using a theme that has not been updated for 31 perhaps?

Thanks for the response.

Are you referring to a TB theme or to a Win 7 theme? I changed very few settings in Tools>Options in TB and I only changed the desktop background color in Win 7.

It's odd, because the problem exists on all tabs for the account (eg, Inbox, Drafts, Sent, etc) but if I open a message that's on any of those tabs, the problem isn't there, but it remains on the "home page" window.

Problem persists through multiple cold/warm system reboots and multiple openings/closings of TB.

Start TB in safe mode (hold Shift when you launch TB) and see if the issue remains. If it looks correct, start in safe mode again, but this time check "Reset toolbars & controls" and click "Make changes and restart".

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Safe_mode#Safe_Mode_options

Starting in Safe Mode looks correct. So I restarted using "Reset toolbars/controls" and it was still ok.

But then I customized the toolbar again by removing a few items I don't use (eg, Chat) and added a few (eg, separator lines, Stop, Delete, and Print buttons) and the problem recurred.

Wonder if those extra buttons are "pushing" against the area with the Min/Max/Close symbols resulting in the black on black issue.

Guess I'll reset the toolbar again and leave it alone until this bug gets fixed.

Thanks!

I have a similar set of buttons, but haven't added any separators. If you can add the customizations one-at-a-time, you may find the one(s) that create the problem. You may also have an add-on such as More Layouts or Rise of the Tools that is incompatible with a non-default tool bar.

When I opened TB this morning, the black box was there so I removed just the separators from the TB toolbar, exited, and restarted. The black box disappeared and TB now shows the "normal" min/max/close symbols in the upper right corner on all screens.

Will use it this way to see if that's the work-around.

It's an odd bug in version 31 that didn't exist in the prior version.

THANKS MUCH!

Well that didn't last long. Back to the black box again after closing and then reopening TB.

I'll reset the toolbars and only add things one at a time to see if I can find the offender, or whether it's just the total number of buttons on the toolbar.

o(

I installed V32 and had the "black box" problem. Same with V33. I had a profile for V27 from MOZ and that worked fine. 32 & 33 worked if started in safe mode. Even resetting Firefox (32 & 33) didn't help. BUT, turning off hardware acceleration solved the problem!

Go figure.

Exactly what hardware acceleration did you turn off, in what version of Windows?

But that sounds like a work-around, not a real fix, and what system performance hit did you take by turning off acceleration?

IF it works use it. Workaround? Not really. Some (older particularly) video cards and drivers just don't do acceleration. While it is wonderful for things like streaming video it just does not have much use in the world of static email display.

Periodically the folk that do the Geko rendering engine which Thunderbird and Firefox share turn on Acceleration and weird things happen. In the past I have only heard of fuzzy displays. But poorly rendered objects are also in the realm of possible.

Now having said that when you start either Thunderbird or Firefox in their safe mode it disables third party themes as well as add-ons. Themes are prone to changes in hardware acceleration due to the graphics that make them up and I would be betting on a theme being the case in scifihi's case.

Disabling Hardware acceleration is as simple as setting gfx.direct2d.disabled true and layers.acceleration.disabled true using the Config Editor.

Hero1318: Tools, Options, Advanced. General, Use hardware acceleration when available. Win 7 Pro.

Matt: No, I'm not gonna turn it on to see if it was a coincidence that the lights came back on. You know, just in case it was. :)

As I see it, turning off acceleration is a work-around. It might not be needed for reading email in TB, but it will impact everything else I do on this PC, including video streaming etc.

I'd rather live with the black box in TB since it's only cosmetic than reduce performance in other applications.

Just curious that the latest TB suffers the problem but earlier versions didn't, at least not for me.

Do you video stream in Thunderbird, I know on some occasions RSS feeds contains Video, but they stream fine without acceleration? Your changing Thunderbird settings for Thunderbird.

Hero1318, I thought we were discussing Firefox. I've no problem with Thunderbird. I keep Chrome and IE up to date and can switch to one of those if I need to stream video. And that setting will only affect TB as for probable a decrease in speed. I've seen no hit in my use of Firefox. My laptop does have an i7 core which might make the difference.

Matt, I don't recall streaming video in Thunderbird. As that's not the program to do so. Or so I thought.

I've been talking only" about Thunderbird. I don't use Firefox.

The min/max/close symbols in upper right corner of my inbox are blacked out. As I said, it's cosmetic because I can still click left/center/right of the black box and get it to minimize/maximize/close TB, so it's usable, just annoying.

Why this version has the problem - at least for me with Win 7 Pro+SP1 (32-bit) is a mystery.

Thanks..

@Hero, there is no mystery. Hardware acceleration was turned on in Thunderbird in version 31

I made those 2 changes using Config Editor in Thunderbird, exited and restarted the app. It didn't make any difference.

Min/Max/Close are still obscured by a black box so I put the settings back to their original settings.

Hero1318, apparently we didn't have the same problem. On my system the whole black box that is the open program was black, not just a part of it. I couldn't make any changes unless I started the program in safe mode. Your problem sounds a bit more fine tuned. If it's the only program this happens to you'll probably have a fix the next iteration of the program to come out.