Well, I spent a few hours yesterday trying to figure out how I was going to go about upgrading all my themes to Firefox 3.  So far, I haven’t had any good ideas.

The new theme structure with Firefox 3 is different than Firefox 2.  I knew it would be.  And, at this time, there is nothing out there to help a theme developer know what to change or what to update.  There is a long list of ongoing theme changes, but what does that really mean?  What are the steps to upgrading a theme?

I tried to pull out the Windows default theme and code from that, however it didn’t look or work well on a Mac.  So I pulled out the Mac theme and tried it on Windows.  Amazingly that worked, so it was a step in the right direction.  However, I have no idea if it works on Linux yet and I’m afraid of future compatibility issues.

Then I looked into converting iPox’s buttons to the new toolbar format.  On the Windows side it was pretty easy.  Their theme uses nice 24×24 buttons that matched up pretty well with mine.  On the Mac side, the theme uses mostly the same buttons for big and small, but they are long and the odd shape makes it look way to spaced out with iPox’s buttons.  Additional coding is needed there, or I need to mix and match pieces of each theme.

I then threw in some of my backgrounds and it’s a decent start, but it’s got a long ways to go.

I started the process of converting iPox to Firefox 3, but I doubt I’ll do much until the release clients come out or at least the Proto Mac theme is finalized.  If you notice above, the stop button is blue.  That’s not my issue, it was mis-coded in the Proto theme and who knows what other bugs it has. Never mind, it’s not a coding issue, I just need to learn how the theme works.

Additionally, if someone knows a good way to port Firefox 2 themes to Firefox 3, I’m all ears.

I am excited for Firefox 3, but not to excited about re-working all my themes.  A part of me does like the idea of re-coding them as I hope they’d be better then ever before, but there are a lot of other things I’d like to spend my time on too.

At this time I will tell you that iPox will make it to Firefox 3; eventually.  I know there are a lot of fans out there and I won’t let you down.  I just don’t know when I’m going to do it just yet.

Tags: mozilla, theme