April 22, 2004
Qute just got better
Arvid keeps improving the Qute theme for Mozilla Firefox and I must say he has done a terrific job this time! The Home icon looks much better now compared to the previous version that can be seen in Firefox 0.8. The theme now features a fresh new throbber that blends in much better with the theme than the Quadrone logo.
I have always thought that the five standard icons on the toolbar (Back, Forward, Reload, Stop, and Home) look dull when a new window is created, mostly because of the grayish Home button and the fact that Back, Forward, and Stop is normally disabled in a new window. The new Home button, however, makes the appearance much more pleasant, which I think is important both visually and psychologically.
Other nice improvements include refreshed toolbar icons (including the Bookmark Manager), new status bar icons, an improved tab close button, and some updated Options window icons. Note that the updated version of Qute hasn't been checked in yet, but it will as soon as Ben gets time for it.
Good work, Arvid!
Posted by djst at April 22, 2004 5:57 PMHi, where i can get the new version of qute? it's really quter than the others!
Posted by: Ismael at April 22, 2004 8:20 PMIs that a new Stylesheet icon in the lower left? I think I liked the old one better, but I'll have to see this new one in use before I can say for sure.
Posted by: Jeff Walden at April 23, 2004 1:01 AMI like the new stylesheet icon (if that really is it) and I welcome the new throbber (actually I like the Quadrone logo, since I'm used to it now, but I'm sure new users don't)
I don't like the new home button, ok, I DO like it, but I think I prefer the blue roof to the new pink/brown/red one. It's too close to being an IE copy.
Posted by: jed at April 23, 2004 2:15 AMWill these new changes also include a new icon for the Mail icon?
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=237900
Posted by: Jeff Walden at April 25, 2004 2:31 AMYes.
Posted by: Arvid at April 25, 2004 3:27 AMI was wondering when Firefox's version of Qute would be updated after Thunderbird's version was cleaned up a while back. The new icons look much cleaner with more gradients and an extremely friendly interface. I can't wait until this is checked in!
Posted by: LinkTiger at April 25, 2004 5:11 AMWhat a *boring* throbber, though... :S
Posted by: Seth Kinast at May 2, 2004 4:17 PMI personally do not like Qute. It's too dull and too hard to see. This whole trend of alpha-blending and 32-bit color icons is hurting UIs. It was much easier to use computers back when the icons were simpler and bolder. Maybe these new icons may have more "artistic merit", but they still harm usability. Give me back my old pixels!
Posted by: Dylan Lainhart at May 4, 2004 8:37 PMWill it use the new forward/back icons that we have now in Thunderbird (carats rather than arrows)? I really like those.
Posted by: John at May 6, 2004 2:27 PMAlso, I'm not really sure I like the black throbber. The concept is good, but some color would be nice. Perhaps use the blue/orange as is in the new FireFox logo (the "firefox" around the world)? Or even just this throbber overlaid on the logo, where the logo would show through wherever it's black currently.
Just some ideas. Sorry about the split posts.
Posted by: John at May 6, 2004 2:34 PMI really like the overall design, but I have one issue that I worrry about: size.
I feel Qute should become more compact. With the multitude of toolbars, we're really shoving the beginning of the document down too far. The top menu with File, Edit, View... looks too tall. I thought it was a few pixels too tall in the .8 build, and now that the search bar is up there, it seems even taller. The address bar box looks like it could have a few pixels shaved off of its height as well. Same goes for the tab strip. Apple has really done the right thing with the minimalist look of Safari.
Posted by: Brian at May 6, 2004 8:25 PMwow ... well, it is noticably better!!! The throbber, while I agree it is improved over the Q, doesn't really fit the rest of the theme though. Would be nice to see something that was colorful and perhaps worked into the whole "Firefox" concept (like IE uses the IE "E" spinning globe)
Posted by: Zulithe at May 7, 2004 11:37 AMI just saw this linked from MZ.
Isn't the new home icon blatantly copied from Apple?
Posted by: wget at May 7, 2004 4:21 PMI don't know if this is the right place for this comment but here goes:
I think there has been a good amount of improvement with the polished theme except for the throbber. It looks good, but definitely can be made better.
Also for the nightlies (I'm using 20040509), the background image for the Tools>Themes window seems to be low res image made to look too big. And there are not buttons on buttons on the window. Hopefully this will be taken care of before 0.9 :)
Posted by: KS at May 11, 2004 12:27 AMHmm..I love everything except for two things: the new theme selector widget in the corner (the new one is too dark), and in the download manager, the Options & Clean up icon look too much alike--both are grey & very small so it's harder to differentiate between the two-- more colour would spice it up a bit :)
Posted by: John at May 21, 2004 6:34 AMSorry, by theme selector I mean the stylesheet icon.
Posted by: John at May 21, 2004 6:34 AMAlso, any news on a "working offline/online" widget in the statusbar like IE's?
Posted by: John at May 21, 2004 6:43 AM