Firefox 1.0almost
Posted on | October 28, 2004 | 30 Comments
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.
- Scrollbar arrows rendered incorrectly
- Themes should be RTL compatible
- -moz-appearance: none gives the urlbar a 2px inset border… (could use some help here)
- Javascript Console: toolbar icons, clean up CSS
Find Bar Feng Shui
Posted on | October 21, 2004 | 22 Comments
I have always thought the UI for Firefox’s Find Toolbar has room for improvement. Recently the Match Case checkbox was added to the bar, increasing the amount of horizontal space it requires. This becomes a problem when the find bar is used in the Help window, where a portion is clipped off unless you widen the window.
I made a Photoshop mockup of how an alternate find toolbar might look. This probably isn’t *the answer* - just starting point for a discussion. What do you like and dislike about the find toolbar, and what should we do about it?
“Live Bookmarks” is not RSS
Posted on | September 30, 2004 | 31 Comments
A few days ago we changed Firefox’s Live Bookmarks status icon to something less geeky.
As people rightly pointed out, Live Bookmarks shouldn’t pretend to be RSS. The status bar icon should not represent multiple flavors of a syndication format. It should represent the Live Bookmarks feature.
Here are some of Stephen Horlander’s original sketches for a replacement Live Bookmark icon
Initially the RSS button design was suggested by members of the Mozilla Visual Identity team. At the time, it seemed natural that we’d want to use something similar to the semi-ubiquitous orange RSS chiclet found on web sites that offer news feeds. I even rationalized that RSS is becoming an almost generic term for news feeds, and even though Live Bookmarks supports RSS and Atom, an icon that said “RSS” wouldn’t confuse people. What the heck, Apple does it too!
But that’s a poor excuse. You shouldn’t need to know what RSS or Atom is to use Live Bookmarks.
Pretty Widgets, Part 2
Posted on | September 16, 2004 | 49 Comments
Here’s a followup on my attempt to make the HTML widgets on Mac Firefox presentable. I’ve had to make some compromises here to get the widgets to look nice, for instance I force the background-color and -image on buttons. And text box borders usually use my colors rather than the ones specified by the web page CSS. For these reasons these styles would probably not be acceptable for inclusion in Firefox, but in most cases I’ve found these to be more comfortable than the primitive default widgets.
Instructions: Close Firefox. Right-click on your Firefox application, choose “Show Package Contents”, and then open the Contents > MacOS > res folder. Make a backup copy of your platform-forms.css file. Then copy these files into the res folder:
Important: If you followed my instructions in the previous blog post to modify your userContent.css file, either delete it or remove my additional code before trying out the new and improved widgets.
A little bug: I’m not sure how I can get rid of the black border around the inside of the selected select box. Please let me know if you have any comments or suggestions for improvements!
Silliness is its own reward (Updated with extra mirth!)
Posted on | September 15, 2004 | 33 Comments
Looking over the selection of Firefox buttons at the new SpreadFirefox site, I was inspired to make this:
To the obvious question, I say: Why not? This is an audience participation blog post. Warm up your Photoshops and your MacPaints and lets see your take on the little browser that could!
UPDATE: This comes from Scott @ techory.com:
He has another one on his blog. Cool stuff!
UPDATE 2: Daniel Keep sent this one through email. Thanks Daniel 
