I'm new to ElCapitan (upgrqded from Snow Leopard a couple of days ago) and to TB 52.2.1. I write a lot of messages with in line insertions like this: ---------------- It should look this way [image] not like this [image] --------------- While I am editing the text of my message, the TBird main menu bar at the top of the screen is very dark and transparent, but I can just read that the menu items are: Thunderbird, File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, Options, Tools, Window, Help. If I click on an item such as Insert or Format in this menu, bar it briefly becomes readable (half second?) and then changes to: Thunderbird, File, Edit, View, Go, Events and Tasks, Tools, Window, Help. In other words, the editing items that I want to use (Insert, Format and maybe Options -- I don't know what might be there) vanish because I indicate that I want to use them. What am I doing wrong? Martin