djst's nest

Seti@Home Can't Write HTML

I was impressed when viewing the source over at the new Seti@Home Website. Impressed about the complete lack of HTML syntax and semantic conformance, that is. I certainly wouldn't want to take a HTML course at the University of California. :)

Oh well... I should probably focus on more important matters, such as updating my help sites for the new bugfix releases.

New Version of Seti@Home

Note to self: Upgrade Seti@Home.

Too bad :(

Winstripe Improved

The latest nightly branch builds of Mozilla Firefox have a heavily improved version of Winstripe that makes me kind of want to use the default theme again. It looks much more Windows XP native now than in the 0.9 release.

Some comments though:

1. Some of the colors are a bit pale. For example, the Home icon could use a more vibrant shade on the roof.
2. There's a bit too much padding on the buttons, as seen on the hover state of the Home button in the screenshot above. I know IE uses about the same amount, but I don't really see why we have to copy that. If it's a usability issue (easier to click on large buttons), then my next comment is valid:
3. The Tab Close button on the tab bar doesn't use the same hover state as the toolbar buttons. It lacks the border shown on the Home button above. This makes it harder to click the button. I've accidentally missed it several times since I started to use Winstripe.

Overall, this is looking very promising! The Back/Forward arrows are much better, the roundness is there, the gradients are more noticeable now. It's obvious that most work has been done for the five standard buttons, but I'm sure the rest of them will get the same amount of attention later. Very good work guys!

Contribute to Mozilla and Get a Gmail Account

I got six Gmail invites today and thought I should give them away to the Mozilla community. However, I will try a slightly more productive approach than just giving them away to the first few comment posters. I will give away my invites to people who make a significant contribution to the Firefox/Thunderbird Help sites, which in the end will benefit the Mozilla Foundation. :) Here's what you need to do in order to qualify (pick one of these alternatives):

• Write a great tip or FAQ item for Firefox or Thunderbird that you don't see listed and you think would be useful to a lot of users. Preferably, write the item in XHTML 1.1 with the same semantics used on the sites.
• Come up with an idea to improve the overall structure, layout or content of the site(s) and provide useful code to achieve it, along with an explanation why it would be a significant improvement.
• Make a significant update or improvement to another page on the help sites, such as the outdated Options Window Reference or Managing Cookies document.

The six persons who make the most important contributions will get Gmail accounts. Please send the contributions to my tenser account at gmail and post a comment here summarizing what you've done.

Gmail Feedback - Where To Send It?

After using Gmail for a few days, I have a few comments on things that I find intuitive and counter-intuitive. The big question is, where do I submit this feedback? I've searched the Gmail website but found no way to express my opinion, other than blogging about it.

Firefox 0.9

Not that anyone has missed it, but go get Firefox 0.9 while it's hot!

My Own Gmail Account

Thanks to R.J. Keller, I now have my own Gmail account. I'll give it a thorough test drive and see if I like it better than using POP3 with Thunderbird. It would be very nice if Gmail would support IMAP so I could still use Thunderbird, since it's such a wonderful piece of software. Anyway, thanks R.J.! I really appreciate it.

Oh, feel free to drop me a line at tenser at gmail dot com. :)

Winstripe Reloaded

Lim Chee Aun has made some very nice attempts at making Winstripe look more native on Windows XP. He recreated vector versions of the Reload, Stop and Back icons and applied some styles to make them look more like the Luna interface. Very nice work, and at least worth a peek by the creators of Winstripe.

A better New Tab icon?

A lot of people are complaining about the New Tab icon in Winstripe. It looks too similar to a printer. I just made some quick changes to the icon to show how it could be improved (original icon on the left, modified icon on the right):

New Tab Icon

Of course, I don't have the actual source files for the artwork, so this is just a modified screen capture. Nevertheless, I think the modified icon better resembles a new tab.

Happy Birthday, Asa!

A late happy birthday to Asa who turned 30 on June 5th. It's a shame I can't remember all people's birthdays. ;) Hope you had a good one!

Stephen Horlander: Winstripe is "a 0.1 release at best"

According to Stephen Horlander, the new default theme for Firefox is "a 0.1 release at best":

Certainly nothing I would consider "final". If I gave themes version numbers, this would be a 0.1 release at best. To be very clear: it is not finished. Not even close I would say. It had to go in now, so what we had finished we used. We would have liked to have time to finish but that wasn't an option.

Let's have a look at Qute when it was considered a 0.1 release:

Now compare that to how it looks like today:

The improvements are countless and the result is a polished and very professional theme. Now, let's look at Winstripe, version 0.1:

Clearly, it will need a lot of work to look anything like the Windows XP artwork it's supposed to blend in with. My point with these screenshots is that we should probably wait with our opinions on Winstripe until it gets time to mature. However, this raises a valid question:

Why are we replacing an almost-perfect Windows XP theme with a nowhere near finished one barely at version 0.1? Why is waiting for Winstripe to mature not an option?

Firefox gets a "new" look

So we now have a new default theme for Firefox on Windows, called Winstripe. The problem is that the new theme is heavily inspired by MacOS design and does not blend in on Windows XP. This blog entry is about my view of the situation and an attempt to point out what needs to be done in order to make this work.

First of all, congratulations to Kevin Gerich and Stephen Horlander for being chosen to create the new default theme. Pinstripe is a beautiful MacOS X theme and proves that you guys are very talented and pay great attention to the details of MacOS design guidelines.

Second, my deepest sympathies to Arvid Axelsson (author of Qute, the default theme for Firefox up until now) who wasn't informed about the new plans until they were already decided. Apparently, Arvid's experience with Qute wasn't even used by the Visual Identity Team. Instead they chose to develop Winstripe without Arvid's knowledge, while he was still checking in updates on Qute. Clearly, Mozilla.org are having some communication problems and this is not the first time I've noticed this. Hopefully both parties can learn from their mistakes and move on. Enough said, let's focus on the Winstripe theme!

Jon Hicks mentioned in Kevin Gerich's web log that he finds Qute to be unprofessional. Mr Hicks is a professional and most probably knows what he's talking about, but I can't say his comment makes that much sense in this case. Qute conforms strictly to the Windows XP icon design guidelines, which includes a number of important attributes. Winstripe, at its current state, hardly conforms to any of them.

With all due respect, the MacOS-inspired Winstripe theme is best suited for... MacOS. It even has the vertical drop shadow that is so typical for that platform. It is indeed an excellent (MacOS) theme, but it has no place in the Windows (Luna/Classic) interface at its current state. It's pretty obvious that Kevin and Stephen are using Macintosh, which leads me to the key question: What's the point of designing a Windows theme if the artists don't want to conform to the Windows XP guidelines? What good does it do to make Firefox look like a MacOS application on Windows, when an overwhelming 83.32%Based on visitor stats for Firefox Help on May 2004. of the user base are running Windows and only 2.86%Based on visitor stats for Firefox Help on May 2004. are running Macintosh?

Anyway, the decisions have already been made. So how do we make Winstripe look good on Windows XP? Well, there are a number of things that need to be done in order to achieve the Windows XP (Luna) appearance. Here are my suggestions:

Use rounded shapes

This is the most apparent weakness of Winstripe at its current state. For example, the Home icon looks strict and dull compared to the inviting Home icon of Internet Explorer, or Qute. Look at the icons in the Windows XP start menu. None of them have hard edges. All of them use soft, smooth, cute looking shapes, such as the Calculator icon mentioned above. This is key to the Windows XP icon design, and if we're not going to follow that guideline, we're not going to blend in on Windows XP.

Use gradients

This is being used in Winstripe already, to some extent. But the icons still look as if they were designed pixel by pixel, unlike the native Windows XP artwork which look like scaled vector graphics, and as such, much softer.

Use more depth

Windows icons should not be flat anymore. They were in Windows 3.1 and 95. They still were flat to some extent in Windows 98/Me/2000, but in Windows XP, which should be the primary target, the icons have a 3D-looking appearance. This can be achieved by having a common light source from the top-left corner and a subtle drop shadow on the lower-right corner.

Don't use a vertical drop shadow

This is just not the convention on Windows XP. I've never seen it used before and it actually looks strange. Drop shadows should be used sparsely in toolbar icons and as mentioned above, they should be located on the lower-right corner.

Use the same width for all icons

The Mail & News icon is wider than the other icons. The Back/Forward triangles appears to be wider than the Reload icon. I could probably come up with more examples. The end result is inconsistency. I know the actual width of the icons are the same, but it just doesn't look balanced.

Blend in and look modern :)

This is a vague suggestion, I know. The current Winstripe theme just doesn't attract me. Try to look cool and modern, try some new ideas, drop the strictness, try to make an impression. I can't express it better, the Winstripe theme is just too squarish, flat, strict and uninspired. A default theme should be inviting, the buttons should encourage you to click on them. The goal of Winstripe should be to blend in with the Windows XP artwork as successfully as Pinstripe does on MacOS X.

I hope this feedback is of any use and that I managed to be specific enough about the current flaws of Winstripe. I'm confident that this can turn out to be a great theme. Personally, however, I much prefer Qute since it already is a perfect fit for Windows XP.

Good luck Kevin and Stephen and keep up the great work!