Evolution, the background of messages is always grey

Question

With Evolution 3.6 on Ubuntu 12.10 all the email messages have grey backgrounds in the default theme (and every other one that I have tried). When using grey or black text, which is standard in most themes, the grey background makes it quite hard to read email messages.

Is there a way to correct this behaviour, i.e. have a white background on emails in Evolution as in former version of Ubuntu?

Solution 1

Well I have answered my own question (again). To correct this frankly stupid behaviour by Evolution one needs to go to

~/.config/gtk-3.0/

Inside that folder there should be a file called gtk.css, if not create it.

Add these lines to the file:

/* Black on white for HTML messages in Evolution Reader/Composer */
EMailView WebKitWebView, EMailReader WebKitWebView {
    color: #000000;
    background-color: #ffffff;
}

That's it. Regardless of theme email backgrounds will now be white as oppose to grey.

Taken from this thread on Launchpad

Solution 2

On other distributions based on Debian above won't work (mainly because you will not have elementary). This below resolves problem.

Find in your home holder .config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css and add:

/* Black on white for HTML messages in Evolution Reader/Composer */
/* adjust colour to your liking */
EMailView WebKitWebView, EMailReader WebKitWebView {
    color: #000fff;
    background-color: #fff000;
}

/*****************************
 * FIX EVOLUTION BLACK EMAIL *
 *****************************/
GtkWindow {
     color: @theme_fg_color;
     background-color: @theme_bg_color;
 }
GtkPaned {
     color: @theme_fg_color;

    /* Evolution sets the background color of its mail window to the background
     * color of entries, but cannot handle background images. Setting the
     * background color here doesn't effect real entries, because
     * 'background-image' has precedence.
     */
     background-color: @theme_bg_color;
 }