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Custumizable background colors made everything unreadable and unusable. What to do?

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  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by cor-el

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So I fiddled with the background colors and the text last night to get rid of so many bright white backgrounds that I couldn't take anymore. But it didn't work and I made matters even worse by ticking an option that says something like 'Use system colors'. I can't quite remember because now everything is purple after everything became black -- the background and the text; don't ask me how I managed to do that -- and when I highlight the text (which I cannot see but only guess its location) by clicking, holding and dragging the mouse across, I can read some of it but I cannot use a single thing properly anymore. I sometimes manage to get this ghostly presence of a drop down menu to appear but I only see the slide bar and I cannot use it. Simply nothing works!

I have tried to delete and reinstall Firefox, hoping that any settings would disappear and Firefox would be installed with its standard settings, but to no avail. I am typing this with the help of Google Chrome. Nothing wrong with it but I also like to use Firefox, because...well, just because. I use Windows 7.

Is there a fix for this? I presume it has something to to with getting rid of Mozilla files altogether but how? (I have tried.)

So I fiddled with the background colors and the text last night to get rid of so many bright white backgrounds that I couldn't take anymore. But it didn't work and I made matters even worse by ticking an option that says something like 'Use system colors'. I can't quite remember because now everything is purple after everything became black -- the background and the text; don't ask me how I managed to do that -- and when I highlight the text (which I cannot see but only guess its location) by clicking, holding and dragging the mouse across, I can read some of it but I cannot use a single thing properly anymore. I sometimes manage to get this ghostly presence of a drop down menu to appear but I only see the slide bar and I cannot use it. Simply nothing works! I have tried to delete and reinstall Firefox, hoping that any settings would disappear and Firefox would be installed with its standard settings, but to no avail. I am typing this with the help of Google Chrome. Nothing wrong with it but I also like to use Firefox, because...well, just because. I use Windows 7. Is there a fix for this? I presume it has something to to with getting rid of Mozilla files altogether but how? (I have tried.)

Chosen solution

Do you mean you made changes here?

  • Tools > Options > Content : Fonts & Colors > Colors : "Override the colors specified by the page with my selections above"

Can open the about:config page via the location/address bar to check the browser.display.* prefs? You can reset user set (bold) pref(s) via the right-click context menu to the default value to undo changes made.


You can rename (or delete) the prefs.js file to reset all prefs to the default value including prefs set via user.js and prefs that are no longer supported in current Firefox releases.

You can use this button to go to the current Firefox profile folder:

"AppData" (XP: Application Data; Mac: ~/Library; Linux: ~/.mozilla) is a hidden folder.

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NoSquint {web link} NoSquint allows you to adjust the text-only and full-page (both text and images) zoom levels as well as color settings both globally (for all sites) and per site.

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Chosen Solution

Do you mean you made changes here?

  • Tools > Options > Content : Fonts & Colors > Colors : "Override the colors specified by the page with my selections above"

Can open the about:config page via the location/address bar to check the browser.display.* prefs? You can reset user set (bold) pref(s) via the right-click context menu to the default value to undo changes made.


You can rename (or delete) the prefs.js file to reset all prefs to the default value including prefs set via user.js and prefs that are no longer supported in current Firefox releases.

You can use this button to go to the current Firefox profile folder:

"AppData" (XP: Application Data; Mac: ~/Library; Linux: ~/.mozilla) is a hidden folder.