styling phoenix window

darren · Post by **darren** » November 9th, 2002, 9:03 am

this is probably a very basic question, but i guess these forums are for novices as well as pros so here it goes:

many of the screen shots of these beautiful themes have the actual phoenix window and background styled as well as just the buttons and icons. in some of the screen shots the whole browser window is a dead ringer for os x even though it's taken from win32. when i apply the themes just my buttons and icons change. how do i make the whole window themed?

thanks in advance for any help!

lynchknot · Post by **lynchknot** » November 9th, 2002, 9:51 am

darren, these themes are dependent on msstyle themes or whatever you have. You can choose any background your OS allows.
For XP you can get the Jaguar theme here : http://www.amilcarguerra.com/~iceman/

darren · Post by **darren** » November 9th, 2002, 10:55 am

thanks for the input lynchknot. looks like iceman's site is based solely on xp. is there anything like this for win2k? i love the result, but i'm just not an xp fan.

Thumper · Post by **Thumper** » November 9th, 2002, 12:18 pm

XP has the theming engine built-in. The closest you'll come without using XP is using WindowBlinds from Stardock.

- Chris

ugggf · Post by **ugggf** » November 10th, 2002, 4:39 am

There is an exception: Phoenix ver. of Orbit 3+1 changes the background as well as the icons. So why this can't happen with the other themes? Does anybody know a way to add a background to a theme?

Post by **djst** » November 10th, 2002, 5:27 am

ugggf wrote::!:
There is an exception: Phoenix ver. of Orbit 3+1 changes the background as well as the icons. So why this can't happen with the other themes? Does anybody know a way to add a background to a theme?

Try looking at the Orbit 3+1 theme and see if you can find the answer. I'm sure it's as easy as setting a background property

Vlaad.t.I · Post by **Vlaad.t.I** » November 10th, 2002, 9:45 am

For those of you who want to more fully customise a Phoenix theme by altering backgrounds and opacity attributes, be warned... I tried altering them and ended up with quite a few sets of results - and none of them were good.

Anyone who might know: how can I change the opacity for popups (-moz-opacity: is an attribute I'm familiar with, but all it did was make items in menu popups unselectable (no hightlighting occured on mouse-over) and unclickable)???

I'd also like to change the backgrounds of scrollbars and the like, but nothing seemed to work. I did manage to get the urlbar to accept a background image - a semi-transparent png file - but it refused to render the transparency, and made it fully opaque, much to my dismay. And yes... the png file was *definately* semitransparent...

lynchknot · Post by **lynchknot** » November 10th, 2002, 4:50 pm

I'm happy with the fact that I have the flexibility to change backgrounds, as I please, using msstyle themes. I realize that some of you are not using XP, but I think you might be the minority. I may be wrong. I'm sorry.

I put this together as an experiment, primarily because I wanted to use icons that were not being offered at this time. I saw that they look terrific and I wanted to offer them to the rest of the community.

I do think, however, most of the icons by various artists look great no matter what background you have.

Of course, anyone can experiement with the background - it's up to you. I'm just saying that I'm content with the outcome of my work.

I would, however, like to learn how to alter the vertical space used. I have looked over the browser.css several times and I still don't understand it.

If you like the Orbit 3+1 background, maybe I can contact the author and convert all the icons to something else. That would be easy.

Stefan · Post by **Stefan** » November 10th, 2002, 10:30 pm

lynchknot wrote:I'm happy with the fact that I have the flexibility to change backgrounds, as I please, using msstyle themes. I realize that some of you are not using XP, but I think you might be the minority. I may be wrong. I'm sorry.

Actually, Win95, 98, Me & 2k users still vastly outnumber XP users.

But the real fix for this would probably to have a checkbox somewhere with "[ ] use theme with transparent background" and then have themers add in an optional background in their themes.

lynchknot · Post by **lynchknot** » November 10th, 2002, 10:46 pm

I'm curious, how bad can it be? Will someone post a screenshot? I think the icons are beautiful no matter what background.

asa · Post by **asa** » November 10th, 2002, 11:34 pm

Stefan wrote:
lynchknot wrote:I'm happy with the fact that I have the flexibility to change backgrounds, as I please, using msstyle themes. I realize that some of you are not using XP, but I think you might be the minority. I may be wrong. I'm sorry.

Actually, Win95, 98, Me & 2k users still vastly outnumber XP users.

But the real fix for this would probably to have a checkbox somewhere with "[ ] use theme with transparent background" and then have themers add in an optional background in their themes.

"fix" suggests it's a problem in need of a solution. I don't see it like that. With winXP and linux I can change my theme and I'm pleased that the themes respect that. For those people on older windows versions you get a plain background to the toolbar of your choosing. Where's the problem? As I see it, the more respect for the system look and feel the better. If you're dissatisfied with the older windows toolbar backgrounds then why not get a program to correct that. I think I've heard several people mention windowblinds.

--Asa

scratch · Post by **scratch** » November 10th, 2002, 11:59 pm

Windowblinds doesn't theme Mozilla widgets on 9x, because nsITheme isn't supported on older versions of windows. On older OSes, you get a skinned window border, but the scrollbars and toolbar background and combobox and everything else all look like windows standard. There's a bug on this: <a href="http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=121119">121119</a>, but it's been wontfixed. It bothered me until I upgraded to WinXP, but it'd still be nice to see it fixed for others.

asa · Post by **asa** » November 11th, 2002, 12:06 am

scratch wrote:Windowblinds doesn't theme Mozilla widgets on 9x, because nsITheme isn't supported on older versions of windows. <snip>

OK. Point taken. But that won'tfixed bug has been (for a while now) supplanted by http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=172751 . And it's got patches attached. Let's not encourage themes to do the wrong thing because older Window's don't support nsITheme just yet.

--Asa

flii · Post by **flii** » November 12th, 2002, 9:43 am

i think asa, that for years to come the number of your "older os" users will outnumber the users who have xp or the next os. let's take my version of what i think you're saying and compare it to the web, which i've seen argued way too many times to count.

...
"ok guys, now we know those older or less-commonly used browsers are out there, but we don't need to make our pages view in them like we want. let's design our pages just for ie, because we like that browser best."
...

after using phoenix for a few weeks now, i have grown to really like this browser and all it stands for. however, i must be completely misunderstanding you, and i apologize. correct me plz, because the way i'm reading you is totally not right, i'm sure.

Thumper · Post by **Thumper** » November 12th, 2002, 9:50 am

Having the theme skin the background would break it for those XP users who have a desktop theme they're happy with, and would be more effort for the Moz theme maker anyway. What you're asking for is equivalent to asking theme makers to support 16-bit colour on your VGA monitor.

- Chris

styling phoenix window

styling phoenix window

Phoenix background changes with Orbit 3+1

Re: Phoenix background changes with Orbit 3+1

Be warned