notes on testing Firefox themes

[mcdavis]

Here's a little test page that makes it easy to see (in light of Bug 543910 - [Windows] Improve Windows OS theme detection for Firefox.next) which media queries and -moz-system-metric selectors match your current desktop theme.

There are two files involved. Just d/l them and plop them both in the same directory so they can find each other, then d-n-d the XUL into the browser. As just discussed a couple posts back, with Fx4, be sure to enable loading of XUL from file:// URL since that is now blocked by default.

http://home.comcast.net/~username54321/ ... ptheme.xul
http://home.comcast.net/~username54321/ ... ptheme.css

[mcdavis]

A couple new test pages. These display common dialogs to help with checking the layout.

http://home.comcast.net/~username54321/ ... Dialog.xul
http://home.comcast.net/~username54321/ ... Dialog.xul

[patrickjdempsey]

You are on a roll man, these are great!

[Zigboom]

Thanks mcdavis! This must be one of the most useful posts ever (probably #1)!
I keep coming back to it & today I found that the Geo-location doesn't work.
Nothing pops-up.
Could you please tell me what do I need in order for it to work?
I tried to copy the code from Minefield for testing but nothing changed.

[mcdavis]

@Patrick:

Thanks - appreciation is appreciated. The holy grail is still what we talked about in the very first post.

@Zigboom:

Sorry, I left out a step. I'll update the instructions. Short answer: at the given URL, click 'Give It a Try', then 'Where Am I'.

[Zigboom]

Aha! It works somehow out of the box.
Thanks for the tip mcdavis.

[mcdavis]

To test popup notification (and limited max-width for long messages) from an IndexedDB access request:

http://html5-demos.appspot.com/static/h ... index.html (requires JS enabled)

If someone has a link to a Mozilla page that does the same thing, that would be better, since I'm not wild about letting some random page execute Javascript.

[mcdavis]

Updated to reflect the existence of tab-modal prompts:

http://home.comcast.net/~username54321/ ... Dialog.xul

The test is the same, but the intro comments are changed to talk about how they can be used to test tab-modal prompts.

Also, one to test the HTML5 audio player:

http://home.comcast.net/~username54321/ ... -test.html

The audio player requires Javascript to be enabled before it will display the controls, so you might want to view source.

[mcdavis]

Here's a summary of results of desktop theme detection with :-moz-system-metric on Windows with the Minefield 20110216 nightly. It's kinda wide, so I put it into a text file for Easy Reading(tm).

http://home.comcast.net/~username54321/ ... 110216.txt

[patrickjdempsey]

Thank you for putting so much energy into this mc! One thing I've noticed is that it will be really useful to detect Luna Silver (and Zune) because those themes use a grey shade really close to the background color as the "highlight" color. It would be nice if you could add Royale and Royale Noir (which is the same as Royale with black title-bars).

[mcdavis]

OK, good idea, added results for Royale and Royale Noir.

Check out the weird readings I got for Royale Noir .. that's kind of surprising and I'm not sure what to make of that. Possibilities: 1) I got the wrong installer 2) I installed it wrong 3) Royale Noir doesn't correctly identify itself and that's as good as it gets 4) Firefox code incorrectly detects that desktop theme.

Here's where I got it.

- Royale Noir: http://www.istartedsomething.com/upload ... e_noir.zip
-- via http://www.istartedsomething.com/20061029/royale-noir/
- DEAD LINK Royale: http://download.microsoft.com/download/ ... royale.zip
-- via http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2005/05/248.ars
- Royale: http://download1us.softpedia.com/dl/f89 ... _theme.zip
-- via http://www.softpedia.com/get/Desktop-En ... inXP.shtml

[ShareBird]

mcdavis,
the problem with Royale Noir is that it is not an "official" theme, so it's no possible to detect it.
I'm wondering why you don't use anymore the native approach you used to... I've got inspiration on you (many thanks ) and made my themes go with native titlebar without problems....

[Zigboom]

It looks like soon we will be able to style the whole window frame, there's a bug working on it (bug 590945).
Google Chrome is already doing it and it looks very cool and modern.

[patrickjdempsey]

That's too bad that Royale Noir shows up as Luna Silver... it's really virtually identical to Royale. Sorry I had forgotten it's not an official theme (as it used to come bundled with Tiny XP). That will mean that any adjustments made in colors that are needed to make things more visible in Luna Silver will impact Royale Noir, but I guess it OK to style Noir, Silver and Zune all basically the same.

[ShareBird]

That's too bad that Royale Noir shows up as Luna Silver... it's really virtually identical to Royale. Sorry I had forgotten it's not an official theme (as it used to come bundled with Tiny XP). That will mean that any adjustments made in colors that are needed to make things more visible in Luna Silver will impact Royale Noir, but I guess it OK to style Noir, Silver and Zune all basically the same.

I don't think Royale Noir shows up as Luna Silver, since I have specific rules for Luna Silver and they don't apply on Royale Noir (my XP theme of choice at this moment...)