I'm using Fluxbox. VSIDO pretty much out of the box (Debian 3.14.9-1 (2014-06-30)).

In terminal,

wmctrl -m

returns

Name: Fluxbox
Class: N/A
PID: N/A
Window Manager's "showing the desktop" mode: N/A

So yeah the "xfce" references are odd.

Thanks for your replies!

Based on your latest reply, I found a thread here at vsido.org on a very similar problem (he was able to scroll over the menu item and read it, but I wasn't able to do that): "Topic: Iceweasel problem [ SOLVED ]" http://vsido.org/index.php?topic=621.0

Then I went to

https://wiki.debian.org/Iceweasel#Troubleshooting

Following instructions there, opened terminal and ran:

MOZILLA_DISABLE_PLUGINS=1 iceweasel -safe-mode

This gives the option to "Reset Iceweasel" or "Start in Safe Mode" (easy pz, but I could no longer read the dropdown menu text in my existing Iceweasel or I could have seen the Help/Restart menu item, which does the same thing. Score +1 for the command line.).

I chose "Safe Mode."

The dropdown menu text wasn't washed out to the point of illegibility anymore. So, according to the wiki.debian Iceweasel document, "one of the installed extensions is the root cause of the problem." The only thing I'd added to the default add-ons had been Lastpass.

Having copied the suspect .mozilla folder to the desktop, I went into .mozilla/firefox/*.default folder, and copied the bookmarkbackups file. Then I pasted that into the newly reset Iceweasel home/.mozilla/firefox folder.

That preserved my history too.

But when I ran the safe mode Restart option command line, I got some errors reported in the terminal, which, as you mentioned, are Gtk theme related.:

(process:22549): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_slice_set_config: assertion 'sys_page_size == 0' failed

(iceweasel:22549): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "xfce",

(iceweasel:22549): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "xfce",

(process:22549): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_slice_set_config: assertion 'sys_page_size == 0' failed

(iceweasel:22549): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "xfce",

(iceweasel:22549): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "xfce",
Error: The name org.freedesktop.UPower was not provided by any .service files

ADDENDUM

I used the "Safe Mode" just to see if the problem went away. It did. So then I used "Reset" and copied bookmarkbackups afterward.

Thanks for the reply.

I changed the Widget in LXAppearance. I restarted. Looks like Iceweasel is the only app now with this behavior of whited-out menu text.

Apps that have the problem:
Iceweasel

Apps that don't:
SpaceFM
Audacity
Bleachbit
Medit
System Information
Xarchiver
Mirage
FileZilla
GMusicBrowser
[That's all I verified.]

Hi,

I tried to install Hotot Twitter client via Synaptic. Was told there were some missing packages, they couldn't be retrieved from the servers (I get that a lot). Installed anyway. Now the text options in my dropdown  menus in Iceweasel and Audacity are greyed out or even whited out. I removed Hotot via Synaptic. Still have the problem. What happened?

Any suggestions on diagnosis steps I can take or on a fix?

Thanks!