Customizing urlbar formatting in Firefox

Question

Firefox 6.0 introduced URL formatting in the address bar, i.e. the domain.tld is black, while protocols, subdomains, and paths are grey. The related about:config entry to enable/disable this feature is browser.urlbar.formatting.enabled. I would like to customize these elements. For example, instead of different colors, make the domain boldface.

My research has only led me to discussions on how to disable this feature, as this was a controversial change in interface. Am I the first person to think of this?

I've inspected the DOM for related CSS selectors, but did not find any attributes specific to the domain or other parts. I also looked through the various XML files (e.g. chrome://browser/content/urlbarBindings.xml#urlbar), but I do not know JavaScript.

I've pasted the related XML/JavaScript code here: http://pastie.org/3122111

Answer 1

Looking here,

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Features/Locationbar_Domain_Highlight -> Implementation section -> Bug 451833 & Bug 654411 -> Bug 654411#c43 -> patch.

See here, is the patch which added the URL highlight feature, it includes complete implementation.

From the second bug it related to nsTextFrameThebes.cpp, that is where they changed the colour itself, the relevant piece of code appears to be

1.12 -  nsILookAndFeel* look = mPresContext->LookAndFeel();
1.13 -  nscolor foreColor;
1.14 -  look->GetColor(nsILookAndFeel::eColor_graytext, foreColor);
1.15 -  *aForeColor = foreColor;
1.16 +  nscolor textColor = GetTextColor();
1.17 +  textColor = NS_RGBA(NS_GET_R(textColor),
1.18 +                      NS_GET_G(textColor),
1.19 +                      NS_GET_B(textColor),
1.20 +                      (PRUint8)(255 * 0.5f));
1.21 +  // Don't use true alpha color for readability.
1.22 +  InitCommonColors();
1.23 +  *aForeColor = NS_ComposeColors(mFrameBackgroundColor, textColor);
1.24  }

So I'm afraid the colour is hardcoded.

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For a test, I added this to userChrome.css which didn't change the colours in Location bar (the domain name is still highlighted; same colours):

* {
  color: black !important;
  opacity: 1 !important;
  -moz-appearance: none !important;
}

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P.s. I'm unfamiliar with the codebase so please feel free to review the mentioned files and check.