15

The tab bar in Orion appears dimmed, making it difficult to identify the currently opened tab. Despite faint highlighting, all tabs have a uniform tone, unlike Safari.

Replication Steps:

  1. Open Orion browser.
  2. Observe the tab bar's dimmed appearance.
  3. Attempt to differentiate the currently opened tab from others.
    Orion:

Expected Functionality:
The tab bar should offer consistent visibility, with the currently opened tab clearly distinguished for easy navigation, similar to Safari's functionality.
Safari:

Version 0.99.127.2-beta (WebKit 619.1.1)

Sonoma (14)

  • dino replied to this.

    When opening a new window, the appearance of the tab bar in “Standard” layout is very dark. This is present in macOS light and dark system appearances, though it especially affects the low contrast of colors in dark mode. A workaround exists to bring back expected behavior.

    To replicate issue:

    1. Open a new Orion browser window with Standard tab layout already selected.
    2. Open a couple new tabs in the same window.
    3. Observe the tab bar—its appearance will be very dark. (You can flip between macOS light mode and dark mode at this point to see the issue both ways.)

    To replicate workaround/compare incorrect and correct:

    1. With the first example window still open, open tab settings at Orion ‣ Preferences… ‣ Tabs.
    2. Choose “Compact” layout, then switch back to “Standard” layout—the first example window’s tab bar will now be displayed in its correct, brighter appearance.
    3. Open a second new window—only this second window will be very dark, while the first window retains the expected appearance.

    Extra details:

    • The same behavior appears when using either a keyboard shortcut (⌘N) or a “File ‣ New Window” command. This also occurs in private windows, both ways.
    • I have View ‣ Always Show Tab Bar enabled when only one tab is present in a window.
    • The URL is irrelevant—this looks like a browser chrome issue.
    • I disabled all extensions and made a new profile to test this.

    Attachments:
    In the video, the left is incorrect and the right is correct. I also attached static images for comparison.




    The tab bar should have the correct appearance when opening a new window. No workaround should be necessary to restore the expected appearance.

    0.99.127.2-beta

    Catalina (10.15)

      Merged 3 posts from Standard tab bar appears too dark when opening a new window.

        I tend to use multiple Orion windows across 2 screens and use Orion's Low Power Mode to auto-suspend inactive tabs.

        However, I find that when an Orion window is out of focus, it can be particularly difficult to read tab titles/icons of suspended tabs (with them being close to unreadable on a low-PPI display with poorer colors compared to a Retina display).

        Vertical tabs:

        Horizontal tabs:

        Could the grayscaling of suspended tabs use a brighter shade (but still dimmed) to make them more visible? Alternatively, Orion could mimic the behaviour of Firefox when only the favicon is dimmed to indicate a suspended tab.

        • Vlad replied to this.

          nnyms This is a duplicate, can you help find the original o i can merge

              Leirk marked this discussion as a potential duplicate of
              . A moderator will investigate shortly.

                @Vlad @Leirk If I understand it correctly, the mentioned post is related to a bug about a slightly different issue.

                To summarize, I see 4 cases:

                1. A focused window with no suspended tabs. This to me is perfectly fine, though in the mentioned post it seems to be dimmed due a bug.

                2. An out-of-focus window with no suspended tabs. I feel this would benefit from colored favicons and increased brightness (but still dimmed to differentiate it from a focused window), though I still find it readable in its current state.

                3. A focused window with some suspended tabs. This to me is also fine, normal tabs are not dimmed and have full color favicons, and suspended tabs are dimmed.

                4. An out-of-focus window with some suspended tabs. This case is the reason for my post - I find the suspended tabs to be borderline unreadable on my low-PPI display.

                  An alternative solution may be to emulate what Chromium does when it puts tabs to sleep (see screenshot from linked article).

                  Chromium makes changes to the tab favicon, as well as very slightly dimming the tab. It is likely they decided on this approach so that users can more easily tell if a pinned tab is sleeping/suspended (because pinned tabs only show the site favicon) or for cases where many tabs are open (see above image).

                  Merged 5 posts from Improve visibility of suspended tabs when window is out of focus.

                    nnyms I’d agree that this might be two separate-but-related issues. @Leirk’s original issue about all tabs being too dim seems to make dimmed suspended tabs that @nnyms reported even dimmer.

                    Screenshot attached, hopefully showing both cases in one window.

                        Leirk @johnmatula can you please help us to get relible steps to reproduce this locally? We are aware about suspended tab UI issue, but we are unable to reproduce the issue where whole tab bar is getting dimmed, so we need your help.

                            dino Yep, happy to help!

                            First, I followed these steps: I created a new test user on my Mac, opened Orion (keeping in mind that the “standard” tab layout is the default setting), and… the dimmed tab bar was already visible.

                            If it helps, I also attached two samples of my Orion process:

                            • orion_a_newwin.txt: I open a new Orion window.

                              • Pre-condition: Orion app is running with zero browser windows open.
                              • Action: I open one new browser window.
                              • End: Sample ends with one browser window open with issue visible.

                            • orion_b_prefs.txt: I toggle between tab layout Preferences—from default-selected Standard, to Compact, to explicitly-selected Standard.

                              • Pre-condition: One Orion browser window open (with issue visible, for me) and Orion Tabs preference pane is open.
                              • Action: I focused the preference pane where “standard” was selected by default. I click “compact,” which changes the tab bar’s layout. I then immediately click “standard,” which changes the tab bar’s layout again.
                              • End: Sample ends with one Orion browser window showing expected, undimmed tab bar.

                            Any other info I can send?

                            orion-a-newwin.txt
                            930kB
                            orion-b-prefs.txt
                            770kB
                              7 days later
                              14 days later
                              No one is typing