Firefox 2 Theme
September 2nd, 2006
I’m unsure what everyone thinks of the new Firefox 2.0 theme or the "visual refresh" but I personally hate it. The new icons are a step in the wrong direction, the whole browser looks like Netscape 4 and many of the parts of the UI which looked native on Windows XP now look alien. Additionally, some of the updated icons are hard to recognise.
There is no point in me repeating things which many other people have already said so I’ll point to some relevant sites:
- Mozilla Wiki: Default Theme Update
The proposal and some mockups. - Asa Dotzler: What do you think?
Mozilla blogger Asa asks users what they think of the new theme. Opinion seems to be mainly negative but this may be because people with negative opinions are more inclined to post. Still, the points made in many of the comments are very valid. - Rakaz: New themes for Firefox and Thunderbird
A fantastic critique of the new themes which say basically everything I wanted to say.
If you’re fed up with the Firefox 2.0 theme you can get an old one back:
This whole theme change is a bit reminiscent of the change at version 0.9 when Qute was changed to Winstripe. I hated it at first but I gradually became a fan when the theme was tidied up and became a bit more polished. I’m open to the possibility of becoming a fan of the Firefox 2.x theme too but I really can’t see any benefits of the new theme since it has worse usability and it looks non-native.
- Browsers , Firefox , User Interface
- Comments(6)
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I’m with you. Personally, I also think it’s a step in the wrong direction. The back and forward buttons are especially annoying. The drop down menus are something I won’t use, I just click the buttons repeatedly.
But, in their defence, the tab area redesign is something I really like.
Personally I think everything mozilla have done since forking firefox into another, bloating, lump of its own, sucks.
I use the Modern Modoki theme out of protest.
I thought the new design was ok (although not as pretty) but after reading the article and have the problems pointed out to me I have started to dislike it too.
I also think that the thunderbird toolbar has too many icons
I’ve never been a fan of the sorta shiney looking buttons for anything really, I always thought it seemed too kiddish. I think the whole glossy effect should be left to external developers to make themes for it, or hope that theme creators for XP/Vista will include firefox theme packs.
Well, I’m surprised to hear this sort of outcry, I thought the new theme looked very nice, they’ve glossed everything a little (sort of like the default Opera theme has glossy bits), and the icons (the ones shown on the wiki.mozilla page, are nice and easy on the eyes, and essentially maintain the same shape and colour as the current set.
Thats why I find it so stupid that "Sunny Boy" hates the new back-forward buttons: they’re the same but with a little bit of extra shading.
Now everyone seems to think the old design was perfect, when infact it was flawed, they couldn’t achieve a consistent look across all Windows versions, let alone all operating systems. Take for example the menues, either they work with XPs butt ugly "candy" (or "childish") themes or they work well with the good old fashion Windows style. They never look right on both…
The new theme means that Firefox will behave in a consistent manner across all platforms from the go.
I personally just prefer the color palette used in the current theme - it’s more vibrant and more fun. I will admit that Firefox doesn’t look great on Linux; I got so annoyed with the look on KDE once I resorted to downloading a Crystal SVG theme.
However, I think the vast majority of people use Windows so Windows users should be the primary focus.