Author: Kevin

From the lab: Pinstripe theme tab redesign

Kevin19 Comments

After seeing Panther’s new tab controls, I thought it was time to redesign Pinstripe’s browser tabs. I want to make the tabs less visually disturbing than the Aqua tabs while being usable and polished. Here’s what I have so far. Click on the thumbnail below to view the whole image. Please comment on the design and suggest changes. Bonus points if you create a mockup of how you think it should look!

P.S.: The screenshot is of the beta of Pinstripe 3 on Mozilla Firebird with the SmoothStripes theme. I don’t use OS themes myself but I plan to make the next version of Pinstripe more theme-friendly.

Pinstripe Theme for Firebird Preview 1

Kevin15 Comments

I’ve been working on a version of Pinstripe for Mozilla Firebird lately though it’s not fully baked. I figured I’d make this preview available to show my progress and get feedback. I’ve taken a cue from Safari on the bookmarks toolbar and have some new icon art. Go to this page to install. Please leave a comment or send me an email with your thoughts. Feel free to pick nits 🙂

Update, June 14: I’ve uploaded a new preview of Pinstripe for Firebird. Changes include more refined icons, more work on HIG friendliness, drop shadows, tweaked preferences window, etc. I’m still far from done but check it out and offer some feedback. Thanks!

MNG support removed from Mozilla

Kevin6 Comments

throbber.png
Support for the MNG file format was removed from Mozilla today. Multiple-image Network Graphics is like a GIF animation but with alpha-transparency so it can blend in with images among other neat features. Look at the image above with the loading animation blending in with the Aqua tab. This looks pretty awful when in GIF format. The thing is that there is no alternative to MNG in Mozilla, so I will have to go back to GIF animations or find some other way of doing an animated icon with alpha-transparency. Any suggestions?

Update: Please vote for Bug 18574 if you’d like to see MNG support restored to Mozilla. But please don’t use the bug for advocacy – that’s what the MozillaZine forums and your blogs are for. Thanks!

Cheapo Mando

Kevin

I really admire the music of David Grisman, Bill Monroe, The Jazz Mandolin Project, etc. and I’m fan of the subtle sound of the mandloin. So I bought myself a cheapo instrument and I’m learning to play. It’s uphill work with me having no musical experience except as a listener. My fingers don’t want to move that way. But slowly I’m getting something that sounds like it might grow up to be music one day.

If anyone can point me to resources (web sites, books, tapes) that are helpful for a beginner, I’d be grateful.

Mozilla Firebird becomes 'official' on OS X

Kevin7 Comments

The first “official” builds of Mozilla Firebird for Mac OS X have appeared on Mozilla.org’s site. I’m taking down my experimental build because it’s no longer necessary. Mac Firebird needs some love to come up to the level of quality that we expect from a Mozilla product. So I encourage you to download an official build and file bugs in Bugzilla. In answer to some folks questions, yes I will eventually rewrite the the Pinstripe theme to work on the Mozilla app suite and Mozilla Firebird.

Smoothscroll not so smooth on OS X

Kevin1 Comment

You might notice that scrolling with the mouse wheel or space bar is a bit more jerky than you are used to in Mozilla Firebird. This is because of a feature called Smoothscroll which seems to have problems on OS X. To turn it off, type ‘about: config’ in your URL bar, scroll down to ‘general.smoothScroll’, double-click it and set the value to false.