Why can't we style the Window Frames?

[Zigboom]

This is something that bugs me for a long time so, to take it off my chest, I decided to post about it here hoping one of the devs will notice and "pick up the glove".

The issue that bugs me, from the point of view of a theme designer and user is (as in the title), the lack of ability to style the Window Frames (the left, right & bottom ones).

Now, we can style the upper one, that's cool, but quite pointless without the ability to style the rest of the frames.

The main point that shows that it can be done is: Chrome does it! and does it beautifully, with rounded corners when necessary.

Please devs, if you like to keep the competitive look, this should be no.1 in the list!

[shorlander]

This will likely be in 4.1. The bug to enable this is 590945.

[patrickjdempsey]

Now, we can style the upper one, that's cool, but quite pointless without the ability to style the rest of the frames.

It's only visible when tabs are on top and the menu is hidden.... and even then only for Windows at this point. There used to be several themes that styled the entire frame back in Firefox 2.0 but I think the method used was blocked, although I think there are some *sneaky tricks* to make it happen in 3.x themes... I mean anything is possible if you know what you are doing and what rules to break.

[Zigboom]

Patrick, please educate me

I'd love to style those frames... I don't mind breaking some rules or being sneaky...at least I would like to offer this option for a review.

Seriously, Firefox is loosing many points to Chrome because of the design, it becomes messy, overloaded and non-consistent.
What's the point to offer themes if the average user will not even know how to change the color of the frames to match it to the theme? The user will have an ugly light blue frame with clumsy huge buttons and very little choice about the style of his/hers browser.
Chrome released few themes made by it's developers! not one as in Firefox!
All this themes style the window frames and have a unified style, including the Window buttons.
Style is a very important selling point as we all know and packaging Firefox with a nice window frames will add to it's attraction.
Oh, by the way, the frames on Chrome also change color between focused and non-focused state so it adds some valuable info for the user.

Please Patrick, if you know how to do it, share with us.

And devs, if you read this, please reply and let me know if I should file a bug about this.

[patrickjdempsey]

I have no idea how to do it.... just saying that there are people who probably do. As far as themes go, Mozilla really has no interest in them... some of the top developers would be happy if themes disappeared completely and were replaced with Personas. We really don't have much leverage in convincing Mozilla do *anything* for the sake of themes... now if you can convince someone that it would be good for the default theme and Personas, then you have an argument that they will be more likely to listen to.

[Zigboom]

I have no idea how to do it.... just saying that there are people who probably do. As far as themes go, Mozilla really has no interest in them... some of the top developers would be happy if themes disappeared completely and were replaced with Personas. We really don't have much leverage in convincing Mozilla do *anything* for the sake of themes... now if you can convince someone that it would be good for the default theme and Personas, then you have an argument that they will be more likely to listen to.

I totally agree with you Patrick.

Anyway, it's definitely true that it can be done because Chrome does it on Windows.

My point is that it'll be good for the DEFAULT theme to control the Window Frames in order to get a better look (Chrome does it in it's default themes).

We could then happily hitchhike on the feature of course.

[patrickjdempsey]

Well the difference is that Mozilla does have concerns about OS integration... they want their product to feel "native" and the only reason they have *any* custom titlebar stuff is because Windows doesn't have an API for adding buttons to the titlebar natively... although I would bet the next version will.

[Zigboom]

I agree, it's nice that the default theme blends into The OS but still can be great to control the window frames and use the OS colors to make a more stylish design, for example thin frames that look similar on both OS (that's what Chrome did but they give few choices of color ' one could be an OS color theme).

There are quite many apps that choose to style the whole interface, including the Window Frames.
For example, Skype, Norton, Tuneup Utilities and many other well established apps.
It gives a very nice look and feel.

I just hope that at least we, the 3rd party theme designers, will figure out the hack.

[Zigboom]

This will likely be in 4.1. The bug to enable this is 590945.

Oh, Just saw your comment shorlander, that's great news!
It looks like the devs noticed the issue and are going to take care of it.
I'm looking forward to be able to play with that feature...

[patrickjdempsey]

Yeah, it looks like the primary goal there is to be able to style the window frame with Personas using a color that is in the Personas spec but is only currently used for the Mac window frame. This seems to only apply to Windows... so the problem of your theme looking different on different OS's will still be there.

[Zigboom]

Sure, as you said, if it's related to Personas then we have a chance of it getting fixed
Anyway, at least we'll have more control of the window frames.
Now it's quite useless to style the title-bar without the option to blend it into the other frames.
Hopefully it'll get smoother and we'll have many more options such as to unify the look of all Windows themes which will be significant, we could make some ugly XP themes look much better and give more personality to the whole look.
Anyway, the Mac theme will always look different because it has a different concept about it's Windows and because it's a very closed system.
I'm looking forward to start designing the Windows frames, I did some work with it in Windowblinds and will be happy to do similar things here.

[patrickjdempsey]

I don't know, my themes basically look identical on all platforms except for the titlebar... and the titlebar doesn't really bother me that much... in fact everyone freaking out about it recently is the most thought I've ever put towards it... people really do obsess too much over a few pixels in the browser when it's bad website design that's the REAL screen real-estate killer.

[jivko]

Now, we can style the upper one, that's cool, but quite pointless without the ability to style the rest of the frames.

There used to be several themes that styled the entire frame back in Firefox 2.0 but I think the method used was blocked, although I think there are some *sneaky tricks* to make it happen in 3.x themes...

Which themes?I'd like to find images and see the frames customized.

[Zigboom]

I don't know, my themes basically look identical on all platforms except for the titlebar... and the titlebar doesn't really bother me that much... in fact everyone freaking out about it recently is the most thought I've ever put towards it... people really do obsess too much over a few pixels in the browser when it's bad website design that's the REAL screen real-estate killer.

I meant for example to make the XP theme's window-frame look the same as the Win7 one.
Chrome does it and look great on my XP setup.

And as for bad website design, it can be fixed with Stylish

[patrickjdempsey]

Which themes?I'd like to find images and see the frames customized.

My memory isn't quite able to recall which exact themes from 3 years ago. I know Frank Lion's themes all did it and several of the Mac-style themes did it. It would probably be pretty difficult at this point do discover which themes and find working copies for 2.0... many of the old themes were removed from AMO and many developers removed old 2.0 versions of their themes when they "rebooted" their themes for 3.0.