theme for icons?

[jhaber3]

I see the new upgrad disables Nautipolis, which translated the icons into something recognizable. (I mean, junk was junk, in color, and now it's just a crescent.) Can anyone recommend something? Thanks.

[tanstaafl]

Monterail works with 60.*. There are also dark and full dark versions of it. It was created in collaboration with Monterail (a web/mobile design company), and has gotten a lot of publicity in the Thunderbird planning mailing list, which increases the chances it will keep working in future releases.

https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/th ... dl-created

Frank Lion (who is active in several MozillaZine forums) developed two metal lion themes. They also work with 60.*.

https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/th ... dl-created

Personally, I gave up on using complete themes and use a normal theme (just changes the menu/toolbar background) plus customization tweaks using the CustomizeMyBird add-on. https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/th ... rd/?src=ss

[jhaber3]

What I liked about Nautipolis was that it changed the toolbar icons, making them much more suggestive of function, a bit in color, and a bit in 3D. It didn't silver over the whole of Thunderbird or add a background image. I'm having trouble finding something like that. I'm in fact also having trouble getting a good preview of most themes out there! Their listing among themes just seems to show a background image (birds, cartoons, whatever), but nothing about the toolbar look.

[jhaber3]

I see it's also disabled More Functions for Address Book and Google Search for Thunderbird. It's sure getting aggressive! (And indeed how odd that looking at available themes and clicking on one doesn't have previews.)

[jhaber3]

Sorry to keep posting replies, but I'm feeling stymied by so many things here. I just tried, successively, installing Monterail and Metal Lion. Each time, I don't actually see an effect. The tool bars don't change, and indeed I'm not sure anything else did either.

[DanRaisch]

Try reinstalling Metal Lion again, shutting down and restarting Thunderbird. If you still don't see any change in theme, repeat the process of installing, shutting down and restarting Thunderbird. Several posters have reported finding it necessary to repeatedly install a theme before the effect of the installation was visible.

[jhaber3]

I did try reinstalling, and of course each time it says it requires restart and offers the choice to restart now, which I took. This time I also restarted Windows 10. Still, unless I don't know what to look for or am looking for more palpable changes in toolbars than it offers, I'm not seeing any difference.

I should add to be explicit that I do see any installed theme in Add-ons, Themes with the remove option, which I always took before reinstalling or installing the other.

FWIW, I particular miss how the Nautipolis icon for address book looked like a small book, not two silhouette heads, and how the icon for junk looked like an international red stop sign or disapprove stamp, not a curious flat dark curve that I can't attribute meaning to.

[DanRaisch]

I should add to be explicit that I do see any installed theme in Add-ons, Themes with the remove option, which I always took before reinstalling or installing the other.

Don't uninstall the theme before reinstalling. You want to overwrite the existing installation of the theme with the new installation. You might need to try that overwrite process more than twice (I've seen reports of 4 installations) before the desired look "kicks in". I had to "double install" Aluminum Kai 2 before the main TB window displayed the theme:

[tanstaafl]

The CustomizeMyBird add-on has a feature to color the icons in the toolbar.

I've sometimes worked around problems installing add-ons by installing them using an older version of Thunderbird (using custom setup to specify a different directory) that uses the same profile. That's why I have both 52.9.1 and 60.3 installed.

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... &t=3041270 mentions MoreFunctionsForAddressBooks seems to install and work fine if you set extensions.strictCompatibility false using the config editor beforehand. That's the recommended workaround for add-ons that haven't been updated for 60.* but don't use any APIs that cause problems.

There isn't a known workaround for google search yet. There is a patch that is still undergoing review, but no idea when it will be released. It broke due to a feature in the Mozilla toolkit that it used going away.

[jhaber3]

Thanks all! If it's a clue, I have found that with at least one theme, Monterail (not that I love it), the toolbar buttons change within a message, just not in the one in the app as a whole.

I just changed strict compatibility to false, and it does not appear to have enabled More Functions for Address Book. If I remember right, I used it for more import / export options, whether in moving to a new computer or in sharing the address book with gmail in the cloud in order then to download it to an iPhone. But I'm not sure, and I gather there are other approaches. (Still a shame that so many popular extensions have been disabled -- by far the majority of the two dozen most popular, I've read. A real blow against the Mozilla culture.)

Anyhow, I'm focusing on looking for a theme I'm ok with that works, especially changing the junk button. So the problems thus far are again that I haven't found one, that it's difficult because the page for browsing themes doesn't seem to have much in the way of previews, and that I'm having trouble making one fully visible. Thanks again. I shall now look again into Customize My Bird.

[tanstaafl]

I just installed the "1.0b7 version (TB 14 - 59)" version of MoreFunctionsForAddressBooks from https://freeshell.de/~kaosmos/morecols-en.html in TB 60.3. Seems to work.

[jhaber3]

Fascinating, thanks. Not only did that installation enable the extension (now if only I could remember more about it, but another day), but it also enabled full implementation of Monterail theme without my doing anything explicit to do so. Now if only I liked it a bit more.

[sfhowes]

Nautopolis works here in TB 60.3/W10, but you have to change the maxVersion in install.rdf to 60.*. Download the xpi installer, change the extension to zip, extract install.rdf, edit in text editor, re-add to zip, change back to xpi, install.

https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-us/th ... underbird/

[jhaber3]

Fascinating, thanks. I'll take a look.

[jhaber3]

Indeed, truly was fascinating, and now I've a better idea of how xpi files are constructed. It worked. Although I've lost the top-right icons (minimize, window, close), I can't actually tell you if they were ever there with this theme.

Given that the installation has now specified valid through v60, do you think that it will disable itself soon as the version advances? (I tried another colorful theme, Phoenicity, but it a bit too much. But no accounting for tastes.)