Hi,

I have just started looking at K-Meleon and I think it looks great.

I would like to move over to K-Meleon from IE6 on Windows 2000.

Please could you tell me if there is an existing stylesheet that will make web pages displayed in K-Meleon look like those displayed in the default IE6 setup? For example, the Google home page in IE6 shows a 3D search field and 3D buttons, whereas in K-Meleon, they look flat.

And dropdown lists in K-Meleon don't seem to use my system colours, but in IE6 they do. Is there any way to change this?

Thanks for your help.

Regards,
Jonny

I'm using win 2000 and the K-M dropdown menus are the same as my system colours
Google search box and buttons look the same on both except for the slightly different geometry to the page layout but that is a normal difference between gecko and internet explorer.

I don't see how that could be changed on a per site basis

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

On my IE6, the Google buttons and text field look like those you would get anywhere on the system (e.g. message boxes, file dialogs etc.). But K-M seems to have its own style for these. This is what I wanted to change.

As for the dropdown menu, it appears to be using the system colours until I actually click on it, then the background colour of the dropped down list changes to a colour which renders the foreground text of the list items unreadable.

I have poor eyesight, and accessibility options in applications (not just in browsers) is often a problem for me. The only solution would be for developers to make every control type have configurable colours in every application, using the system colours as a starting point. But this is usually not a priority for developers, who often assume that everyone will be using black text on a white background. It may also not even be possible if applications are using third party controls. The worst case is when developers hardcode some colours but not others, which I believe is what may be happening with the dropdown list in K-M.

Regards,
Jonny

Jonny,

What you describe is not normal. Your km installation may be broken. Try to uninstall and reinstall it. If that doesn't help, redownload the installation package - it might be corrupt.

PS: Are you sure it's not your profile? Have you tweaked any user styles?

Hi,

I figured out why the dropdown list background changed colour when I clicked on it. I had to set:

browser.display.focus_background_color
browser.display.focus_text_color

to the desired colours, and then set:

browser.display.use_focus_colors

to "true".

As far as the Google buttons are concerned, they do look like other Windows buttons when K-M is first installed and the Google page is displayed using its own colours. But once I change the K-M settings to use my system colours, the Google buttons look different to the rest of the Windows buttons. They no longer have a 3D effect. This applies to all buttons on all websites.

I suppose there must be a CSS solution, which is why I was wondering if anyone had created a stylesheet to keep controls looking the way they do in IE.

But I am happy with the way things are at the moment. It will just take a bit of getting used to, as I have been using IE for the last few years. But so far, K-M seems to be very customizable and very fast, so I intend to continue using it.

Thanks for your help.

Regards,
Jonny

Hi Instead of altering settings in about:config maybe you can apply styles in K-M's usercontent.css which might work better for your needs
There's knowledgeable people here who could help you with code for that if you say exactly what you want

Jonny, thanks for the clarification. It would have been easier for us if you had mentioned your tweaking right at the beginning.

OK, what I can tell is that when you set browser.display.use_focus_colors to true, then this will also affect dropdown lists. I think that's correct since the focus colors are meant to help you finding the currently active input element.

However, when you set browser.display.use_document_colors to false, the effect on buttons and dropdown lists doesn't make sense to me. I think that's a Mozilla bug (SeaMonkey behaves the same way).

As an alternative, I can offer you a couple of CSS rules. Open Edit > Configuration > User-Defined StyleSheet and paste the following:

/*
 * disable background images
 */
  html * { background-image: none !important; }

/*
 * use system colors instead of document colors
 */
  body * { color: inherit !important; background-color: transparent !important; border-color: inherit !important; }
  html > *, input, select, textarea { color: WindowText !important; background-color: Window !important; }
  button, input[type="button"], input[type="reset"], input[type="submit"] { color: ButtonText !important; background-color: ButtonFace !important; }

/*
 * set link colors
 */
  a:link { color: blue !important; border-color: blue !important; }
  a:visited { color: purple !important; border-color: purple !important; }
  a:active { color: red !important; border-color: red !important; }
  a:hover { color: red !important; border-color: red !important; }

You have to restart km to make changes take effect.

These rules have pretty the same effect as setting browser.display.use_document_colors to false (you have to set it to true again), but don't have that strange effect on buttons and dropdown lists. You may change the link colors to your liking. You can also combine these rules with focus colors.

Hi,

Thanks for taking the time to do this. Even at this early stage of using K-M, I can see that its customizable nature is really going to help me.

Regards,
Jonny

Quote
kko
Jonny, thanks for the clarification. It would have been easier for us if you had mentioned your tweaking right at the beginning.

OK, what I can tell is that when you set browser.display.use_focus_colors to true, then this will also affect dropdown lists. I think that's correct since the focus colors are meant to help you finding the currently active input element.

However, when you set browser.display.use_document_colors to false, the effect on buttons and dropdown lists doesn't make sense to me. I think that's a Mozilla bug (SeaMonkey behaves the same way).

As an alternative, I can offer you a couple of CSS rules. Open Edit > Configuration > User-Defined StyleSheet and paste the following:

/*
 * disable background images
 */
  html * { background-image: none !important; }

/*
 * use system colors instead of document colors
 */
  body * { color: inherit !important; background-color: transparent !important; border-color: inherit !important; }
  html > *, input, select, textarea { color: WindowText !important; background-color: Window !important; }
  button, input[type="button"], input[type="reset"], input[type="submit"] { color: ButtonText !important; background-color: ButtonFace !important; }

/*
 * set link colors
 */
  a:link { color: blue !important; border-color: blue !important; }
  a:visited { color: purple !important; border-color: purple !important; }
  a:active { color: red !important; border-color: red !important; }
  a:hover { color: red !important; border-color: red !important; }

You have to restart km to make changes take effect.

These rules have pretty the same effect as setting browser.display.use_document_colors to false (you have to set it to true again), but don't have that strange effect on buttons and dropdown lists. You may change the link colors to your liking. You can also combine these rules with focus colors.