The discussion revolves around the “show user menu avatars” setting and its unintended effects on UI colors and styles. RGJ notes that enabling this setting changes the boldness of usernames and link colors, and causes visual glitches when exiting hover states on dark themes—particularly when opening notifications in a new tab. awesomerobot confirms these effects occur in the notification dropdown and in light mode, suggesting they are intentional for accessibility, as focus states should persist when links are opened in new tabs. While the behavior is expected, there is a suggestion to improve the visual appearance of these focus states.
The “show user menu avatars” setting seems to affect more colors and styles than expected. Note the bold style on the username and the color of the links. Top image is with “show user menu avatars” enabled, bottom image it is disabled.
Additionally, this seems to cause weird effects when leaving a hover state on a dark color scheme, for instance when the right mouse button is pressed and the notification is opened in a different tab.
I believe this aspect is intentional, it happens in the notification dropdown as well
Like this?
I think this is intentional too, light mode does the same thing:
Perhaps we can improve the visuals of this state… but this is the focus state of the link which, for accessibility purposes, is expected to remain when opening a link in a new tab.
