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I want to change background color of Thunderbird start page from white to medium gray, hard on my eyes now

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Hello, I have bad eyesight. I would like to be able to change the background color of my Thunderbird start page message pane windows from stark white to whatever hex color I desire. Such as medium gray which causes much less eye strain. If its in the code how would I access that? And I believe this would be an optional feature that many people with eye problems would truly appreciate. Thanks for any help with this.

Hello, I have bad eyesight. I would like to be able to change the background color of my Thunderbird start page message pane windows from stark white to whatever hex color I desire. Such as medium gray which causes much less eye strain. If its in the code how would I access that? And I believe this would be an optional feature that many people with eye problems would truly appreciate. Thanks for any help with this.

All Replies (4)

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What do you mean by "start page"? What we would normally refer to as a start page shows only until you start reading messages, so it's not clear why it would give you trouble.

I suspect that you are talking about the message list. The easiest thing to do would be to apply a theme, assuming one can be found that provides a suitable colour scheme. Otherwise you could create a userChrome.css file where you can override the usual colours. A related file, userContent.css, can be used to override the colours in messages themselves.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.php?title=UserChrome.css&printable=yes

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Yes thank you Zenos, You are correct I was referring to the message list and messages themselves.

I will attempt to create a userChrome.css file and go from there.

As a related question, are the available Thunderbird themes editable by me or are they locked up by their creators?

Thank you for your help.

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I have just looked at a theme to check. You download an .xpi file which is effectively a zipped archive. You can open that (change its extension to .zip if that helps) and edit the contents, rename to .xpi then apply (i.e. install) it.

The one I have just looked at (Nautopolis) is chock full of css files. Your problem may be to identify which are relevant to your needs.

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Thank you for the information and tips Zenos. I will be into this new adventure over the next week.

Truly appreciate your assistance, have a great day.  :o)