sends me an email all in BLACK.  When I reply to it, I

have set up BLUE as my default. But then suddenly EVERYTHING
TURNS BLUE, including my friend’s email that is quoted under my
email. So, to preserve the original color integrity, I then have
to change my friend’s text back to its original color.

  For some unknown reason, in some cases, the original color of the

older text does stay BLACK, but not always. But, in MOST cases,
it all turns to blue. Not only does the COLOR of the quoted text
change to BLUE, but also ** my friend’s font changes from the
original** to the one that I chose as a default for MY
emails.

  **Why doesn't the quoted text stay true to its original?**        Why

does it change to my preferred font and color? I thought my
preferred setting was meant only for my outgoing text . It
shouldn’t change the text that I am replying to.

  In the case of THIS email, **tomct's** font was automatically

changed from a sans-serif font to Bookman Old Style
(which is my preferred font). See the quoted text below.
Interestingly, most of tomct’s color did stay black, but
his numbered list below was changed to blue. Why? My font
preferences shouldn’t change his. By the way, this is the first
time that I’ve seen only a part of the text changed color. In
most cases, everything I quote turns blue!

  Emilio2000