So, you wanna make a theme...

lucx · Post by **lucx** » December 2nd, 2004, 6:01 pm

If you are serious about making a theme, here is my setup that will help you on your way:
http://members.shaw.ca/lucx/archives/theme.htm

Post 0.9 procedures:
Install "Show Old Extensions"
Enable "showoldexts.enable_theme_support"
Disable the xul cache.
Open a new window to see the changes you made.

There are many missing details that others can fill in.
Bon voyage and good luck.

If you know of equivalent procedures for making extensions, please broadcast them.

gaby · Post by **gaby** » December 3rd, 2004, 1:13 pm

Is there a theme preview build?

tmkt · Post by **tmkt** » December 3rd, 2004, 2:39 pm

Lucx,
Thanks very useful.

lucx · Post by **lucx** » December 25th, 2004, 1:28 am

Some more comprehensive instructions:
Follow all the steps in http://members.shaw.ca/lucx/archives/theme.htm

Install the “Show Old Extensions” extension:
http://www.pikey.me.uk/mozilla/?extension=soe

Go to about:config and add this boolean preference:
showoldexts.enable_theme_support
Set it to true.
This makes your theme show up in the Theme Manager.

Still in about:config, set:
extensions.dss.enabled
to true.
This lets you switch themes without restarting the program.

Set:
nglayout.debug.disable_xul_cache
to true.
This lets you see changes in your theme without having to restart the program.

If you theme doesn’t show up in the theme manager, you can force it with:
general.skins.selectedSkin
and setting its value to your skin name (ie. the “chrome:name” entry in contents.rdf)

Open a new browser window to see changes you've made to your theme.
If, after switching themes, everything looks garbled, open a new window.
To see changes in dialogs, reopen that dialog.
To open a new Thunderbird window, double click on an empty folder in the folderpane.

coda · Post by **coda** » December 25th, 2004, 12:10 pm

thanks for your help lucx

Scarrow · Post by **Scarrow** » January 4th, 2005, 3:03 am

I'm bumping this useful little tutorial back up.

Perhaps it is deserving of the much coveted status of "sticky"?

dcNate · Post by **dcNate** » January 5th, 2005, 4:37 pm

The link says it is incompatible with 0.9 though, is this still useful for 1.0?

Pikachu90000 · Post by **Pikachu90000** » January 5th, 2005, 5:12 pm

It's useless, you need a install.rdf and some things have changed a bit, Livemarks, etc

Chriss · Post by **Chriss** » January 5th, 2005, 7:18 pm

What's needed is a Theme and Extension Wizard. As it is now, the mechanics of creating either are too complicated for the average user.

Frankly, the majority of themes I've seen so far for FF are too cutesy or too large. Needed: More compact, small themes.

lucx · Post by **lucx** » January 5th, 2005, 7:19 pm

The theme tuturial was made when 0.8 was the current version. It broke when 0.9 came out. Follow the post-0.9 instructions to make it work again (I'm too lazy to rewrite the tutorial). Everything works as of version 1.0.

Install.rdf is something you will eventually have to do, but out of the scope of this topic. Livemarks etc, are have nothing to do with this topic.

Chriss · Post by **Chriss** » January 5th, 2005, 7:21 pm

If Pikachu is correct, then who/what/where does one go to learn to make themes?

Pikachu90000 · Post by **Pikachu90000** » January 5th, 2005, 9:42 pm

Well, I learned by looking at classic.jar and some other themes like Pinstripe for Mac. That is how I make some of my themes, most of them were ports from 0.9-0.10. There is no extensions for making themes, but I know a site that makes the install.rdf and contents.rdf for you, but you need to change a lot of things.

Pikachu90000 · Post by **Pikachu90000** » January 5th, 2005, 9:46 pm

Well, I learned by looking at classic.jar and some other themes like Pinstripe for Mac. That is how I make some of my themes, most of them were ports from 0.9-0.10. There is no extensions for making themes, but I know a site that makes the install.rdf and contents.rdf for you, but you need to change a lot of things. My themes are mostly small, my smallest theme is 118 kb (LittleFirefox 1.0u) while Winstripe Classic 1.0.3 is 368 kb at second. The largest is at 1.1 MB which is Yellow Tab. I'm going to make a package where all of my themes are in a zipped file for easy download.

lucx · Post by **lucx** » January 6th, 2005, 11:42 pm

Pikachu90000 wrote:It's useless

Saying that this tutorial is useless demonstrates a gross misunderstanding of this topic. Making such an abrasive claim is negligent, especially since others have benefited, and has added to the confusion.

XUL-based themes are complex; they are unnecessarily complex. For anything beyond altering existing images, you must know Cascading Style Sheets.

Keep in mind, this topic will not teach you how to create a theme. But it will make the process of creating themes more efficient, less frustrating, and hopefully, more enjoyable.

ShareBird · Post by **ShareBird** » January 7th, 2005, 3:41 am

Two months ago I started to look at this stuff cause I wanted to solve a little language related problem (help section, remember???). One of the first thing I found was your link... I learned really a lot working into your theme (IMHO the most complete theme for Firefox I know) and misshandling it (sorry... :-)

). It's a really enjoyable experience. I think that's the way. And discover this powerfull tool: DOM Inspector.