Mar 16

CyberNotes: Add the Date To Mac Menubar Clock

Posted in: CyberNotes, Mac, Software, Tips and Tricks, Today's Chili

This article was written on May 22, 2008 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Tutorial Thursday

arrow Mac Mac only arrow
When on a Windows computer one of the things I always did was make the Taskbar twice the normal height. The reason I did that was because it would then show the date in addition to the time, which is something I use quite regularly. Sure I could have hovered my mouse over the time to see the same information, but that often took more time than was necessary.

So naturally when I got my Mac I was surprised to see that I couldn’t do something similar with the Menubar. There is a checkbox in the time configuration options so that you can add/remove the day of the week, but there’s no setting to add the current date. Being the geek that I am I begun a quest for someway that I could get this, and as it turns out there’s a rather simple solution. The best part is that it requires no additional software! Here’s what my end result looks like:

mac menubar clock.png

Notice how the Menubar shows the date without needing to be clicked? Cool, huh? Here’s how you can add the date to the Mac Menubar clock:

  1. Go to System Preferences -> International -> Formats, and click the Customize button listed in the Dates section.
    mac international.png
  2. Now you’ll want to build the format of the date that you want shown next to the time. To change between the different different date formats use the arrow located next to each element, or drag and drop elements from the lower section to add more of them:
    date builder.png
  3. Now you need to copy and paste the elements by highlighting everything in the contents of the box, and then pressing Command+C to copy it. Once you have the elements copied press CANCEL:
    copy date format.png
  4. Now click the Customize button located next to the Times section in the International settings. Make sure you switch the Show option to Medium, and then paste in the formatting where you would like it to appear. Remember, you can add spaces, punctuation (hypens, slashes, semicolons, brackets, etc…) by simply typing them in where the should appear. After you are done formatting press OK.
    custom date time mac menubar.png
  5. You should now see the date in the Menubar located alongside the time (no restart is required). If you don’t, you may need to change the Show option in Step 4 to Long and paste in the formatting elements from Step 3 again. One of those two styles should work for you. When all is said and done you should see something like this:
    mac menubar clock.png
  6. Note: By changing the time format you might noticed that the day of the week is automatically shown in the Menubar. If you don’t want this just go to System Preferences -> Date & Time -> Clock, and uncheck the Show the day of the week option.

I do want to point out that there could be some adverse affects from manipulating the Menubar clock in this fashion, such as an application showing the date and time where it would only show the time before. That will only happen, however, if the application uses the Medium time format that you altered in Step 4. I’ve found that most programs, such as iChat, use the Short format when doing things like timestamps though so they really aren’t affected.

This might not be as simple as checking a box, but I was actually surprised that I didn’t have to go diving into a system file to adjust the setting. It’s not optimal, but it definitely works. This is a must-have tweak in my book!

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Mar 16

CyberNotes: Mandriva 2007 Makes XGL Easy And Quick

Posted in: CyberNotes, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on October 31, 2006 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Time Saving Tuesday

A few months back I gave Kororaa Linux a shot because it installed XGL automatically on my system without me needing to do a thing. Heck, the 3D goodness that Kororaa brought even worked flawlessly on the Live CD that they offered. It didn’t take long for ATI and nVidia to go after them for distributing the drivers with the kernel which forced Kororaa to remove XGL from its CD.

Mandriva Linux It has been several weeks since Mandriva 2007 (formerly known as Mandrake) was released and it has received some pretty amazing reviews because of the built-in XGL/Compiz. I love trying new Linux distributions and this one seems to be very popular on the list at DistroWatch (located in their right sidebar).

The first thing that I did was download the free version of Mandriva and burned it to a CD. Before I installed it I decided to boot it up and see if I like it. Well, I didn’t have much of a choice because you have to boot it up in order to install it anyway (the installation shortcut is located on the desktop).

It didn’t look very promising because the first two computers (both have ATI graphics cards) that I tried it on couldn’t even get the CD to finish booting. It would get an error halfway through loading and then throw in the towel. The hours of troubleshooting didn’t help and I was beginning to believe that it was a bad download/burn. Then I popped the CD into my Dell laptop with the integrated Intel graphics card and it loaded up just fine.

With Intel graphics cards, however, Mandriva uses AIGLX instead of XGL for performance reasons I would imagine. At any rate it looked superb and ran smoother than my XGL installation under Ubuntu, which is on a laptop with an ATI graphics card. This is the closest thing to a Mac, based on graphics, that I have ever experienced! There is even an Exposé clone that is nothing short of remarkable.

I put together this quick video to show you Mandriva 2007 (free version) in action:

Sorry about the poor quality but I had to use a camera since I couldn’t find any good screencast software for Linux.

The Exposé is no doubt my favorite feature and is actually available for all Linux distributions. Its real name, which bears no resemblance to Exposé, is Komposé. Combining this feature with XGL/AIGLX makes it look and feel like a retail operating system that you would expect from Microsoft or Apple.

I don’t think that I’ll be using this as my primary Linux installation because I am still a big openSUSE fan, but Mandriva definitely sets the bar very high when it comes to the expectations that other Linux distributions need to reach. The reason I chose this for the “Time Saving Tuesday” article is because there are many of you who are looking for a way to play with Linux and XGL…and this is by far the easiest/quickest!

Mandriva One 2007 Free (KDE) Torrent (XGL capable)
Mandriva One 2007 Free (Gnome) Torrent (XGL capable)
Mandriva Free 2007 DVD (NOT XGL capable)

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Mar 06

CyberNotes: Rotate Your Screen Orientation

Posted in: CyberNotes, Freeware, Software, Today's Chili, Windows, Windows Vista, Windows XP

This article was written on February 21, 2008 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Tutorial Thursday

Whenever I’m at home I hookup my laptop to a secondary 24″ monitor to drastically increase the amount of screen space available to me. When I’m working on programming projects I will rotate my monitor so that it is oriented vertically (a.k.a. portrait mode), which I think is something most programmers do when they have widescreen monitors.

Physically rotating my monitor doesn’t change the screen’s orientation though, and for that you’ll need some software. Most graphics cards are bundled with a control center that will let you change such properties, but I often find them a bit bulky. Below we’ve got three different methods that you can use to change the orientation of your monitor without using the software that came with your graphics card.

Note: All of these alternatives depend on your graphics card supporting screen rotation. This might require installing the drivers for your graphics card, which are typically offered separately from the software control center that they offer.

–Windows Hotkeys–

Believe it or not there is a standard Windows hotkey (in both XP and Vista) that will let you change the orientation of your primary monitor only. The shortcut is Ctrl+Alt+[Arrow Key], where you use the standard arrow pad on your keyboard to change the orientation. Ctrl+Alt+Up will always set your monitor back to the usual landscape orientation.

–Vista Settings–

All editions of Vista except for Home Basic now come with Tablet PC support regardless of whether your machine is actually a Tablet PC. If you only want to rotate the primary monitor you can use the Tablet PC settings in Vista to rotate the screen orientation.

The easiest way to find the Tablet PC settings is to open the Start Menu or Control Panel and start typing “Tablet PC” in the search box. You want to click on the “Tablet PC Settings” option when it is displayed. Then look for the orientation option that you can adjust:

tablet pc rotation

Unfortunately this only works for the primary monitor on the system, but I’m guessing that there are more people out there looking to do this with a single monitor rather than multiple monitors.

–iRotate (Homepage)–

iRotate This is a free program that creates a System Tray icon for each of the monitors connected to your machine. You can click on each icon to see the various orientation options that are available to that monitor. That means in a few clicks you can quickly switch between orientations.

iRotate will also set itself to start with Windows to ensure that all of the monitors remain in the correct orientation. Hotkey junkies will appreciate the keyboard shortcuts that are provided for each of the four orientations, which can be seen in the screenshot above.

–Overview–

I’m sure there are dozens of other ways that you can change your monitor’s orientation, and that’s where we turn it over to our readers. What tools, if any, do you use to adjust the orientation of your screen?

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Mar 02

CyberNotes: Save Yourself From Spam

Posted in: CyberNotes, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on October 10, 2006 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Time Saving Tuesday

Everyone hates having to provide their email address to sites because they just aren’t sure what kind of spam they’ll receive. That’s why we have spam filters but you know those don’t always work (GMail does do a pretty amazing job though).

I have a few different sites that I am going to tell you about that all offer temporary email addresses for you to use. Each one operates in a different way which means you might find one that you like more than the others.

–Dodge It (homepage)–

Dodge It

Dodge It is close to my favorite solution out of the three that I have listed. There is no setup process that you need to go through before hand…just send the email to any address that you want.

There is no password protection or security features which is something you should keep in mind. You can view almost any email address simply by typing it into the homepage. I say almost because users can choose to make a small donation and in return they can get a password protected account. For those RSS junkies out there you can subscribe to any address’s Inbox!

It is also important to note that you cannot delete emails that you receive at any address. They will automatically delete any emails after 7-days, which can be a little long for most people.

 

–Mail Expire (homepage)–

Mail Expire Mail Expire also has a unique approach to spam because they let you utilize your current email address without exposing it to spammers. All you have to do is enter in your current email address and how long you want the account to stay open. It also has a field for a reminder so that every time you receive an email it will remind you what the account was created for.

After you fill in all of the fields you just have to hit the “go” button and it will generate your temporary email address for you to use. Then just activate the account with the verification email that they send.

 

–Temporary Inbox (homepage)–

Temporary Inbox

Temporary Inbox is no doubt the coolest solution out of the three. It is kind of a combination of the above two sites and brings the best features into one solution. You can have it randomly generate your email address or you can just start sending email to any account. Then, just like Dodge It, you can pull up the email for accounts that you never even bothered to setup. They will delete your emails after 6 hours so don’t expect them to sit there forever but they do also let you manually delete them if you choose.

The most unique thing about Temporary Inbox is the Firefox extension that they have available. You can pretty much do everything right from your toolbar so that you save yourself a few steps.

 

–Overview–

Even though all of the different email companies offer spam protection you should still make an effort to keep your inbox clean. I’m sure most of you probably use GMail as your primary email address and have a Hotmail or Yahoo account specifically designed to collect your spam. That’s another good solution but I actually think it is quicker to access the temporary email addresses than it is to log into an account to retrieve an email.

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Feb 17

CyberNotes: Signs Technology Has Taken Over Your Life

Posted in: CyberNotes, Humor, Today's Chili

This article was written on October 05, 2007 by CyberNet.

If you can nod your head in agreement to some of the statements below, there’s a chance that technology has taken over your life…

  1. When you go into a computer store, you eavesdrop on a salesperson talking with customers — and you butt in to correct him and spend the next twenty minutes answering the customers’ questions, while the salesperson stands by nodding his head.
  2. Off the top of your head, you can think of nineteen keystroke symbols that are far more clever than :-) .
  3. On vacation, you are reading a computer manual and turning the pages faster than everyone else who is reading John Grisham novels.
  4. The thought that a CD could refer to finance or music rarely enters your mind.
  5. You own a set of itty-bitty screw-drivers and you actually know where they are (and use them).
  6. You are so knowledgeable about technology that you feel secure enough to say “I don’t know” when someone asks you a technology question instead of feeling compelled to make something up.
  7. You back up your data everyday.
  8. You can’t help but wonder what it would be like if Google indexed your house so that you’d always know where everything is at (car keys!).
  9. You have never sat through an entire movie without having at least one device on your body beep or buzz.
  10. You think of your gadgets as “friends,” but you forget to send your father a birthday card.
  11. When you hear Wow, you automatically think World of Warcraft or Microsoft’s Vista campaign.
  12. You have no hesitations with naming your child LOL or LMAO…

joy of tech joke

 

Sources: Here and Here

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Feb 02

CyberNotes: Get the Best eBay Deals

Posted in: CyberNotes, Freeware, search, Software, Tips and Tricks, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on May 13, 2008 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Time Saving Tuesday

I don’t know about you, but I’ve gotten some really tremendous deals on eBay before. The general consensus that I’ve found when talking with people, however, is that they normally make impulse purchases before they take the time to see if they are getting a real bargain. Today we’re going to walk you through a 5 step process that can save you a lot of money in the end.

Ashley and myself ran an eBay business for over a year, and it was quite an interesting experience. From it we found ourselves knowing more about eBay than we ever wanted to, and now our friends always poke and prod us for tips on how they can get the most out of the online marketplace.

1. Search eBay

ebay deal finder.png

The first thing that you’ll obviously want to do is search eBay to see what kind of prices they have. Don’t get sucked into the low-priced auctions… no, you’re not going to get a $1,500 laptop for $25. Many people wait until the last minute to bid (a.k.a. sniping), and we’re going to show you the best way to do that as well.

What may prove to be helpful is to checkout the completed listings. On the search page you’ll notice the “Completed listings only” checkbox which will show only those listings that have already ended. If the item you’re looking for is rather common then there should be a fair amount of listings that have already completed, and with those you should be able to get a rough idea of what future listings will realistically sell for.

When sifting through the completed listings be sure to also watch for people who are constantly relisting the same item… especially if it never sells. That’s normally an indication that they really want to get rid of it or they have a bunch that they need to unload. In situations like those you might be able to bargain with them even if all you may get is the shipping fee waived.

Believe it or not eBay actually has their own Deal Finder search engine. When you perform a search on there it will only show items that have zero bids, less than 4 hours left, no reserve price, and free/fixed price shipping. So it is actually different than the regular eBay search engine, and can be beneficial for finding those gems that no one else has come across.

2. Search for Misspellings

Ahhh, we’ve all been criticized at one point or another for not proofreading the things that we write. Well, here’s where you can really benefit from the mistakes that others make. Maybe it’s poor typing skills, a genuine mistake, or maybe they are just in a rush to get a listing done. Whatever it is there are quite a few people out there who like to misspell words in their listings.

ebay misspellings.png

So how can you capitalize on the mistakes of others? It’s rather simple actually. There are all kinds of sites, such as Fat Fingers, that will help you search eBay for misspellings of any word you specify. A really good example of this in action would be searching for Oakley sunglasses. You’ll quickly find quite a few different ways that people spell it, including Oakly and Oakely.

3. Shop Around

I definitely don’t see this happening enough with people who buy things on eBay. They naturally assume that if an item is on eBay that it’s gotta be a steal, but that’s surprisingly not the case for most items. Be patient and shop around at some other stores for goodness sake. You have to remember that eBay sellers have to pay rather excessive fees for every item that sells, and they will definitely make sure that those fees are recouped.

When it comes to shopping around I normally do a quick run through on Amazon, PriceGrabber, and Google Product Search to see if any of them point to a better deal. More often than not I can find an item brand new for nearly the same price as some used/refurbished items on eBay… so it’s definitely worth doing your homework.

4. Subscribe to Feeds

When Ashley and I were selling items on eBay for a full-time job one thing that we always tried to do was turnover the merchandise quickly. Ideally we wanted to get the things out as fast as we got them in, and to do that we had to slap low Buy it Now prices on them. What this meant is that the people who took the time to find the Buy it Now listings that still have several days remaining are normally the ones who get the best deals. Most people never look beyond the first page of search results, but that’s normally where you’ll find the most reasonable prices.

If you don’t need the item right away it will likely serve you well to hold out for the low Buy it Now listings. If you use RSS feeds I highly recommend subscribing to a feed for any particular search that you perform. That way you’ll be one of the first people to know when there is a new item listed. To do this just look for the orange RSS button at the bottom of any search results page:

ebay rss feed-1.png

5. Snipe the Auction

The art of sniping is becoming more and more popular on eBay. It’s where someone swoops in at the last second to place a bid, and often doesn’t leave enough time for you to counteract their offer. It’s sneaky, pisses a lot of people off, and sellers hate it. But you can do it with little to no effort thanks to JBidWatcher (available for Windows, Mac, and Linux).

We’ve already assembled a more detailed tutorial on how to use JBidWatcher, and it’s been getting some welcomed updates lately. It’s pretty much an automated sniping system that you can easily setup. With it you can even target multiple auctions for the same item, and it will continue to bid on them all within seconds of them ending. What’s nice is that once you win an auction at the price you specify it will not bid on any of the others! This can save a lot of hassle for people who have to work during the day, and don’t have an opportunity to check on their eBay auctions.

It is possible to snipe an auction without using any software, but I’ve ran into some problems when trying to do that before. When doing it manually I try to leave about 15 seconds left on the auction before submitting my offer, but one time I went to do this and eBay unexpectedly made me login before submitting my offer. Needless to say I wasn’t ready for that and ended up not getting my bid in on time. So software like JBidWatcher is definitely nice to have.

–Overview–

These are the five steps that I feel most people should follow when purchasing from eBay, and hopefully they will help you save some money. Be sure to share your eBay money saving tips in the comments below!

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Feb 01

CyberNotes: SWiK – Community Driven Resource for Open Source Software

Posted in: CyberNotes, Linux, Mozilla, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on May 05, 2007 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Weekend Website

Some of the best software available originates from open source projects (i.e. Linux, and Firefox) where peers contribute and review the software in development. These projects give programmers the opportunity to change programs to suit their needs which also opens the door for a lot of customization.

One way that you can keep up-to-date with Open Source software is a website called SWiK.  SWiK is a project of Sourcelabs, and they’re a community driven resource for Open Source software.  Users come and document the open-source software that they’re familiar with, and then everybody benefits from their knowledge.  SWiK relies heavily on the community, and without the users, SWiK wouldn’t exist.

It’s like Wikipedia, Del.icio.us, and Digg all mixed into one, but it’s just for anything related with Open Source projects. The great thing about SWiK is that it showcases all of the hard work that people have put into their Open Source projects. If you’re unfamiliar with Open Source projects and you’d like to find and discover new ones, this is the perfect place to start.

Swik

Features:

  • Tags are a big part of SWiK. All of their content is organized using Tags, so it’s a key element.
  • Digg-like element where people can submit stories regarding open-source software.
  • RSS: Subscribe to your favorite projects.
  • Feeds can be s

There’s not a lot of content that makes it to this site on a daily basis, maybe one or two new items per day. However this is nice because then you’re not over-whelmed with new content- it’s just enough.

Swik1

Get involved:

Getting involved at SWiK is really easy. One way is by adding an open-source project that hasn’t been added yet.  Another option is by editing already added projects with new/updated information. If you know something that hasn’t been added, add it (much like Wikipedia)!

Another important feature is the search.  If you’re looking for new projects, you can use the tag feature to search. You can also search by Tags in a cloud-view, or just use the search box.

Swik2

Wrapping it up:

While SWiK is not the most active community out there, it serves its purpose – to allow people to share information about open source projects. If you’ve come across a great project that you weren’t quite sure how to make the most of, visit SWiK and see if there’s a page for it that might give you more details.

Pages of Interest:

Visit SWiK: http://swik.net

 

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Jan 27

CyberNotes: How To Customize Firefox’s Toolbars

Posted in: CyberNotes, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on June 22, 2006 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Tutorial Thursday
 

Some people go crazy with Firefox extensions and install them left and right. Extensions help to drive Firefox’s popularity but they can also start to clutter up your toolbars:

100 Extensions
 
Now I know that picture is a little dramatic because that guy installed 100 Firefox extensions, but it gives you a good idea of what may eventually happen if you never try and clean up your toolbars.

I limit myself to just one toolbar and the tab-bar. I say “if it isn’t something that you use each day then you don’t need it on a toolbar.” Now let’s get started on customizing Firefox’s toolbars.

You can move items, like the bookmarks found on your Bookmarks Toolbar, from one toolbar to another toolbar:

  1. Install the Tiny Menu Firefox extension so that the Menu Toolbar takes up very little room (you can customize which Menu items are hidden and which ones are shown).
  2. Right-click on a toolbar in Firefox.
  3. Select Customize….
  4. From the drop-down list on the Customize screen select “Icons.” Also check the box that says “Use Small Icons.”
    Icons
     
  5. Now start dragging items from one toolbar to another.
    • I drag all of my navigation buttons, search box, and address box up to the Menu Toolbar. Once I have those items on the Menu bar I can eliminate the Navigation Toolbar.
    • Next I target the Bookmarks Toolbar. Your bookmarks that are found on the Bookmarks Toolbar will show up as “Bookmarks Toolbar Items.” If you don’t have a lot of bookmarks on the toolbar then you can move this up to the Menu Toolbar as well. I only have two bookmarks that I use on the toolbar: GMail and Google Calendar. You don’t have to supply a name for your bookmarks and not supplying a name will save you a lot of room on your toolbar. It will only show the icon for the page and no text, much like how the Home button doesn’t say “Home” next to the icon.
      Bookmarks Toolbar Items
       
    • NOTE: If you want to remove something from a toolbar you just have to left-click on the item and drag it into the Customize window. Items can always be added by dragging them from the Customize windows onto a toolbar.

Now that we have finished all of the customizations why don’t we see what kind of improvements we have made:

Before:
Before Toolbar
 
 
After:
After Toolbar
 

There are two things that still might differ from my toolbars compared to yours. I am running Firefox 2.0 Alpha 3 which has a different search box. It is still about the same size as the one in Firefox 1.5 but does look a little different. Also, instead of using the built-in Firefox Bookmarks manager I have started using Google Bookmarks. I don’t use the Google Bookmarks because it is a space-saver, instead I use it because of the portability and privacy it gives my bookmarks.

I hope this has either helped you or has given you some ideas on how you can reclaim your toolbar space.

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Jan 17

CyberNotes: How to Monitor Software Installations

Posted in: Apple, CyberNotes, Freeware, Microsoft, Screenshots, Software, Tips and Tricks, Today's Chili

This article was written on June 07, 2007 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Tutorial Thursday

One of the things that Windows is notorious for is not completely uninstalling an application when you go through the Add/Remove Programs. There just always seems to be some junk left behind that is impossible to get rid of, well, almost impossible.

ZSoft Uninstaller (Download Mirror) hopes to conquer all of your uninstallation woes by providing a more advanced method for keeping track of the applications you install. Normally when you install a program it creates an uninstall log that monitors where all of the files and registry values are stored. That way it can reference when a user wants to uninstall it later on.

Some things, such as registry values associated with your program settings, aren’t removed in case you decide to install the program again later on. That way you won’t have to reconfigure it all again. I don’t know about you, but when I want to uninstall a program I want everything it created to be removed.

That’s where ZSoft Uninstaller comes into play. It will scan your hard drive and registry both before and after installing a program. Then it will compare the differences so that there are no worries about everything not getting removed. All it takes from you is a few clicks…

  1. Download and install ZSoft Uninstaller (Download Mirror).
  2. Click the Analyze button in the toolbar. Press Next when you see the popup on the screen.
    Uninstaller
  3. Click the Before Installation button to begin the hard drive analysis. Depending on the speed of your hard drive and how many files are on it, this could take several minutes.
    Uninstaller

  4. Begin the installation of your application, in our case we are installing Google Earth.
    Uninstaller
  5. After the installation completes, press the After Installation button on the ZSoft Uninstaller. This will reanalyze your hard drive and Windows Registry looking for changes. When it completes it will ask for the name of the application.
    Uninstaller
  6. Now the comparison between the before and after will take place, and then the window will close. If you want to see the differences just switch to the Analyzed Programs tab, right-click on the program, and choose Show Recorded Info.
    Uninstaller
  7. Similarly, you can go to the Analyzed Programs tab and click the Uninstall button to truly remove the application from your computer.
    Uninstaller

One thing that you want to make sure when using this program is that you promptly perform the before and after scans without doing anything “extra” in between. If you create a file in between the two scans, ZSoft Uninstaller will think that the application created it during the setup routine, and if you try to remove the program later on, that file would also be removed.

Thanks to Radu for the tip!

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Jan 13

CyberNotes: Firefox Themes That Might Be Right For Some People

Posted in: CyberNotes, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on January 10, 2007 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Web Browser Wednesday

Firefox is known for the large amount of themes that they have available, with most of them being pretty subtle. After all, no one wants to sit and stare at a browser that would make your eyes water up…or would they?

Before I get into listing the slightly more “interesting” themes that I have found, I want to first say that I use the default Firefox theme. That might make me a little bland but I think the way Firefox looks out-of-the-box is simply marvelous, just like Flock, Opera, and even Internet Explorer. I think all of those browsers come with a great default theme/skin and I have never swayed away from them. So if you use one of the themes that I list here (and it is a great possibility since they total nearly 3.5 million downloads) don’t take any offense to it because they are solely my own opinions.

 

–Walnut (about 1,500,000 downloads)–

The Walnut theme doesn’t seem too bad at first and I actually think that I would be able to tolerate it had I no other choice. Of course, with over 1.5 million downloads I would have to say that there are a lot of people who have made this their theme of choice. Like most themes, when it is just the toolbars that are skinned it doesn’t seem quite so bad…but when you take a peak at the options you’ll notice that it is surely a lot of wood!

Walnut

 

–RedShift (about 900,000 downloads)–

There is no way that I could use RedShift on a daily basis! The solid black background and bright red text would make my eyes bug out of my head. It’s like trying to read a website that is written on a solid black background, although you typically don’t do a lot of reading when it comes to items that have been skinned. Typically you’ll just be pressing buttons and typing things in the text boxes, but those too have black backgrounds.

If the RedShift theme pictured below doesn’t excite you, then maybe one of the author’s other color choices will: BlueShift, EarthShift, GoldShift, GreenShift, OrangeShift, or PinkShift.

RedShift

 

–PimpZilla (about 730,000 downloads)–

Out of the five themes that I have listed here, this would be the only one that I would ever consider using. It doesn’t strain your eyes at all and actually has some well thought out replacement icons. So if it isn’t that bad then why am I listing it here? Because it is just too funny with the icons and leopard print background to your tabs bar! I’m surprised that this one doesn’t have more downloads than it currently does.

PimpZilla

 

–GlowyBlue (about 270,000 downloads)–

I would rank this one right up there with the RedShift in terms of usability. The background/text combination is sure to strain your eyes after just a short period of time. The blue version is the most popular but it can also be found in wine, gold, green, and red.

GlowyBlue

 

–Pink Paula (about 90,000 downloads)–

In order to find this one to be tolerable you better like pink because you’ll be seeing a lot of it. Some people may think that it takes it a little too far, and I might have to agree with them. However, the pink is not terribly overbearing because of its washed-out appearance, but it might help to increase the number of female Firefox users if they knew that this existed. There is also another Firefox theme designed for Breast Cancer that doesn’t go over-the-edge with a pink background, but it does look slightly more like magenta.

Pink Paula

 

–Overview–

So, there’s a different perspective on the themes that are currently available for Firefox. Some of them might be kinda cool for giggles around the office, but they could surely put some strain on your eyes if you are a heavy user of the Web browser. For me the default theme works great and is subtle enough that it doesn’t distract me from the sites that I am trying to read. Even the Noia theme seems to be a little too much “eye candy” for me, but I have been tempted to try out Blue Ice…it’s subtle yet attractive.

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