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Mozilla Theme Builder Released
icqqm writes: "The people from AlphaNumerica have released their Mozilla theme builder which, of course, runs in Mozilla itself. Looks MUCH easier to use than the horribly complicated instructions fot XML files on Netscape's site" Note that it doesn't work with current builds, but it ought to once the dust settles a bit. I've been using Mozilla more than Navigator these days... Still want to get Galeon working since it looks to be a lot more slimmed down.
if this is marketing speak, then use arguments to disprove mine.
cylab
The Taco writes: I've been using Mozilla more then Navigator these days..
I don't see how. I've been trying to use the latest (what are we up to now -- M17?), but it's not nearly up to snuff yet. Its worst problem is that it dumps core on a regular basis. It also has other nagging problems, but I could probably live with them if the app didn't die every ten minutes.
On the other hand, I can say that Mozilla is clearly improving steadily; I've seen a marked increase in useability over each of the past three or four milestone releases. I like Mozilla and can't wait to try my hand at skinning it. But it's just not quite dogfood quality yet.
--Jim
Fuck off, troll, or I'll rip your colon out through your mouth.
Troll? I think you've got the wrong foot-fetishist. I happen to be a Karma Whore.
--Shoeboy
No, the best way to read slashdot is with links. See http://links.sourceforge.net. It rocks, I could never go back to lynx again. Just make sure you know about the menu using escape ;)
True, too bad it uses the transfer manager though. I think it would have been better using a program not needing X11/GTK+/GNOME-libraries. Then all effort would be concentrated to one progam instead of two (we will always need the shell...) The transfer manager could then be used as a frontend to this shellprogram/server.
The backend could still use CORBA though, but I also think the bonobo part should be abstracted from the GNOME project. That would make it even more usable for people not wanting to use either GNOME or KDE and probably form a standard for the unix-world! (not strictly to be used only for X).
a hardware accelerated Mozilla card, so that I can plug it in my computer and run Mozilla without wasting all my cpu time and memory?
:)
I think this is a big business opportunity!
---- Email is reversed
But i betcha most of that is shared memory with other apps.
Duh. When will people learn to read the output of top?
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Peter
The only good thing about the cromes released is that I can make mozilla look like the old netscape.
But on another note: Why the hell does the windows binary of mozilla consume over 30Mb of mem while iexplorer takes 7,8Mb? The thing is fucking bloated if you ask me....The old netscape used only 10Mb. And there is no obvious difference in functionality...
Ok...no need to call me a troll because of what I just said. Just frustrated that's all. (Cause I hate to see borg win)
Lothar
I wasn't going to rant here, I wasn't. No, really!
naden, you hit on a topic that's been scaring the heck out of me considering who is really running the Mozilla show. Yes, I have read many a lecture and been provided numbers of arguments that pointed out for me how Mozilla was not Netscape or AOL, but a truly independant entity. These were all good arguments mind you, but I still have my doubts.
Clue #1: Netscape home page turned into pop up ad hell, designed to look like the Mozilla default skin.
Clue #2: Why was theming so important all this time? As cool as this is the whole process of plugging it in and making it work (even with XUL in the play) could have waited until Moz 2.0. Unless a certain service provider needed a way to expand what platforms their software ran on. A simple browser couldn't do that.
Clue #3: Moz is going to have a mail client. You can love it or hate it, it's in there. For folks, such as myself, it needed to be in order to fully replace NS 4.7. Thing is, somewhere along the line it was decided that they didn't have time to implement LDAP into the address book. This rather upset me, as I utilize this at my office where folks mostly use NS 4.x for mail. Even being upset I can appreciate time constraints. I'm just wondering why 3 months of development has instead been going into working on AOL's addressing schema. All the while, only one indvidual has been doing any work with the open standard LDAP.
There's a good bit more that's still nagging at me about AOL's involvement with all this. I think I'll save some of that for the next milestone release of Mozilla.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
I tried Galeon, and I think somebody read Icaza's headline and left out the "not". This thing sucks. First of all, the button I use *most* in a browser is "Back", so what does Galeon do but hide it down in a pull down menu! I cannot find a configuration menu to fix that. Secondly, like Mozilla, it doesn't handle relative links properly. Things like href="./abc.html" are just silently ignored, while things like href="/rfc/index.hmtl" bring up some god awful search engine thing. Relative links have been part of the web since the days of xmosaic, and indeed some of the ones on my home page have been there for 8+ years as my web pages have been tarred and moved off to new jobs, isps, and web servers without having to be changed.
If this is the best the Open Sores Community can do, then sign me up to buy a copy of Windows, because we've lost.
--
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Ok, then, look at http://xcski.com/~ptomblin/. Validates as 4.0 Transitional except for one tiny little problem that's beyond my control. But Galeon can't handle the relative links in it (try clicking on the link to my Rochester Flying Club page, or the one to my Piseco trip page). Neither can Mozilla M17. Netscape can. IE can. Lynx can. xmosaic could handle them back in 1992. But Mozilla, the saviour of us all, can't.
So much for standards compliance. So much for the quality of open source software. Maybe if they hadn't wasted the last two years on chrome and eye candy, they could have actually implemented something that has been an integral part of the web since its early days.
--
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
KDE and GNOME have themes already.
Why can't those themes be good enough or be extended with mozillaisms?
If every application decides it needs it's own themes, that will be fun to configure won't it?
The lack of LDAP support is a crime, if only because just a couple years ago Netscape Communicator was supposed to be the client-side of Netscape's wonderful enterprise product line up.
I know that if I was one of the suckers who is running iPlanet's mail/calendar/directory system, I'd be pretty pissed right now. If I wasn't too bogged down with the details of the Exchange/ActiveDirectory migration, that is.
(As a side note, I'll point out that the 'theming' support has always been a pure play for the 'service providers' that abandoned Netscape for free IE a few years back. It is and always has been for adverts/portal/AOL poop.
Outside of a handful of desktop customziation junkies, nobody else wants it at all, especially the last line of corporate MIS Netscape defenders. As soon as the native interfaces on Windows/Unix/Mac stablize, expect folks to forget the XUL chrome was ever put in there to begin with.)
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Having Galeon be a only frontend for Mozilla rather than a standalone browser is, uh, kinda lame. Kmeleon has done a great job taking the gecko engine and throwing out the rest of the Mozilla code to create a lightweight browser. It's too bad there isn't a version for unix.
You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
I'm not saying create a monolith. Mozilla is already that. So why do I want to install it plus yet another front end (Galeon)? It would be much better to have gecko alone as a shared library with a lightweight gtk+ frontend, for example.
Sure its possible to release code that includes all its own libraries its own UI, it's own widgets, its own version of printf and it will compile anywhere, but aren't you getting sick of them?
Absolutely. All I want is a browser, like lynx is a browser, only I want to see pictures. Just a browser!
You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
Everyone knows that when the whale swallowed Jonah there was the sound of a great big gulp.
You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
Nautilus *does* use a whole lot more of Gnome and more fully explores Gnome components and bonobo than Galeon. And it is extremely bloated. Of course it's unstable as well being in early stages of development, but even when stability improves the bloat will remain. This will force hardware upgrades for many unix users who are doing quite well right now on mid-range pentiums with 32 - 64 megs of ram.
I also would like to see a gui for Gecko which doesn't require either Gnome or Kde. The original Qt work is now out of date but could be revived, and/or a plain old gtk gui for Gecko would be nice.
Not to just knock Gnome and Eazel, Kde's new Konqueror is also quite nice (roughly equivalent to Nautilus but available right now in a very usable and fairly stable form). However, becasue of all the component stuff it also is a little less responsive in some ways than the old kde kfm or than Netscape. Other things are faster and smoother, though.
The "embedding" buzzword is not the solution to everything, and there is a tremendous tradeoff in slowdown and stability. Why stability? Because components added can destabilize the aggregate, especially those designed by third parties. There is no way to reliably predict how an unknown number and variety of components might interact, especially in situations where components are added and removed while an app is running.
Use of components is just one of many kinds of code reuse. In many cases simply using what's in existing libraries is better - faster and more reliable.
It would be great if it worked. Actually I can't get anything based on the mozilla engine to render my site. That is if you go to the /
Try http://www.solutionsfirst.net to see for yaself.
What could be wrong here?
Dave
Navigator 3.x eats about 5MB of memory initially and after few weeks of usage (still hasn't crashed!) it is below 20MB. Galeon initially eats over 20MB and you're telling that isn't bloated? Well, it is. Even navigator4 is smaller. I don't need the other gnome apps, in fact the only non-athena/motif app I use is the gimp (and I still prefer the old motif-gimp. Wish I could find it somewhere.)
no doubt it was submitted numerous times before it was posted on slashdot. I think slashdot should either rephrase the slogan "news for nerds, stuff that matters" to "news for nerds, stuff that mattered last week".
This is a bit harsh perhaps but it captures my general impression that it takes longer and longer before things get posted on slashdot. This doesn't mean the discussions are less interestng (moderation brought back the fun for me), but it does mean that I no longer use slashdot as a prime source of news.
I occasionally submit news to slashdot, often on days with very little postings (e.g. sunday). Invariably those submissions are rejected after 15 minutes or so. Only to be posted days later by someone else. I understand, slashdot people have to read through a lot of submissions but perhaps they could monitor some sites for new articles. E.g zdnet is a frequently referenced site on slashdot, yet it sometimes takes days before a post is made on a zdnet article.
BTW, I have a slashbox for mozillazine, so I learned about the new tool within hours after it was posted.
Jilles
I've been trying to use Galeon for several months. Yesterday, I did exactly as you did: downloaded the M17 RPM an installed it, followed by the Galeon RPM.
When I run it nothing happens. NOTHING. No diagnostic messages, no crash, no whirring of the hard drives - a silence as profound as when the whale swallowed Jonah.
I'm presuming that this isn't what's supposed to happen, right?
I'm running Sawfish 0.30 on Helix 1.2.1(?) on RH 6.2. If someone out there is using the same setup and has had success, I'd be interested in hearing how you managed it. Even more importantly, if someone experienced what I am experiencing and worked their way out of it, I'd LOVE to know your secret! I've heard a lot of good things about Galeon and I'd really like to try it!
P.S. The same thing happens when I run M17 too.
I agree. I don't want GNOME or KDE installed on my machine. This is my choice. Don't flame me, but I am beginning to see Motif and GTK (standalone) as the lightweight alternatives.
If I page cannot be viewed with lynx, it cannot be worth browsing.
I personally use w3m-ssl on my FreeBSD box for any text testing.
The problem with your CSS is the "#664433". Get rid of those quotes and it renders fine for me in Mozilla.
Always a good idea to check your pages for standards compliance.
Not sure why the JavaScript doesn't work (although DOM layer support is rather dicey and browser specific).
The milestones have always seemed buggy crap to me, but the nightly builds are usually good. I'm running M18, and have been for a while, though some of the "add-ons" don't work. The only thing that pisses me off, is lack of Java support on Linux. I use applets on a daily basis, and Mozilla can't run 'em. At this stage in the game, why the hell not? I ask....
I'm sure everbody can do that!!
Not quite as easy as that for me. Galleon doesn't have an rpm for alpha linux, so I have to compile it on my own. Not too bad until one realizes that it requires header files from mozilla, so the source for mozilla has to be downloaded (which is over 200MB unpacked). Now I see that all the header files aren't in the uncompiled source, so it looks like I'm going to have to compile mozilla. If the source is over 200MB, it's probably going to need several GB's to compile. So now I have to make room on a partition, and let it compile all day (it probably won't compile right either given my luck). Glad it's easy for some people, though.
Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
You should try using the nightly builds.. you will be shocked. I must say that it's running amazingly better now than the M17 build.
I don't know what bug(s) they fixed but I must say I am quite impressed with the nightly builds the past couple of days.
They have also put a new skin on the distribution and it looks GREAT.
--------------------
--
--
Have good ideas? Want good ideas? ShouldExist.org
Seems to me like there's potential for a problem here. If the theme builder runs in Mozilla, would it be possible to create a Mozilla theme sufficiently broken to make the theme builder unusable? ;-)
"Whoops, I forgot the "OK button" widget... uh oh." <reinstalls Mozilla>
We need another themes.org
:wq
Whenever I try to install a *.xpi file with the current milestone release, it just times out while connecting to the server. I can download the XPI files no problem with another browser.
There are already quite a few themes available already (see http://x.themes.org/viewresourc es.phtml?type=chrome). They ought to make the ones that exist installable first.
-- Steve
Galeon seems like it may be a viable solution when it's more mature, but why must it rely on GNOME? That isn't going to fly either. We need a version that stands alone, without having to install Mozilla or GNOME first.
You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
This was posted on mozillazine.org 3 days ago.
Anyways, I tested it with a nightly build and it brought my whole x down. I think they should make a version check and give you an error message if you try to run it with the wrong build.
You might also want to check out the latest mozilla nighlty which has now the new modern 2.0 skin, which i, amongst many others think is looks cool. This has also been posted before, but just in case you dont know...
I installed the Galeon rpm after I installed the Mozilla RPM from the Eazel site. Imported my Netscape bookmarks and it worked immediately! I'm sure everbody can do that!!
Yeh, Galeon is great....
:)
Pity it needs the Gnome libs... which I dont install.
Is there a Galeon fork with removal of the Gnome crap? I want straight gtk people
Simon
Simon
The real linux_penguin has Slashdot ID 101961. Anyone else is an impostor. Including Bruce Perens.
Very good tactic. Hats off to the Mozilla team for creativity in targeting and tracking to a valid marketing strategy rather than relying on just "Mozilla is cool man, It's open source."
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
With Mozilla having the ability for the entire user inteface itself to be defined externally, I wonder if we are seeing the beginnings of a possible future advertising hub. Whilst this is somewhat occuring with the ability to add buttons and toolbars to IE, XUL enables an unherelded array of customization possibilities.
Could in the future, the entire web browser be a huge banner, with the theme being streamed via an All Advantage server in exchange for money.
Similarly could porn sites trick you into using a porn theme complete with Forward and Back buttons that go off to other porn sites rather than the appropriate destinations.
Also, how long before Netscape really does fulfil its goal of becoming the ultimate x-platform OS shell.
Im just dreading the future of the net.
Naden
"Who do you want to geekbone today ?"
- www.it-guys.com
Funtage Factor: Purple
Renders fine ... but if you mean the Javascript problems, I agree, there's still a lot of work in that area.
Themes are a byproduct of making widgets the same on all platforms to conform to the new CSS specs. They would have had to write custom widgets on every platform anyways, so why not make a cross-platform, customizable GUI in the process?
What I feel is much bigger news regarding Mozilla is the totally re-done Modern skin (the default one). This was quite possibly the worst problem with Mozilla because it made most people puke the first time they saw the app, which made for a pretty bad initial impression..
The new skin is much, much, MUCH, *MUCH* cooler. Check it out at: http://www.mozillazine.org/jason/newmodern.gif
Excellent, I thought, I'll just grab the nightly and check it out, I'm about due for a new one (two weeks). Man, if this is your idea of an attractive GUI layout..... this looks like some gifs someone slapped together 'cos they ran out of time!
I turned off java and it cae straight up
think java is still a problem in mozilla
Microsoft(tm) - a particular virulent virus that has infected most Pc's.
Great, you've found a bug then. Go tell them about it and the next version will be better.
I told them about relative links back around the time of M5. I'm not holding my breath for a fix. Evidently fancy gui shit is more important than standards complaince.
--
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Yeah, you could say that galleon is slimmed down - to the point of it only being a front end for the mozilla engine. No right click menus, no downloading for the most part... but I guess that will come later as it develops.
--Baelmix
The theme builder app is not made by the mozilla team but by a company named AlphaNumerica. It's written right up there in the first sentence of the post.
PCXL Forever!!!!
Not to mention the way they buried the "don't load images" checkbox in the Edit-Preferences-Advanced submenu (yeah, that's real advanced).
And do the words "incremental rendering" mean anything to these people? The best way to read Slashdot is still Lynx if I don't want to wait for the entire 500K page to load before I can see the first paragraph.
Grrrrr.
I know it wasnt written by the Mozilla team. I was just saying that before anyone gets to concerned with themes we should have a working browser first.
"If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people in the world?"
Okay, so Mozilla's XPI is slow and unresponsive compared to other GUI toolkits. A bunch of people complained that this feature is "useless and bloated." Mozilla responded by saying "so embed Gecko." The Galeon folks did this, and are doing a great job so far. What's the first thing we hear in this thread? "Galeon is too bloated! They should be using plain GTK+!" Oh for Christ's sake, give it a rest!
If you want a Gecko browser for your favorite toolkit/platform, then write one! But please, stop telling hard-working volunteer developers what they should be doing just because you disagree on what features are useful!
-zack
Did it ever occur to you that the Alphanumerica developers are mainly designers, and not hardcore C++ hackers equipped to work on a complex project like Mozilla?
Non-coders are always asking what they can do to help with a project. The folks at Alphanumerica are taking it upon themselves to build some very interesting software based on Mozilla. Haven't you ever used beta software for development?
-zack
First off, some comments are suggesting that "Mozilla" should be focused on X rather than a theme builder. This is just mis-informed. The theme builder was created by a third party, and is not part of the Mozilla tree. Alphanumerica (now owned by Collab.net) created this theme builder as a demonstration of how the Mozilla platform can be used to create applications. In this case an application that helps configure the look and feel of Mozilla itself.
There are many other applications that are being developed using the Mozilla platform. A few of note are: a Jabber client, a News Reader like interface for web forums (such as Slashdot), and various games (mostly 2d recreations of classics).
Just keep in mind that these *third* party applications being developed using the Mozilla platform does not slow down, or detract from the development of Mozilla. In fact, they can actually help: these new, outside, developers are actually testing and submitting bugs on the Mozilla platform (Html Rendering Engine, Networking code, etc.) while creating their applications -- which in turns helps Mozilla developers increase the stability of Mozilla itself.
Joseph Elwell.
Yawn wide as I ram my giant manmeat down your throat, veteran cockgobbling loser.
It's man-meat you moron. Don't let me catch you leaving out the hyphen ever again.
--Shoeboy
Maybe its the style sheets...
galeon renders 2K for me then cancels so its something near the beginning there...
when everything is working perfectly.. BREAK SOMETHING before something else FUCKS up!
But it can be even easier than this! Just select the URL in your xterm, and click with the middle mouse button almost anywhere. (The only places you can't click are places where the middle mouse button already has a different meaning - i.e. text boxes, scroll bars, etc.)
This is much quicker and easier than waiting for a dialog box to pop up, and having to click right in it.
Preventive War is like committing suicide for fear of death. - Otto Von Bismarck
I installed the Galeon rpm after I installed the Mozilla RPM from the Eazel site. Imported my Netscape bookmarks and it worked immediately! I'm sure everbody can do that!!
:-)
I got the latest rpm from rpmfind. I initially had trouble getting it to work with SUSE, either via rpm or source compilation (library soup) but the latest rpm installed and ran without a hiccup.
I'm responding with Galeon now. If you can see this post, you know it works.
--
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Is Mozilla's composer better than Screem or Bluefish or Dreamweaver? NO.
Is the email client better than Mutt or Eudora? NO.
Does anyone give a shit about an NNTP client? NO.
Sorry, but the earlier posters are correct - there is a market for a small stable lean browser - unfortunately the mozilla folks have missed this completely.
Ok, I guess I have not slept enough later.
Sorry for the rant.
--------------------
'The'? no, 'There' too.
--Neil Armstrong tripped, the ruskies flipped.--
Your method.
The middle mouse button method.
What could be easier?
Preventive War is like committing suicide for fear of death. - Otto Von Bismarck
no no, mozilla is not dead...
it comes slowly, but powerfull. what you hear now is the sound of a stampede, just hiding behind the hill.
there are numerous reasons for that:
i had a discussion with a friend about a project, where large amounts of preformatted text must be categorized and made searchable for cdrom publishing. the view application and the displayed text shall have the corporate design of the publishing company.
it all comes down, that we need to categorize the text with xml-tags and make some stylesheets for diplay of the categories and their content in the different search-masks. than we need to find a offline xml-viewer, that runs on all desired platforms and some kind of script language to implement the functionality. nice would be a sdk for changing the viewers look n feel, to match the corporate design... and it should be really cheap..
hmmm... think for your self... mozilla is not only cool, because its ..eh.. cool; its cool, because it implements features, that are really needed by companies... at least needed in the near future (..ok, this is good for mozilla ;) )
cylab