shorlander wrote:Frank Lion wrote:...Here's a new idea you might like to consider, Mozilla - give these guys a level playing field with yourselves. Give them an installable version of the latest version default theme and which includes chrome manifest flags pointing to sub folders for Linux/Aero/Mac folders for universal compatibility with all major OSs. This would take Mozilla less than a day to make and directly improve the performance and 'user experience' of around 250+ themes by the less experienced theme authors.
@ Stephen ~ I'm not afraid of 'competition' and nor should you be. Give those guys a level playing field with yourselves.
There is certainly all kinds of stuff wrong with how hard it is to create and maintain a theme. However nothing about this difficulty is adversarial or motivated by fear of 'competition'. More themes = more choice = good. This would mean everyone wins.
Which mirrors exactly my views on this as well.
shorlander wrote:Also it is late so I am maybe am not quite sure what you are suggesting to alleviate this pain point. You are suggesting a nightly updated theme template download?
I am suggesting a single theme template be made available by Mozilla exactly one month prior to the official release of that version. If earlier beta stage templates were offered, it would only encourage the less experienced themers to run with that beta version and not change their stuff to the latest. This would result in breakings on release as the default code would have changed a fair bit.
Do a single pre-release template and you have guaranteed built-in QA that any theme based
directly off default template will be functionally as good as the default theme and no icons/graphics will be missing, as if any are not added by the themer it will simply use the default ones.
A month may not seem long, but consider how it would pan out in practice -
1. Addons notifies themers the the default template is ready.
2. Themers basing off default then change the template GUID, External Name, Internal Name, description as appropriate in install.rdf and chrome.manifest.
3. They then substitute their own icon.png, preview.png, toolbar.png, background images and any other images they want. They just have to stick to the same locations and image naming conventions as the template uses and ensure that their toolbar.png matches the same -moz-image-regions as the template - a simple blank toolbar.png with those regions marked off could even be included in the template.
4. If the template included an import url in global.css (i.e. @import url("chrome://global/skin/xul/xul.css");) pointing to a blank .css then the themer could add any additional coding there without touching the default template coding. This would be coding for their non-default toolbar/window backgrounds, etc.
5. The theme is finished.
Many new themers only theme the main browser window as it is, so the theme dropping to default in the Addons Manager, Options, Bookmark Manager, etc. is nothing new and there is no reason why they couldn't substitute their own Options.png, viewButtons.png, etc at a later date.
So, how does this work out in real life? Well, I did an experimental theme based off default back in 2008 using this idea. It took 90
minutes to version it from Firefox 3.0 to Firefox 3.5 and the same for 3.6.
How long were other guys basing off default taking at the time to do the same? Judging from their comments, 30/60 even 100
hours...and they still had breakings on release.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (attrib.)
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I'll post an updated screenshot shortly.
