patrickjdempsey wrote:One thing that I've recommended for first-time themers for awhile now is building a browser-skin-only theme. Most themers only want to touch the primary interface anyway, so there is no point of packaging the other skins if you aren't going to change them.
You ask them or just assume that? When you talk to them, they also want to theme the Options Window as well, so preferences.css also has to be added.
The problem here and it's one that's always been here and it used to be how our MozillaZine KB was, is this idea that if you throw endless information at people that some of it is bound to stick. It doesn't, it confuses people and they give up. I know, I've talked to them.
I still remember before I started making themes, I used to reads the yards upon yards of posts here, and at Mozilla, all supposedly explaining theme related things and I didn't understand a word of it. Luckily, I have a 'How hard can it be?' mindset and just pressed on and made one. Made one, I'd add, without ever asking one single question in this forum and when I had done it I felt like Peggy Lee and thought 'Is that all there is?''. You see, it wasn't understanding the theming that was difficult, it was understanding the over-complicated waffle that was endlessly talked about theming that was difficult.
You should all feel free to turn this thread into a good ol' 10 pager, so we can all walk away feeling that we have really got to grips with this problem and that it has now been thoroughly discussed. However, I guarantee you one thing, not one single potential themer will have benefited from it and not one single new theme will have been made as a result of it.
People starting out on making themes just need a simple template and simple, concise, instructions.