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May 11, 2004

Theme Manager

I'm almost done...

Posted by ben at May 11, 2004 12:01 AM

Comments

It looks really good !!!

Posted by: Chmouel at May 11, 2004 12:41 AM

Ben, will you make your New Theme 1 available for download? :)

Posted by: Papuass at May 11, 2004 1:26 AM

What does that globe have to do with the default theme? If there's an icon for each theme, I think it should be that theme's back button.

Posted by: Jesse Ruderman at May 11, 2004 2:46 AM

The icon is whatever the theme chooses to use for itself... good idea on the back button, I'll change the defaults over.

Posted by: Ben at May 11, 2004 2:59 AM

nice :)

how's the server-side bit coming along?

Posted by: spiz at May 11, 2004 5:34 AM

Oooh, this is looking better and better. I'm not a 'nightlies' sort of person any more - no time with Uni and so forth - but I'm really looking forward to the feature leap in 0.9.

Is the "Update" feature going to work the same way as for the new extensions spec? And, for that matter, will Theme updates be included in AutoUpdate?

One final thought for the future: In a situation where Firefox gets updated and a theme becomes incompatatible (according to the theme RDF or whatever) will FX still keep it 'hidden' so that when an update is released after the main Firefox update, people will automatically get their favourite themes reinstalled? Might be worth a thought if it's not there already?

Great work Ben.

Posted by: Ben Ward at May 11, 2004 6:00 AM

How about using the forwards button instead? The back button, as marketing morons would say, is "backwards" and henceforth negative.

Plus it would point at the theme info which would look nice.

Arabic and other "backwards" languages could just change their localised version to use the back button before anyone moans about that.

Posted by: Peter Hewitt at May 11, 2004 10:50 AM

I would think that the Home button would make a better choice for the theme's icon.
Very market friendly, and one of the nicer looking buttons on some themes.

Posted by: Ryan C at May 11, 2004 11:23 AM

In the "final thing", the Firefox theme should probably have the same version number as Firefox itself.

I agree with Ryan C - the Home button gives more room for design flair than the Back button, and probably gives a better impression of the theme as a whole.

Posted by: Greg K Nicholson at May 11, 2004 11:43 AM

Does this manager mean that we will finally be able to install all themes without a restart?? That sure would be awesome!

Posted by: yacoubean at May 11, 2004 11:49 AM

Cool...

Agree on the Home icon instead of back. Also agree with checking compatibility of the theme with the Firefox version, although I'm not sure how that'd be done.

All in all, great job! I can't wait to see it!!!

Posted by: brooks at May 11, 2004 12:30 PM

Does this mean that the theme.extension tabs in optinos are going to be deleted - they look a bit daft empty.

Posted by: Alex at May 11, 2004 12:56 PM

Not to fuel a discussion thread on this minor detail, but if you put a part of a theme in the theme manager, you have to take into account small and large objects. You have to expect that a theme will have a very small home button. You have to expect that a theme will have a very large home button. In that case, it will have to either be cropped off or shrunk down to fit the size. Either way, it's going to look ugly. Let the theme designers be theme designers and create a theme image to be displayed in the theme manager. (4 "theme", 1 sentance. oh yeah!)

Take a look at phoenity aqua for a large icon set.

Posted by: Mike Goodspeed at May 11, 2004 7:48 PM

"The icon is whatever the theme chooses to use for itself..." -Ben

How is it that you all have missed this?? I think Ben merely stated that for the default theme it would be the back button. Others may choose differently; surely they will choose something appealing. And who cares whether the back, forward, or home button icon is more indicative of the theme, did you see that BIG-ASS PREVIEW PANE on the side???

Posted by: Ran at May 11, 2004 11:24 PM

Wow, I love this. Also Ithink the home button is nicer than the back button. Good work

Posted by: marzlo at May 12, 2004 6:58 AM

The back button is a bigger "icon" than home though, that's probably why it was suggested.

Posted by: Peter Hewitt at May 12, 2004 11:54 AM

Sweeeet.

The icon issue: As Ben said, it should be up to the theme author. Themers already package a preview graphic with their theme, so it shouldn't be much trouble to include another 32x32 (or whatever) image to be used as an icon.

Posted by: Alex H, at May 12, 2004 12:23 PM

Sweeeet.

Posted by: Alex H. at May 12, 2004 12:25 PM

Wait, did I miss something? Why do we need a seperate theme manager at all? Shouldn't these things still be kept in the preferences panel?

Posted by: Patrick at May 13, 2004 11:20 AM

Ben, quick bug note on current extensions manager. I am using nightly 20040514 Firefox/0.8.0+ for Max OS X and I am unable to remove current extensions that I have downloaded. I have removed them from the Chrome folder as well, yet they continue to appear (in title only) in the extensions preference window. Any thoughts?

Dr. G

Posted by: Dr. G at May 14, 2004 7:13 AM

I vote for forward button - it points on the name so may be considered both as a little preview of theme's style and a list bullet at the same time.

Posted by: Julas at May 16, 2004 1:19 PM

Can we have an option to HIDE the icons incase they look... not well? Just a thought.

Posted by: Corey K. at May 17, 2004 2:24 AM

Dr. G:
Extensions and themes are extremely broken right now - this is midway through the implementation of a huge, huge feature. Wait until Ben gives the okay that everything's "good" and then start asking the questions. Right now you should expect extensions won't work - nightlies are like that sometimes. Perhaps we've been spoiled with too many good nightlies over the last several months.

Corey:
I can guarantee you that will never happen in the GUI. (However, I'm sure some userChrome.css hacking could do it.) It's bloat that most users would never even think of exercising, let alone needing.

People:
Who really cares what the icon is? Let the author choose for himself. Some will want a personal logo (a Qute for Arvid if he's made any other themes), some will use a button (back/forward/home/static throbber), and some will do other things. Who cares? Choice of theme icon is waaay, waaaaaay low on my priority list of things of concern when Firefox is mere weeks away from another huge release.

Posted by: Jeff Walden at May 17, 2004 8:33 PM

Awesome man!!! Can't wait! Good job :D

Posted by: Erez at May 20, 2004 4:58 AM

Ben: I've just changed my res from 1024x760 to 800x600 and your main blog page is thrown out of whack by the size of the extension manager pic. it overlaps into the next column.

If you need a screen shot i can post a pic somewhere.

cheers.

Posted by: Chubb at May 21, 2004 8:05 PM

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