This update to the stand-alone Pinstripe theme turned out to be more of a redesign than I originally intended. Stephen Horlander sent in a cool concept for the browser tabs. Check out the etched text on the inactive tabs. You’ll see some of the other details in the screenshot below. The theme has some rough edges but should be usable. As always I appreciate your feedback.
Click on the thumbnail for a full screenshot.
Install the Pinstripe Theme (requires Firefox 2.0RC1 or later on Mac OS X)
The Firefox 1.x classic default themes, called Pinstripe on Mac and Winstripe on Windows, are available for your installing and downloading pleasure.
These are simply stand-alone versions of the Firefox themes before the Firefox “visual refresh” landed. The themes require at least Firefox 2.0b1. I will work on them in the coming weeks to smooth out the rough spots. I tested the themes on my machines but they may be buggy. Please let me know if they don’t work for you.
Install Pinstripe FF Classic (Mac only)
Install Winstripe FF Classic (Windows only)
Download Pinstripe FF Classic
Download Winstripe FF Classic
By the way, you can get the Illustrator and Photoshop files used to make these themes here.
Designer Stephen Horlander and I are pleased to announce the availability of the toolbar and UI artwork seen in Firefox on Windows and Mac OS X.
Winstripe has been the default theme on the Windows version of Firefox for over two years. Man, how time flies. To explain the odd name, the Pinstripe project started in 2001 as an attempt to make the appearance of the Mozilla Suite fit in with the Mac OS X desktop. Icon designer Stephen Horlander joined the project and took the icon artwork to a new level of usability and polish. The Windows version of Pinstripe, dubbed “Winstripe”, became the default look on the Windows version of Firefox 0.9.
I’d like to see you take the artwork and remix it, mash it up with your own projects, use the artwork as the basis for your own Firefox themes. If you’re not familiar with Firefox themeing, start with the documentation at the Mozilla Dev Center. There’s an active community over at the Mozillazine Themes forum that’ll help you get up to speed. If creating a theme for Firefox looks daunting but you have a great idea, create a mockup of your idea and share it on the Themes forum. You might find people to help you turn your idea into a real theme. Enjoy!
The artwork source zips contain Illustrator and Photoshop files. The majority of the icons were created by Stephen Horlander with contributions by Kevin Gerich. You can use, modify and distribute them under the Mozilla tri-license.
Pinstripe Browser Art (3.6MB)
Winstripe Browser Art (5.9MB)
I am encouraged to read Mitchell Baker’s posts (part 1, part 2) about the usage of Stephen Horlander’s web feed icon which is seen in Firefox, IE7 and on an increasing number of web pages. She suggests that Mozilla should work with the web community to set usage guidelines for the icon. This is a great idea. Guidelines are necessary to avoid confusing web users about the meaning of the image.
It’s puzzling that Mozilla has already applied for a trademark on the web feed icon: http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=78836825. In light of Mitchell’s recomendation against the formal trademark option, does this mean that the Mozilla’s application will be withdrawn?
There’s also the question of the icon image license. Mitchell’s post implies that the feed icon is not subject to an open source license like the rest of the Firefox code. This is news to me. When Stephen Horlander and I checked in our images for Firefox and Thunderbird, we were told that they are covered by the Mozilla tri-license. In fact part of the move to replace the Qute theme before Firefox 1.0 was driven by the desire to have artwork that is free of proprietary licensing. I hope Mozilla will clear this up soon.
We should move quickly to come up with an icon kit that web sites can use and a clear set of usage guidelines. There has already been some good starts by Khoi Vinh, Matt Brett and others. I look forward to the discussion.
Update: Mitchell Baker posts details about the Mozilla Foundation’s trademark application.
The Mac-like form controls seen in Safari and Camino look nice, but tend to ignore CSS styling. I wanted to see if I could bring more flexible form widget styles to Firefox, while staying close to a native look as seen in Camino.
Single select boxes were the most problematic. How do you fuse the aqua pill-like control with a CSS background or border color? I think the answer is: You don’t. I decided to abandon Aqua for my own hand-rolled look which hopefully is Mac-like enough to blend with the other controls, but flexible enough to look good when CSS styles are applied.
The look for the select box is created with semi-transparent PNG images that allow the background color to show through. You’ll notice the widget also respects your choice of either the Blue or Graphite OS theme. Here’s a build off the Firefox 1.8 branch with the new Mac widget styles. Check it out and let me know what you think.
Download: ff-kmgerich-2006-03-11.dmg.gz, 9 MB
If you want a less experimental build of Firefox with native looking form widgets, check out Neil Lee’s G4 and G5 optimized builds.
This is a third try at making Mac Firefox’s primitive-looking HTML widgets work with the design of Pinstripe. This time I took care to make the styles play well with others. For instance these styles won’t override CSS set by a web page in most cases.
Continue reading “Pretty Widgets, Part 3”
Ben’s been working on making the Firefox preferences window more Mac-like and I slapped on a skin last night. Here’s a peek. The content fades in and the window slides open as you click from pane to pane.
Someone tell me where I can get the Goats font.
Even though I’ve been working closely with Firefox and Thunderbird for over a year now, I’m amazed at the attention it’s receiving. Not actually surprised though. I’ve always thought of Mozilla as being full of potential. It’s great to see Mozilla technology being given its due.
My own involvement with Mozilla has been very rewarding so far. Thank you to Ben Goodger and Dave Hyatt for bringing me into Firefox. Thanks to Scott MacGregor who helped me land the first version of Pinstripe Thunderbird in CVS when I barely knew what I was doing. Thanks of course to Stephen Horlander who has been a great collaborator. He has brought great style and attention to detail to the Firefox and Thunderbird themes.
What’s next? Well, it’s easy to design something to death. I’d like to take a step back from the Firefox themes for a little while, move on to something else and then come back and consider Firefox with a fresh dose of perspective. I’d like to write a style guide for Pinstripe/Winstripe for extension developers. There’s been talk of a Thunderbird theme for Windows and maybe even a Nvu theme.
Get Firefox 1.0 Now! FTP | BitTorrent
A little over a week ago, Ben informed me of the decision to push back the Mac-specific Firefox work to a 1.1 release that would come out in March 2005.
Firefox 1.0 was going to be released on Windows and Linux first. After the Windows version was out the door, we (meaning Ben and the few Mac hackers who work on Firefox) would focus on the Mac user experience to bring it closer to the level of polish and integration that OS X users expect.
But the Mac-specific work will take a while – with the holidays it could easily take until early 2005. Ben and crew want to merge the work that’s been going on in the Firefox branch with the Mozilla trunk as soon as possible to get on with the post-1.0 development.
Ben, Asa and I met to review a plan for synchronizing the Mac 1.0 with the Windows and Linux releases on 11/9. We looked at feedback and satisfaction data from version tracker and other sources, recent Mac specific bugs fixed and decided to move forward with a plan to ship Mac Firefox 1.0 on 11/9. The hard and anecdotal data shows the satisfaction rating of Mac Firefox to be very close to Safari, and we see many users choosing Firefox over Safari which is a clear sign that we should be calling it 1.0.
This is disappointing but I agree with the reasoning behind the decision. Hopefully we will be able to use the extra time to make Firefox 1.1 the best browser on the Mac platform. Of course you can help! Look over the bugs targetted at Firefox 1.0mac and file requests if you think something is missing.
Firefox 1.0 Release Candidate 1 is out. There isn’t anything flashy to talk about in this version except hundreds of bug fixes. Version 1.0 for Windows and Linux is scheduled for release on November 9. The Mac version will get special attention and come out sometime later.
Between 1.0RC1 and 1.0 I’m going to finish up tweaking the Windows and Linux theme. Here are a few of my priorities. Feel free to suggest other theme tweaks that should make it into 1.0.