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extero
I’m retiring from Firefox theming.
It’s been a fun journey over the past 5 years creating Firefox themes. I created nearly a dozen themes, stating with iPox, and I’ve got over 5 million downloads! However, I just can’t keep up.
With Firefox 4 just around the corner, my themes would probably need to be revamped from the ground up and I just don’t have the time. Heck, some of theme aren’t even updated for Firefox 3.6!
It’s a hard decision to make though as I loved creating them. I loved making the fans happy and I wish I could keep up with them.
iAqua Has a New Home & Firefox 3 Compatibility
A big thanks to Jivko Evgeniev who heard the call for help and has taken iAqua and ran with it. It’s alive and well and running nicely in Firefox 3.5!
I’m really happy at how iAqua has grown in the hands of another developer. One of the downsides to letting go is worrying about what someone else will do.
You can grab iAqua 3.5 from the Mozilla Addon’s site for Mac, Windows and Linux.
Also, the same developer is working on extero and taking it in a different direction. I have not tried out that one yet though.
iAqua and extero Themes Need Your Help
Two of my themes that have not yet made the Firefox 3 jump are iAqua and extero. Both themes are very nice and ones that I wish I had time to update but it’s just not happening. With a baby due in weeks, I just don’t see these two Firefox themes getting any sort of attention.
So, if you’d like to take the files, update them, and release them, you are free to. If you’d like to take the files and create your own theme, you can do that as well.
Why I Love Theming Firefox
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
Why I would quit theming today.
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.
TwisterMc Themes and Firefox 3 – Vote for your favorite.
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?
Introducing MidnightFoxy – Dark & Stylish Theme
MidnightFox has always been a great theme. It’s dark, yet usable and, as stated by others, one of the best dark themes out there. However, I wanted more.
While fixing a few toolbar issue with MidnightFox, I started updating other pieces. I reworked the tabs, the bookmarks, some menus and the the navigation buttons. Taking extero’s icons and leveraging Pixelmator’s menu design, I created much nicer toolbar with icons that ‘pop’ when you roll over them.
MidnightFoxy was first set to replace MidnightFox, however some of the testers were partial to the old buttons. So MidnigthFoxy was born. It’s basically the same theme, only with a more polished toolbar.
MidnightFox Theme Gets All New Buttons??
Tom, a fan of MidnightFox, emailed me the other day about issues surrounding the ugly status bar and other toolsbars in MidnightFox. I don’t see the issues, but some Windows users do. So we worked together to iron out the problems. Along the way, I started tweaking things I no longer liked about the theme.
One of the biggest updates were all new toolbar buttons. I used the same icons I have in extero and I took some direction from Pixelmator for that’s the graphic design program I was using. I also tweaked the tabs and a few other areas to create a darker more polished version of MidnightFox.
extero Firefox Theme Launches
My latest Firefox theme, extero, has hit version 1.0 and is live and ready for your enjoyment!
extero is a gray theme with bright brilliant icons from Jonas. It was created to be just a little bit different, but nothing overboard.
Checkout extero and see what you think.
extero Firefox Theme – Preview 1
My latest Firefox theme is entitled extero and you can install a preview of it today!
What’s different about extero? The main thing is the tab bar. It was designed to bring the tab bar to the front. It’s kind of hard to explain, so you’ll have to check it out. extero also uses dots instead of little arrows for menus and, back by popular demand, the close button is on the left.
Granted, it’s not finished in my mind yet. I’m unsatisfied with the right click menus and am torn on what to do. If I leave them black, I have to get rid of the border somehow. If I change them, what to?
