A Mind-Blowing Theme for Firefox

You’d have read about this one in my previous posts, but that is rare cuz this blog is new anyway, so y

ou’d better check out some pictures in my previous post, and if you like the theme, then you can get it here :

DOWNLOAD INCOMPLETE

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since the release of Firefox 3’s RC1, I’d been using the 3rd version of the fox, and it was superb even in those early days… The autocomplete dropdown was excellent, the redefined icons were classy and witty, security was better, and the browser stable. But there was one thing which always came to my, and I am sure, many others’ minds : Nearly Zilch Themes for Fx 3!!!

Things have changed now, but the number is still low, and still there are very few ‘GOOD’ themes for FX, and whatever themes I set my eyes upon were accompanied by a gray box saying :

So… There were two ways : Wait for another 12 months, or change the time limit… I chose the latter, as you’d have read in my previous two posts…

Here is a link to the theme, (which is still in the ‘sandbox’, so you’d have to become a member of addons.mozilla.org for getting the theme), but I’ll notify here when the theme goes public.

DOWNLOAD INCOMPLETE

Hope you enjoy it… And feel free to give your feedback, cuz that will help me make it more ‘Complete’ and help it get out of ‘sandbox’ into the public category.

Technorati Tags: Incomplete,Theme,Firefox,Mozilla,Addons

Making A Firefox Theme : Part 2

As my previous post showed you the basic way to kick-start your mind in the direction of making a good theme, this one tells how I did it.

First of all, I took a Bible-Blue theme by Bodizzle (AMO), and… well… ripped apart the theme to see its entrails… Then, I set off into creating new icons, but soon saw that just the icons would not do enough, so changed the Toolbar background image… After doing some basic icons, I felt satisfied and used it on Firefox (now I’m calling it Fx)… To tell the truth, it was not bad, so i quickly posted it on AMO (addons.mozilla.org), and even though it recieved many glowing reviews, and a 4.3 star rating, I knew, by use, that just changing the icons and toolbar background wasn’t enough. So I set off a bit deeper, and changed some more icons.

By this time, I came to the saturation point (in the field of icons), and knew I had to put my thoughts to CSS. But when I opened the files, it was next to greek… But that was because I had had a long hiatus from any HTML coding. But as I spent one more day, things started becoming clearer, and I tweaked some properties, and released another version at AMO (very prematurely).

Then after some so-so kind of reaction, I dived into CSS full time, and forgot that I was a human, and spent 2 whole days (and half the nights) tweaking every aspect of my theme. But I realized that I didn’t know what every inch of the CSS did, so I used 2 or more themes as a ‘reference’ and compared my CSS to theirs, and found out that I had made a very big mistake in my choice of the base skin… There were many loopholes, and the Bible theme was lacking many features which even the Firefox’s Classic theme had. But since I had already given my theme so much time, there was no point in turning back… Finally I overcame the shock, and after another 2 updates, I finally managed to address much of the designing part, and the theme now is… well… sort of… Complete. (But this is just v1)

Here are some screenshots :

This is the original… not anything to distinguish it from…

Here is a close-up of the toolbar : very plain…

If you think I had done enough to make it look pretty, then look below

This is the current release : very usable, very stable, and of course, very Gorgeous. Reinvented everything from scrollbars, to the dropdown menus…

Come on now… Give it a try… It ain’t tough at all…

Making A Firefox Theme : Part 1

I was inactive for a long long time (by web’s standards), not because I had nothing to write, but because I was involved in a really addicting task of making a Theme.

Sure you know what a theme/skin is cuz that’s why you have come here. So without wasting much time, lets get started.

First, you need to know how a theme works in Firefox. Well, there are ‘basically’ 3 things involved. Images, CSS and XML… You’d be thinking “Shit man… I can’t do this… xml??? what is this???” If you’re thinking something equivalent to that, you are wrong. But for now just forget about those things and read on.

First step is deciding what to create. Once you get a basic picture of your theme, you can do two things : Get a ready-made theme and open it up, edit the CSS and alter images, etc and repackege it. Or make every inch of the theme yourself (which, frankly is a pretty hard proposition… monumental actually… if u r a beginner)

Now, if you get a theme of your choice on the net, download it or get it from your user profile (find it at

%system-drive%\Documents and Settings\(your profile)\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\(your profile)

Alternately, you can use firefox’s default theme (get it in firefox’s folder…)

Now, you’d have noticed that the theme is a .jar file… How do you extract all the files?? Easy… If you have WINRAR, you can directly unpack the files… or you can rename the .jar to .zip and then unzip it normally.

Now normally you’d find 5 folders (can be more)… They contain the files of those components. Now, first to the BROWSER folder. You’d see many icons/images and some CSS files… Confused?? Well, first try changing some Toolbar icons… Remember the resolution of the image though (if the icons are 32x32, and you make a 24x24 icon, the browser won’t look good… So taking care of resolution, edit the files in a GOOD image-editor (not MS Paint… it is one of the worst things around… IMO)… (A tip : USE GUIDES and Grids… It’d help you overcome the situation in which another icons parts encroach upon other’s territories…

Now, once you get involved in creating icons, do it fully. Then turn your attention to the other important part : CSS… If you prefer not changing the font colours and browser colours and behaviour of icons,etc, then you can leave these alone, and proceed to the next step. If you know atleast some HTML, this could get interesting… If you do know how CSS works, then go for it (unless the original  theme is superb).

The CSS files do exactly what they are named… So whatever you want to edit, search that file and find the relevant property and edit the desired line. You can add some more features/properties to the theme if the theme does not have some components.

Now, once you are done with CSS files, come to the root folder where you have the stored the 5 (or more) folders… There would be 2 files : icon.png and preview.png (normally). Edit these to make them look like what you want people to recognize your themes by. Now, edit the install.rdf and contents.rdf files… here you have to edit only 2 or three lines in Install.rdf :

<Description about="urn:mozilla:install-manifest">
    <em:id>extensionname@organization.tld or GUID</em:id>
    <em:version>version-number</em:version>

You can get a UNIQUE GUID for your theme here :

GENERATE GUID

Copy the generated GUID to the place of <em:id>-------</em-id> mentioned earlier.

But you need to give either a GUID or the type mentioned above.

Now scroll a bit lower and edit this line :

<!--
<em:updateURL></em:updateURL>
<em:aboutURL></em:aboutURL>
-->
<!-- Front End Integration Hooks (used by Theme Manager)-->
   <em:internalName>extension-name</em:internalName>
</Description>     

(If you want to specify an external update link, you can specify it here… but if you are posting the theme on addons.mozilla.org (AMO), then you can skip this part. The internal name is the name by which you want firefox to store the theme in your user profile.

Now, come to CONTENTS.rdf, and replace any occurence of the original theme name by your own theme’s INTERNAL NAME… Just see the tags, and you’ll understand what you have to change and what to leave… Its plain english (nearly)

Once you are done, you zip the file (using Winzip/Winrar/ any other software you have) and rename the filename from .zip to .jar

Now Drag the theme from its location to the ‘addons’ window in Firefox. This will install your theme in firefox, see how it is, and if it is good enough, you can post it to AMO…

Best of luck…

The URI schemes in Browsers

You must be very familiar with the page :

about:blank

So what do you think this " about: " is??? A protocol?? A URL?? Nopes... Actually its one of the URI Schemes(Uniform Resource Identifier).

Here are some more about about:

Browser : FIREFOX

about:	See the info about firefox... (Same as clicking on Help>About Mozilla Firefox)
about:blank	A beautiful white backgroung with the fox in pure white ashes... (some people call this as a blank page)
about:mozilla	Verse from The Book Of Mozilla... Read it and you'll see.
about:plugins	See info about all installed plugins
about:about	Lists all the about: addresses. (Not in FF3 as far as I know)
about:logo	See the Firefox Logo
about:cache	One of my favourites... It lists the cache entries on disk and memory... The reason it is my fave is because through this I can Download any song/video from ANY site... (Follow this link to read more)
	DOWNLOAD MUSIC/VIDEOS
about:license/about:licence	See the Official Mozilla Public License (Licence in British English).
about:config	The most useful about:, It lets you configure every inch in firefox... But just don't change anything without thought... It may crash the Browser.
about:blocked	Shows you the page which comes up if FF considers a Web Forgery/ Attack site... But the about:blocked page itselt is harmless...
about:robots	Added in FF3, try it yourself
about:credits	See the FULL credits... See what a big thing this fox is...

Browser : OPERA

Most of the Firefox's URI Schemes are also supported in Opera, but you'll have to replace the about: with opera:

Like :

opera:plugins

One exception is about:blank which is universal.

Browser : IE7

about:tabs shows information about Tabbed browsing (which was MS added in IE7 for the first time)

about:NoAddons displayes list of disabled addons...

There are many more... Try searching for them yourself...

Easter Egg in Firefox

Now you must be already trying out FF3, and yeah I know its pretty intelligent and cool… (slightly buggy though)

Did you ever think where did Isaac Asimov get the inspiration for I Robot?? Maybe he was using a prototype of FF (FF 1 pre-pre-pre-pre.....-pre-Alpha) and he came along this :

But did you find out a bot lurking in the FF3 software? It is actually very friendly and is made of plastic and calls itself ROBOT.

Just type in this in your address bar and interact(!) with the robot.

about:cache

And if you click on the button named "TRY AGAIN" (which you can try only once again!!), the transformation of the label points out that out FFRobot is a bit touchy... See it yourself now in a new tab!

And about the Title : GORT! KLAATU BARADA NIKTO! It actually originates from a science fiction film The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). The command(?) was used to stop the Goat.. er.. Gort from destroying good ol' Earth. (Wiki the term to read more...)

Technorati Tags: Firefox,Easter Eggs,Robots

Firefox makes the World Record

The Mozilla team had thought about scaling a cool 5 Million downloads in 1 day (yeah… 5,000,000 downloads in 3600*24 seconds… nearly 58 downloads-per-second) based on the assumption the Firefox was popular…

What they didn’t know was exactly HOW popular was this fiery fox. Nearly TWICE as much… yeah… Our very beloved FIREFOX 3, grandson of the original Firefox, crossed the 8 MILLION mark on the day of its release… and that’s because the site would have been already clogged for late comers… and guess what?? it crossed the 14 MILLION mark in 72 hours of it’s release (which was Tuesday, 13th June)

Reports of some security flaws, and even my own (small?) grouse about FF3 (that it starts typing in reverse after some Java applications run) haven’t stopped people from drooling over this newbie (which actually has grown smarter and securer than even IE7 or FF2.xx)

Now Mozilla are ready to pack up the data and send it to Guinness World Records, which would be a first-of-its-kind record, and a hard one to break (for some time, atleast).

FIREFOX 3 : Innovation in every vein

After more than 2 years of development, Mozilla released the third installment of Firefox on Tuesday… Though the features did not surprise me, as I had already used the 2 Release Candidates for nearly two-and-a-half months, they are very useful and come handy in fast browsing.

Take the navigation bar itself :

The BACK button is intentionally made larger due to the fact that most people use it much more often that the forward button (shows how many people are retrospective!! *wink*). Though the Glassy effect is due to Vista, the buttons look very neat and polished even on XP/Linux.

Next is a very useful button : Most Visited. It lists all the sites you visit most, thus giving you instant access to your faves without requiring you to type in the address in the address bar.

And yeah… even the address bar is renovated :

It shows the URLs containing the string you are currently typing (even if the string is in the middle of the URL). And remember how you had to access the option to view the security certificates of a site earlier?? That has changed too, as FF3 also shows the Site Information just on the click of a button. As Simple As That.

And a change which may have some mouse-only users confused is the disappearance of the GO button… Instead they would encounter a yellow Star… So What’s this all about?? Actually, there was no need of a GO button when you are not using the address bar… Right?? So Mozilla did this : The Address bar shows the Star button (for bookmarking a site) when you are viewing a page, but as soon as you start writing in the address bar, Voilà, the GO button appears as a blue arrow!!!

And never forget the Password Manager… Better and more non-intrusive… Just go onto a site, an the Username-Password will be kept ready in the required fields… You just have to press Enter.

Another great feature is the library. Just press Ctrl+Shift+H/B and you will see a new window open up showing the Library where you can neatly organise your Bookmarks/History and Tags…

Wait, wait… What are TAGS??

Well, they are exactly what they are anywhere else…. Tag the sites you visit with tags like ‘sports’ ,‘news’, etc and organise them. Later if you don’t remember a site’s name… just recall what it was about and search the relevant tag… And there you are…

Added to these superficial innovations are higher levels of security, where you are actually blocked from a phishing site rather than merely being warned about it. (FF replaces the site’s page with its own Warning page). Similarly you are blocked from any site reported to infect your computer…

Get ready for next generation browsing:  Speedier and Safer