Today, the folks over at Growl released official extensions for both Thunderbird and Firefox. You can now be alerted when new mail arrives or when downloads complete.

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Install is extremely simple, just install the extension. That’s it. You can configure how it displays though the main Growl system preference just like any other application. It’s simple and sweet. I’ve been using them both all day and they are a great addition to the Mac platform.

Get Growl for Thunderbird or Firefox!

If you followed the Thunderbird Labels modification I put up a few days back, you may have found out that it didn’t work for custom labels/tags. Yes, I knew that, but wanted to start off with the basic labels. Here is a quick tutorial on how to get your custom ones up and running.

What you’ll need to do is add the following lines of code to your CSS file. The code below accounts for one label/tag color, which, in this example, happens to be orange. You can see where the orange color is represented by the orange HEX colors. The lighter orange HEX number is for the background of the un-selected, labeled message.

Creating your theme’s identity is probability the most important part of creating a Firefox theme. You need to ensure your theme doesn’t conflict with anyone else’s and, of course, give it a cool name.

To do this, we’ll need to modify two files inside the iPox Remix Pieces folder; install.rdf and contents.rdf. Each file should be able to be opened by a basic text editor like TextEdit (Mac) or WordPad (Windows)

Inside install.rdf we start by giving our theme it’s own UUID. This is like a fingerprint and it makes each theme unique. UUIDs are simple to get. Just visit http://www.famkruithof.net/uuid/uuidgen and they’ll give you one. Now, replace 11111111-1111-1111-1111-11111111111 with the UUID you acquired from the site above. Keep the numbers inside the {} brackets though.

One of the first things you need to understand about Firefox themes is how to package them. It’s really simple, so be prepared to have an easy first step.

Firefox themes are just zip files, renamed to jar. So, if you can create a zip file, and rename a file, you’ll be done in no time. You may have to make a few tweaks to how XP/Vista shows files though.

For starters, open the iPox Remix Assets folder. Inside you’ll see nine items. Select all items and zip them up. On a Mac, you can just right click and make an archive. On PC, you should be able to right click and send to compressed folder.

Announcing iPox Remix. No, it’s not a new theme, it’s the iPox source for you to customize.

iPox Remix is not only the files, it is going to also be a set of walkthroughs that help you better understand how to create a Firefox theme. They could be used to modify iPox as you wish, or it could be to use it as a base to create your own, all new, Firefox theme.

iPox has spun off a new version with brighter blues and all new buttons. It’s called iPox Aqua and it’s for those that like iPox, but want just a bit more kick out of the theme.

Thanks to BitBox for the base buttons that started this re-work and thanks to you all for making iPox such a huge success.

And this is just the beginning, in the upcoming weeks I plan on helping everyone create their own version of iPox. Or, if you really excel in my tutorials, you can create your own theme. So stay tuned for that.

I’m a big fan of Thunderbrid, however one of the things that bugs me is that the labels don’t stand out enough. I feel as if they kind of blend into the background. I did a bit of research and figured out how to style the labels to stand out a bit more. Check it out:

To update your labels in Thunderbird follow these simple steps.

With the recent upgrade to the Mozilla Addon’s site, there is now a sandbox. What’s a sandbox you ask? Well it’s where all new addons go before they go live to the public.

The great thing about the sandbox is that once you are in, you can view and install any theme or extension that has been uploaded. There is no waiting for approval which is good news to developers. One can upload their item right away and send users to it.

I’ve been getting quite a few messages about how to get a theme to activate. I think that Mozilla has a usability issue as once a theme is installed, nothing happens. This tends to confuse quite a few people who are new to themes. So I thought I’d put together a quick ‘Now What?’ post.

After you’ve installed a Firefox theme, follow these 4 steps:

1. Go to Tools -> Addons.
2. Click on the Themes tab.
3. Click Use Theme on the theme you’d like to use.
4. Restart Firefox.

The new Mozilla Addon site is live! Lets hope it stays that way.

The approval area for new extensions and themes however is not online just yet. Lets hope that happens soon.

[update] : Another failed attempt. It sounds like they are getting closer, but the new Addon site has been postponed once again.

[update]: It’s back again and I think all signs are good to go.