Toolbar and menu entries white instead of gray

[Sirtel]

I finally updated from 6.10 to 6.19. The background color of the toolbar and the context menus is now blindingly white instead of gray, I'm guessing because of the Qt update in 6.12. This makes Calibre very hard to use for me. I can't use the dark mode either, as I can read light text on a dark background only for a short while, then my eyes get tired.

In short, is there some way or plugin to change the background color of the toolbars and menus? I searched, but it seems there isn't. Which would mean I'd have to stick to pre-6.12 versions from now on.

[kovidgoyal]

This is on what OS?

[Quoth]

6.17 seems OK. That's what I'm still on as I often don't update (anything) unless there are bugs or security issues fixed that affect me. It's vanishingly rare that there are new features I want. Updates to Thunderbird, LO Writer, Firefox, The Gimp etc have either completely disabled features I use or broke features I use. Though The Gimp and LO Writer have workarounds (different scanner plug-in and no floating toolbars in LO Writer). Then there is Windows, downhill slope after 2003 with Vista. Crazy Win8 & Win10. People expected to buy Win7, when it's only a fix of Vista. So December 2016 I stopped using windows for everyday work.

Lack of testing, Incremental and rapid updates are to blame. Firefox is one of the worst. At 114 on my system and less functional and worse GUI than version 50 or something. Thunderbird after V91 is unable to use system theme and instead uses braindead Firefox style. Mozilla is clueless about GUIs.

And almost all issues with Calibre have been forced on Kovid by stupid QT design decisions or Browser Engine decisions outside his control. It was a bad day when Nokia bought Trolltech (QT), though since sold again. Most of the top talent left.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

This is on what OS?

Windows 10, sorry.

[kovidgoyal]

Are you using the system user interface style? try switching it back to the calibre style if so under preferences->look & feel or vice versa.

[BetterRed]

Try setting Prefs->Look & feel->Main interface->User interface style
to calibre-style

BR

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Are you using the system user interface style? try switching it back to the calibre style if so under preferences->look & feel or vice versa.

Used system before, but now I tried both. The toolbar background is grey with the calibre style, but the background of the context menus is still white. Well, I guess it's better than nothing, although I'd love the background to be light grey in the menus as well.

[Comfy.n]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I finally updated from 6.10 to 6.19. The background color of the toolbar and the context menus is now blindingly white instead of gray, I'm guessing because of the Qt update in 6.12. This makes Calibre very hard to use for me. I can't use the dark mode either, as I can read light text on a dark background only for a short while, then my eyes get tired.

In short, is there some way or plugin to change the background color of the toolbars and menus? I searched, but it seems there isn't. Which would mean I'd have to stick to pre-6.12 versions from now on.

Background colors are a big issue for me, and I think that's one of the reasons I have migrated to using dark style in Calibre, main one being that the Viewer follows the general color scheme - and in the viewer the dark style looks perfect to me.

When browsing the web, I tend to create usertyles for the sites I read more often, like this one for Mobileread:

@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);
@-moz-document domain("mobileread.com") {
body{background:#D9D9E0!important}
}

And for programs that allow unrestricted background customization (e.g. Xchange Editor, Vivaldi), lately I found #c5cbd5 to be a nice fit.

I remember I mentioned here something like that before, before migrating. The menu items in Calibre are always #FFFFFF (blindingly white), either using the System Default UI style or Calibre's Light Theme (which is mainly #F0F0F0).

Attached some illustrating screenshots:

Calibre UI style: system default


Calibre UI style: Calibre's light palette


Xchange:


Vivaldi:


I also change PDF backgrounds with Xchange Editor and it was interesting that i was troubleshooting a Chromium browser "Save as PDF" background issue when i saw your post. For PDFs I use something like #f4f4fd or #fffdf4 ("hygge").