A New Look For Firefox

ben writes "Regular users of Mozilla Firefox may be interested to know a new default theme is planned for 0.9 in preparation for the road to 1.0. 0.9 will also feature new improved theme and extension management, which will make it easy to make Firefox look the way you want it to."

Comments

I liked the old look

[linuxci]

I did prefer the old look, but then again the new one hasn't been finalised yet and is still under active development (it's been checked in but not enabled yet).

Whatever the case, 0.9 will be an excellent release and well worth trying. However, please remember this release will have some major new features (better extension/theme management, migration of prefs from other browsers such as IE, Netscape and Opera) and then focus will be on polish and stability up to a successful 1.0 release.

Re:How about...

[Anonymous Coward]

eh? i use FF loads and don't have to do that, ever. could it be one of your extensions or sommat?

Thunderbird?

[mccalli]

One reason given is for consistency across platform. I agree with this, but part of the 'platform' is the other software you're likely to use with it. In my case and I suspect in many others, that means Thunderbird.

Will Thunderbird be following suite and changing default theme too?

Cheers,
Ian

Fuck the Mozilla devs

[Fnkmaster]

Sorry to sound like a prick, but some of the lead Mozilla developers have turned into incredibly unresponsive pricks that don't know how to delegate and assign authority properly. I respect their hard work immensely, but their attitude and arrogance on certain issues continues to mystify me. Look at this new theme at the top of this thread. This is beyond atrocious. This is because the Mozilla devs don't know how to resolve differences with other people, and they REPEATEDLY have shown a complete indifference to aesthetic issues in the browser and an unwillingness to make use of the talents of the many artists out there who would be very willing to help create good splashscreens, icons and so on, a rather critical part of a mass market desktop application that we want people to adopt (in the interests of a more secure, standards-compliant web).

Yes, Arvid Axelsson, the author of the current default theme (Qute), may have a bit of an ego himself, and may have been reluctant to freely license his artwork under the same MPL terms as the Mozilla codebase. But he's a reasonable person, and he's indicated he's willing to compromise and do a Free license that works for the Mozilla team, because he wants to make sure that Firefox succeeds, and has the best, most aesthetically pleasing look and feel possible.

For God's FUCKING sake you egomaniacs (and anybody who has followed some of these discussions over the last few years knows this is true - see the splashscreen debacle in Bugzilla, the many UI layout discussions, and the naming debacles for examples), we are relying on you and the excellent browser you have created and maintained. We respect immensely all the hard work the Mozilla and Firefox core developers have done, but their lackadaisical attitude towards branding of their product (Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox?), the terrible aesthetics of the splashscreens and icon sets they keep putting back in are just unacceptable. Qute was the best thing that ever happened to Firefox and the Mozilla project - compare to the awful looking old versions of the Mozilla browser - ugh.

You are the developers and project leaders of a critical mass-market product. If there is truly an unresolvable licensing issue with the current icons and their author is unwilling to compromise, come out and tell us, and assign a group of artists or other aesthetically inclined technology professionals to consider submissions for a new default. Realize that your contributions, while critical, do not need to include drawing shitty icons or making terrible off-the-cuff aesthetic decisions that have a negative impact on the adoption of a critical product for the entire Internet's wellbeing.

Re:Fuck the Mozilla devs

[bogie]

This is just indicitive of the way the entire Phoenix/Firefox project has been handled from day one on issues that actual users are interested in. They devs simple are not interested in taking in and responding to feedback from users on issues that users really care about like aesthetics. Look at the bugzilla voting system for an example. No matter how many votes a bug gets the devs could care less. Yes at some point someone needs to step in and say "This is how its going to be", but jeez at least try to make it look like you value the opinion of the people who have been bug testing and promoting *zilla for years and years now.

I still use Firefox but I don't particpate anymore. I don't file bugs and I don't post in the forums. If the developers are going to continue to not pay attention to the users then they are losing IMHO their greatest strength outside the actual merit of the products themselves.

Call me a drama queen. Explain how I'm wrong. But don't discount the fact that many people right or wrong feel the same way as I do.

Re:Definately a bad choice on the part of the devs

[igrp]

I agree. Most people I introduced to Mozilla were impressed by two features: the pop-up blocker and its feeling. Many remarked that it just felt "right". That's one of the biggest compliments you can pay to a UI designer: if the user doesn't feel that there's a transition period and can get started right away then you've done something right.

Personally, I'm more of an "I don't care how it looks as long as it works" guy but I agree that the Qute theme looks great and I always felt comfortable using it. I guess variety is a good thing but I'd much rather see them sort out their differences and stick with Qute.

Re:opera vs firefox?

[elFarto the 2nd]

May I suggest you fire up Firefox again, and type

about:config

into the address bar and hit enter.

More options than you could shake a very large stick at

Also, Character Encoding is in the view menu.

Regards
elFarto

HCI anyone??

[the_true_cirrus]

Why oh why do they want cross platform uniformity??

One of the most basic principles of human-computer interaction is consistency. Windows users expect to see Windows-like apps, Mac OS X ppl expect native OS X looking apps and likewise for GNOME, KDE and whatever else.

Anything that breaks that (for example an OS X app that looks and/or behaves like a Windows app goes against the user's expections. And ultimately that makes the app harder for them to use and hence less appealing.

Granted there is a lot of similarity between the various desktop environments but they do each also have their own quirks. For example OS X apps have the toolbar along the top of the screen (not part of the app window) and have that little window-resizing thing in the bottom-right corner of a window (not part of the window's border). GNOME and KDE generally have different standard back, forward, reload etc icons for buttons that all apps should use rather than their own.

If you make Firefox look the same on every platform you will be breaking such little quirks and conventions on some (possibly all) platforms and the users will suffer.

I say make a different, native looking (and feeling) theme for each major platform and ship it as the default for that platform!

As for branding - you've got the name, you've got the firefox icon - they stay the same on every platform - surely that's all that's needed.

Personally I think that's a good thing too. I for one perceive it as really annoying and intrusive when I install an app that insists on planting it's icons all over my desktop, installing a pointless system tray icon and making itself the default player/browser/whatever (eg RealPlayer or QuickTime on Windows) - it feels like I get the branding forced down my throat and that does NOT make me a happy user! Apps that don't feel the need to do that are a breath of fresh air and it would be a real shame for Firefox to go down the road of excessive branding.

Idiots love skins

[Tom]

Actually, the look of things is about the only thing that even total idiots do change about their computers.

Many, many thousands of machines out there run without having ever been update since install, with every service under the sun enabled, and probably with the default passwords still in place. However, these same machines have custom backgrounds, colour cursors, sound effects and a dozen screensavers.

Skins are big with people who don't know how to change the Start menu and believe Linux must be a windos program, because how can something run on a computer if it isn't a windos program?

Re:You need a bigger "but" next time

[STrinity]

I think the most telling thing about Goodger is that he absolutely hates TBE, probably the most popular extension out there, because it makes drastic alterations to the code, but he's made no effort to change Firefox so that TBE would be unnecessary.

SVG Support

[kiyut]

How about firefox native SVG support? Does anyone know if native SVG is included by default install?