Another default theme coming

Discuss application theming and theme development.
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Arvid Axelsson
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Another default theme coming

Post by Arvid Axelsson »

An e-mail from Ben and my reply:
Arvid Axelsson wrote:
Ben Goodger wrote:Hi Arvid,

We have been working on some of the issues surrounding Themes in our tree in recent months and two of the key areas of concern are licensing, and uniform product appearance across our supported platforms.

With regard to licensing issues with artwork in our tree, Mozilla policy has always been to minimize the amount of proprietary material that we host in our CVS repositories. In our case at present it's pretty much only our logos which are protected by trademark, and the Qute theme which you have indicated a desire to protect.

I have indicated it, yes. But you are obviously the ones who have been reluctant to discuss this. Simply, I wouldn't have hesitated to license it as you wish if you stated it was necessary. And you could hardly have assumed otherwise from what I've written.

We have also had a desire to present a consistent look and feel for our browser across the platforms that we support - including Windows, MacOS X and Linux. This allows us to create a stronger brand identity for ourselves.

As a result we've decided to pursue a new path for the Firefox browser that we distribute, which involves replacing Qute with a free alternative developed by Kevin Gerich and Stephen Horlander as a Windows variant of Pinstripe.

I see no reason not to make use of my experience. At least I'm sure it would have been useful. Because I too think the quality of my work is very good. It feels like you're not telling me all the truth, and you're telling it late. It's not too far-fetched to call Mozilla's attitude arrogant here.

The transition to the new theme for Firefox will begin in the next few days as the materials become available to us, before the 0.9 release. The decision to do this is in no way a reflection on the quality of your work, which has always been excellent, Qute is in my opinion one of the best themes produced . I encourage you to offer it as a standalone .jar install for the large number of people who enjoy using it. I imagine that being able to deliver updates to it on your own terms and schedule will be a relief from incessant Mozilla release delays and swamped engineers like myself too busy to find time to check in artwork updates right away.

Well, I learned to check in them myself (and Mike Connor was responsive in doing so anyway). And it's more like it's been easier not having to keep up with theme changes. And my focus has always been on making a great default theme, with aspects that I'm afraid are only fully appreciated as such, especially in my recent version which has more than twice as much time invested in it as before. Aside from that, it's a huge relief.

Thank you very much for the hard work you've invested in this project to date, and I hope to see newer and better versions of Qute in the future.

I assume this will happen for Thunderbird as well? When?
fredrik
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Post by fredrik »

I want my Qute :(
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CeleronXL
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Post by CeleronXL »

Is this new theme the new artwork in the latest nightlies, or is it something completely new?
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chrisgeleven
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Post by chrisgeleven »

Why? Qute is the best default theme for a Windows app I have seen. It looks beautiful on Windows XP. It makes Firefox and Thunderbird look like real Windows applications. You know how many people I have converted to Firefox because it looks and feels like every single well designed application on Windows?

Pinstripe is a nice theme, but definitely fits much better with Mac OS X and not with Windows.

Pinstripe works perfectly and fits perfectly with Mac OS X. The same goes with Qute and Windows (sorry, I don't use Linux so I can't say anything about that platform).

I don't understand this.

Edit: I just wrote a blog post about this.
Last edited by chrisgeleven on June 5th, 2004, 6:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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GNU/Ben
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Post by GNU/Ben »

I also fail to see what is wrong with Qute. It fits in as well as any one skin can on both Windows and Linux. And Arvid is willing to license it in such a way that it is compatable with mozilla.org's goals.

Why should it not be used?
"When you say 'I wrote a program that crashed Windows', people just stare at you blankly and say 'Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*'."
-- Linus Torvalds
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bangbang023
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Post by bangbang023 »

Having an alternative is never a bad thing. The very concept is in the spirit of what Mozilla is all about.
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CeleronXL
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Post by CeleronXL »

Is the problem that you do not want the Qute throbber replaced with something else?
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GNU/Ben
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Post by GNU/Ben »

bangbang023 wrote:Having an alternative is never a bad thing. The very concept is in the spirit of what Mozilla is all about.

This is about the default Firefox theme. There can only be one default.
"When you say 'I wrote a program that crashed Windows', people just stare at you blankly and say 'Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*'."
-- Linus Torvalds
Gentoo: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041210 Firefox/1.0
Arvid Axelsson
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Post by Arvid Axelsson »

CeleronXL wrote:Is this new theme the new artwork in the latest nightlies, or is it something completely new?
The nightlies still have Qute.
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Hooded One
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Post by Hooded One »

So... now "consistent look" means "Mac OSX look?" I know it'd only be the icons, and they *are* nice icons, but they really don't look good with anything other than OSX. Qute on the other hand fits in with Windows perfectly, and doesn't look bad at all in Linux.

:/
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mezziah
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Post by mezziah »

Pinstripe? Never seen before. I think Qute is a really nice theme, I'm happy with it and it should stay there as the default theme.
What will happen next? You never know.
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chrisgeleven
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Post by chrisgeleven »

Pinstripe screenshots: http://kmgerich.com/archive/000049.html

Looks perfect on OS X, but does not fit with Windows at all like Qute does.
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kainashi
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Post by kainashi »

who said it was going to look exactly like the mac os x version? ?_?
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mezziah
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Post by mezziah »

Thanks for the link. I personally don't like the theme, but let's see how it will look in the future. Remember, there are enough alternative themes you can install. It's just the future default theme.
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CeleronXL
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Post by CeleronXL »

Arvid Axelsson wrote:
CeleronXL wrote:Is this new theme the new artwork in the latest nightlies, or is it something completely new?
The nightlies still have Qute.
Ah that's just a new version of Qute?

I'd really like to see Ben's input on this...
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