Comments on: Creating Your Themes’ Identity & Install Files

By: james

james — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 03:39:13 +0000

whenever I update iPoxRemix and all the ones to the same in Contents the theme no longer works, it installs correctly, but it just the default theme, if I leave it how it is and just do the rest of the changes it doesn’t work. I ever just tried adding an extra x on the end, Nothing works when I change that string.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 10:39:02 +0000

That’s usually an issue with one of the install files where the theme doesn’t know where to find the icon image. Either that or an issue with the browser.css file.

By: srsly_sara

srsly_sara — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 22:44:15 +0000

First off, thanks a lot for doing these tutorials. I’m just delving into themes and having fun with it

Second- I know I’m doing something wrong. I followed directions to repackaging your iPoxRemix files for FF 3.6.*.
It installs, thankfully. However, the only thing that seems to have changed is the menu backgrounds. None of the new icons are showing up.
Any clue what I’m doing wrong?

By: farshad

farshad — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 07:29:51 +0000

i know what’s wrong guys. there is a file named “chrome.manifest”. you must put it away from your pack.
i had the same problem and now it’s gone and everything is fine.
thanks thomas for sharing this

By: I will not give away my name

I will not give away my name — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 13:14:09 +0000

It will only install into addons not themes so I can not use it

By: mu

mu — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:15:54 +0000

really beautiful tutorial thanks so much and keep it up we’re loving you!

By: BN

BN — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 01:37:44 +0000

Ok, so I did all the changing in “install” and “contents”…I then zipped all 9 files to “desktop.jar” and renamed it to my theme. I open up the add-ons and when I try to drag it into the themes, nothing happens. No error messages, nothing. It acts as if I never even put anything there. So is there something I missed somewhere? I opened the .jar folder just to make sure that all 9 files were, and there they were.

Although “install” and “contents” is listed as “rdf”, I don’t see “.rdf” at the end of their name. I had to open them and save them in wordpad (i’m using XP SP3), so I tried to save them as a “rich text format”, “text document”, “text document – MS-DOS format”, and as “Unicode Text Document”. These are the only options for saving them. NOTHING worked. I actually wish I could have gotten an error message to let me know i’m at least doing something, lol. So…what am I doing wrong?

By: Thomas

Thomas — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 02:32:37 +0000

Email it to me and I’ll take a look at it. twistermc gmail

By: Josh

Josh — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 15:22:07 +0000

Ok, PLEASE help me, I did what it said EXACTLY and I used WinRAR and made it into a ZIP, then named it what the name of it is and made it a .jar, then I dragged it into the Firefox theme box and installed it, restarted fire fox and when it did, it was just the normal Firefox theme, the same as the Default theme. I have spent forever looking over the scripts, and it looks all good, I haven’t even got to skinning yet, just wana make the one that came with it work first. Please help. If you can help, reply here or e-mail at joshdayjd@yahoo.com PLEASE HELP!!!!!!!!!!

By: WDDan

WDDan — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:45:46 +0000

Thank You!!

By: Thomas

Thomas — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:59:15 +0000

Open install.rdf and change 2.0.0.* from 2.0.0.* to 3.5.*. Then it will install in Firefox 3.5 and you’ll have to look for any issues.

By: WDDan

WDDan — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:52:24 +0000

How can you make the Theme compatible with FireFox 3.5

By: Thomas

Thomas — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 03:20:58 +0000

Sounds like the install files are not correct. Email me the file twistermc/gmail and I’ll fix the files.

By: DKT

DKT — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 02:50:32 +0000

I get this error

Firefox could not install the file at

because: Not a valid install package
-207

can you help me please

By: Thomas

Thomas — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 11:04:03 +0000

Sounds like the install file is incorrect. You can try to sent it to me twistermc/gmail but I’m not sure when I’ll get time to look at it.

By: david-X

david-X — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 19:33:28 +0000

I have a problem too

i cannot find my fault!

when i drag the .jar to the add-on window the install window appears and when i click install the window fade away and the add-on window turns to the install window(where the progress bar is normaly), but there is no progress bar , there is nothing! its completely blanc and no error appears!

can you halp me please

By: Thomas

Thomas — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 12:02:15 +0000

Thanks for the update BobCFC. You are correct.

By: BobCFC

BobCFC — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 06:40:29 +0000

I had the same error as Kyle the first time I tried:

Firefox could not install the file at

because: Install script not found
-204

It turns out this was because when I created the .jar file I had right clicked ON THE FOLDER and created an archive. This is wrong. Go into the folder, select all the files instead then create and archive. Now the error goes away and it works.

You can tell because when you click on the .jar file to look inside you should see the files straight away not a folder inside the .jar file.

By: Byron

Byron — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 09:46:38 +0000

umm…i think i’m understanding this. Your tutorials are helpful and i am deeply thankful towards you for inventing firefox. It’s fun.

By: BKP

BKP — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 03:29:10 +0000

for “Install script not found -204″ error message:

It may be that your zip file (or jar file) contains all files/folders under a “named” folder. You might have used windows built-in “send to –> zip folder”.

https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Creating_a_Skin_for_Firefox:Getting_Started

Look under “Repackaging JAR”
you need to repackage a JAR file with the following directory structure:
————————
/browser/*
/communicator/*
/global/*
/help/*
/mozapps/*
/contents.rdf
/install.rdf
/icon.png
/preview.png
————————