Have you heard about Mozilla’s Fashion Your Firefox? It’s Mozilla’s way of showcasing exceptional Firefox addons and grouping them in a way that makes it easier to find great addons.

Under the Decorator heading are a handful of themes that were picked based on quality and usability. One of those addons is Tinseltown.

I’m honored that Mozilla has chosen one of my themes to showcase. I make themes because I want to and the recognition from Mozilla, along with all the positive feedback, is really appreciated.

I’m happy to release the next update to Tinseltown today.  This version cleans up a lot of the areas that I didn’t spend to much time on with the early release.

Tinseltown Updates Include:

• Right click menus have new snow graphics.
• URL bar auto complete menu has been re-designed with a snowman.
• Back/Forward drop down arrow has a flake behind it.
• Star graphic in URL bar is now prettier.
• Tab hover text color is now easier to see.
• Addon window has snow.
• Download window has snow.
• Preferences window has a selected text color.

I’ve had quite a few people wonder where Tinseltown was.  In my mind, Christmas is still a little ways away and it’s easiest to build a Christmas theme when you are in the Christmas mood.  However, I pulled together an early release of Tinseltown for Firefox 3.

What’s an early release?  Well it just means that it’s not completely updated.  I didn’t spend to much time theming all the new elements in Firefox 3.  I just quickly coded them to match with the theme.  There is so much more I want to do, and will do.  But for now, the early release will bring back the familiar Tinseltown look and feel for those that want to get int he holiday spirit now.

Theming Firefox has its good and it’s bad times.  Yes, it’s a lot of work for no money, but making people happy is something I like to do too.  And it appears that, according to Mozilla’s stats, I’m making a lot of people happy with my themes.

Check out these stats!

Miint
Total downloads since April 8th 2007: 234,303
Active Daily Users on Wednesday September 3rd: 35,425

PinkHope
Total downloads since January 29th 2007: 530,214
Active Daily Users on Wednesday September 3rd: 80,814

iPox
Total downloads since January 4th 2006: 1,479,462
Active Daily Users on Wednesday September 3rd: 79,518

I love to create Firefox themes, make addons and lots of freebees that others often enjoy.  I do this on my free time and love to see people enjoy them.  But some days, I’m ready to throw in the towel.

I’ve recently got a few comments from a visitor saying “hurry up and release the f**king theme” and “do your f**king job.”

Now I know that there is bound to be one jerk out of hundreds of users, but it’s comments like these that make me wonder why I continue to spend my time on themes.  It’s not my job and, the more negative comments I get, the slower my progress will be.  These things take hours to build and there is a lot to take into consideration.

With the Firefox 3 release upon us, a lot of people will be wondering about the status of my themes.

So what is the status?

It’s that time of the year again. Time to put up the lights, shop till you drop and dress up your Firefox with Tinseltown, a Christmas theme.

I’ve no formal update plans for Tinseltown, so I’m asking you. What would you like to see updated?

I’ve been running Tinseltown for a few days and there are no major issues that I see. But you may be seeing something that I’m overlooking. So please do share.

Talk about your overabundance of holiday spirit. It seems that Mac developers are creating more than a few great holiday apps this year. Here is a quick list of some of my favorites.

1. Sno – This has been around for a while but has nice falling flakes on your screen.
2. MacLampsX – One of my long time favorites as it adds customizable lights to the sides of your screen. Very festive.
3. Snjor – A new snowing app that has little snow orbs that look quite nice. It’s suppose to collect on windows too but doesn’t for me.

I don’t usually post about multiple theme updates at once, but everyone got a little update today.

As noted earlier, all themes should now be Linux compatible.

MidnightFox also got the status bar code updated so hopefully that ugly grey one is gone.

iPox got the most updates with a new throbber and a few theme fixes throughout.

For the most part, just little tweaks, nothing major.

All updates are available via Mozilla’s Add-On site.

It took a few days and lots and lots of test builds but I think all the Linux crashing issues with Tinseltown, iPox and MidnightFox are fixed! Even better yet, the fixes have no ill effects for Mac or Windows users. I’m so happy.

A huge thanks goes out to all my help including ehume, terry(Denver) (Teruel de Campo MD), Albireo and Richard Hemmer! Without you all I could never have figured it out.

All theme updates should be available on Mozilla’s Add-On site in the next day or two.