The screenshots were reordered after submitting this report. 

First screenshot = "Screenshot from 2016-03-18 19-58-19.png". 
Second screenshot = "Screenshot from 2016-03-18 20-26-50.png". 
Third screenshot = "Screenshot from 2016-03-18 20-00-23.png"
Fourth screenshot = "Screenshot from 2016-03-18 20-32-48.png"

I think the dev build mentioned in the initial report did not have a4db9673a67b98e1bdd7adeb1a866b3e940593ba which should fix this issue.

Thanks. I tested the latest dev (51.0.2687.0 dev) and certainly the Classic theme has been fixed. However, the GTK theme still has the same issue. Do you know if there is an upcoming improvement?

what's wrong with the GTK theme? It's not clear to me what you want changed. The background color seems perfectly suitable imho.

I attach a screenshot with and without incognito mode using GTK theme. I think the contrast between background color of tabs and their text is not sufficient to make it easily readable. I also upload an image with annotations to describe this better.

Hope that helps.

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thanks. I think this is pretty low priority because

a) it's only a little bad, and only because contrast is not sufficiently high
b) it might be hard to fix this in a way that creates a general improvement across all gtk themes

That's okay as long as you're aware of this issue. Fortunately, the classic theme is pretty usable. The only drawback is that "Use GTK+ theme" is set as default, so this change could surprise users.

This issue has been available for more than 365 days, and should be re-evaluated. Please re-triage this issue.
The Hotlist-Recharge-Cold label is applied for tracking purposes, and should not be removed after re-triaging the issue.

For more details visit https://www.chromium.org/issue-tracking/autotriage - Your friendly Sheriffbot

> a) it's only a little bad, and only because contrast is not sufficiently high

With a dark GTK theme it's way more than a little bad, it's almost unusable. I challenge you to find the active tab in this screenshot in less than 2 seconds.

b) it might be hard to fix this in a way that creates a general improvement across all gtk themes

If using the "notebook tab" and "notebook tab:hover" for inactive tabs and the toolbar/active tab, respectively, is not acceptable (and I don't see why it wouldn't), then I have at least 2 suggestions for ensuring there is enough contrast:

 (i) either subtract an absolute value from the R, G and B values of the active tab/toolbar instead of multiplying them by .8 or whatever you're using; or
 (ii) if the theme is dark (there already exists an IsDark() function in the Chromium GTK integration logic) then lighten the inactive tabs instead of darkening them.

Assuming you start with 20% gray, there is much better contrast between 20% gray and 20% + (100% - 20%) * some_coefficient than between 20% and 20% * some_coefficient. Just sayin'.

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> (i) either subtract an absolute value from the R, G and B values of the active tab/toolbar instead of multiplying them by .8 or whatever you're using

That will not work because some themes use the same color for active and inactive notebook tabs (screenshot)

> (ii) if the theme is dark (there already exists an IsDark() function in the Chromium GTK integration logic) then lighten the inactive tabs instead of darkening them.

estade@ what do you think about this?  The screenshot from c#11 looks pretty bad imo

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Meant to reply to this in place of (i)

> If using the "notebook tab" and "notebook tab:hover" for inactive tabs and the toolbar/active tab, respectively, is not acceptable 

> That will not work because some themes use the same color for active and inactive notebook tabs (screenshot)

I totally understand your concern (and it's essentially the exact symptom this issue is addressing) but themes are a user choice. If the user feels that identifying the active tab is unimportant to him, then let him have his wish. :o) I am actually using such a theme myself and I went on and manually edited the theme, so now all active tabs everywhere in Gnome are much more visible. Except Chrome, of course.

But because I understand most people won't go to the length that I have and because Chrome seems to take a pretty strong position regarding deriving inactive colors from active ones, I proposed the other alternative. It's essentially similar to applying a negative filter to what happens with a light theme.

And, BTW, thanks for the quick answer.

What do native tabs look like in this theme? With many themes I actually have way more difficulty finding the active tab in my gnome terminal than in Chrome, which calls the functional argument into question. "If the user feels that identifying the active tab is unimportant to him" seems like a straw man; what user would consciously declare this stance? I'm much more concerned with the imperfections inherent in taking colors meant for one set of UI elements and mapping them onto a different set of UI elements.

re #12: I don't think lightening instead of darkening the bg tabs will help visibility and will look good, but if someone wants to try that and we find it improves more themes than it hurts, then I wouldn't be against it. It wouldn't be easy to find the active tab in that screenshot on any theme because the tabstrip is extremely wide yet still overstuffed with tabs to the point that the tab title text becomes near worthless.

> What do native tabs look like in this theme?

Originally, they looked almost exactly as the ones from Thomas' screenshot: same as inactive ones but with a bright underline. I understand Chrome doesn't do that, so I'm not asking for it. Right now though, I've edited the theme and made the active tab significantly brighter than inactive ones (and added borders).

> I'm much more concerned with the imperfections inherent in taking colors meant for one set of UI elements and mapping them onto a different set of UI elements.

I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at here. Aren't Chrome tabs conceptually the same type of UI element as e.g. terminal tabs?

> I don't think lightening instead of darkening the bg tabs will help visibility [...].

I'm pretty sure it will (in fact this is what I did with my theme). Think of it this way: with a bright theme you take a bright color (active tab color) and go let's say 20% of the way to black. Assuming you start with 200 (light gray), that gets you close to 160, so the delta is ~40. Applying the same logic to a dark color will get you from, say, 50 (dark gray) to 40, so a delta of ~10.

What I'm proposing is going from this 50 some 20% of the way to white, so a delta of +40 instead of the current -10. If for some reason you believe it won't look good because the active tab is darker than the inactive ones (in my mind they're just "grayed out"), then apply my proposed logic to produce the 2 colors and use the brighter one for the active tab and the darker one for inactive tabs. I don't care much as long as they can be distinguished from one another.

> It wouldn't be easy to find the active tab in that screenshot on any theme because the tabstrip is extremely wide yet still overstuffed with tabs to the point that the tab title text becomes near worthless.

I've been using Chrome since before it launched, with the classic theme and a number of graphic ones (which I picked for having reasonable contrast for the active tab) and I've always had tens of tabs open. I don't mind not being able to read the (full) title, I use the favicons and keep track of relative tab positions (e.g. previous tab was 2 tabs to the right of the current one). But if I can't locate the active tab then my whole system goes out the window.

Anyone willing to pick this up? It's a simple change and it isn't as controversial as it may appear at first sight.

Any takers? Please? :o)