Two more of my themes are  now in beta and ready for you to test out.  MidnightFox and MidnightFoxy are both available for Firefox 3 and the adventurous type.

Actually, you don’t have to be adventurous.  I have tested the themes on Mac and XP and saw no show stopping bugs.  Yes, there are quite a few outstanding areas that need theming, but I thought that the progress so far would be enough for some users who are patiently waiting; which I appreciate.

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.

I was all excited at the beginning of the March because I had all sorts of theme updates and releases to put out along with a ’secret’ project. Well here it is, the end of March and only a few updates have made it though. The big ones have yet to see the light of day. But it’s not my fault, really.

Here’s the deal. The Mozilla Addon site is getting upgraded. It’ll be a nice update, but it seems to be a pain in the butt to get it live. They’ve already tried and failed more than once and the launch date was the 15th of March, then moved to the 22nd of March. So my fingers are crossed that that deadline actually happens and I know they are working hard on it.

Firefox themes are great and I’m always on the lookout for more. But sometimes, finding the coolest ones takes a bit of work.

addons.mozilla.org is the first stop for finding any themes. However, this official listing doesn’t include everyone. Some theme developers don’t take the time to upload theirs for some reason. The second place I always look is DeviantART.

DeviantART Firefox themes are usually quite nice, but mainly designed for PCs. That hasn’t stopped me from trying them and lately I’ve been finding a few cool ones.

The other day I got an email from Angel_Wings2000 who nicely asked me to create a breast cancer theme. So last night I created PinkHope.

Whenever I think of breast cancer I think of lots of pink and white. So I thought iPox was a good starting point. I took a few hours and I converted iPox from blue to pink.

PinkHope includes a Breast Cancer ribbon for the inactive loading icon and the throbber is a beating heart. Also includes pink scrollbars, bookmark bar, window background and icons. I don’t think it’s overly pink, but some might.

I’ve started a bug tracker application to keep all the bugs, and feature requests, for my Firefox themes in one place. My goal is to not miss out on any requests. Check out the full bug tracker or the quick submit bug form.

Basically, just fill in a few fields, hit submit and I’ll be notified via email. It’s that easy. It’s even got a developer comments area where I can respond to any issues.

Thanks to ZoHo for creating an easy to use, and very powerful, online application for collecting and organizing data.

iPox version 0.7 was released today and is just waiting for you to grab an update.

The biggest update in this version is the addition of buttons. Firefox buttons are now slick white buttons that are based off a mockup from my Firefox buddy Greg. Other updates include an alternating background for the bookmarks and sidebar windows. It helps with readability a bit. The folder icon was also re-drawn from scratch and looks cleaner. Many other smaller updates were fixed/updated to bring a better user experience.

So what’s next for iPox? Probably Firefox 2 support. Lots of people ask for it and it is coming.

If you pick up the latest edition of Mac Fan (Mac Fan 2006.3月号), a Japanese magazine, you’ll fine some of my work in the 2006 Online Software Encyclopedia.

The Online Software Encyclopedia is a separate insert that goes out with the magazine and it includes desktops, icons, themes and screen savers for your Mac. Included are my Mac themes and some of my Holiday Desktops.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been mentioned in a Japanese magazine as they are very nice to the average designer. The only qualification to get in are a few creative pieces of your own. Then, one day, they may contact you via email to use your work in their magazine.