The dropdown styled before dark mode existed
A rule written for one old finding forced white option lists, and on Windows a fixed background beats the colour scheme. Two rows honestly marked not fixed.
Two rows from the previous round of testing came back marked still not fixed, in a column where everything else said fixed. That is the honest outcome and it is worth more than a tidy sheet. We had reported both as done. Both were done on the machines we checked them on and not on the tester’s.
The first was a dropdown. Months ago a finding said the options in a select box were unreadable, and the fix was one rule: dark text on a white background for every option. It was correct at the time, because the back office was lighter then. The office has since moved to a proper dark theme, declared to the browser as a colour scheme so that native controls draw themselves to match. On a Mac that was enough and the old rule was harmless. On Windows an explicit background wins over the scheme, so every option list opened white, with the dark theme’s pale text on it. The old rule now names the theme’s own surface colour instead of a fixed white, and the list draws the same on both.
The second was two empty boxes
A staff profile has nine numeric boxes, each meant to show an example of what goes in it, such as a typical overtime multiplier or the longest booking the person will take. The table of examples had seven entries. The two boxes added last had nothing in them, and the tester said so twice. Nine boxes have nine examples now.
The pattern in both is a fix made for the screen in front of you. A colour written as a number is right until the palette around it moves. A table of hints is complete until somebody adds a field. The retest column exists because the person who wrote the fix is the last person who will notice it has gone stale, and a tester who writes still not fixed when it is still not fixed is doing the job properly.