Hasta La Gadget!

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

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!

–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.

–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.

–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.

–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.

–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.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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In the last quarter, Chrome, Safari and Opera all set new personal bests for browser market share with 4.63, 4.46 and 2.4 percent respectively. This period marks the first time Chrome has beaten Safari to third spot, while their collective prosperity comes at the expense of IE, which continues to hemorrhage users at a rate of 0.92 percentage points a month. Microsoft’s 62.7 percent slice might still look mighty, but projections from Net Applications suggest it could shrink to below 50 percent by May of this year. Unless something magical happens. You’ll probably also want to know that Net Applications monitors incoming traffic to over 40,000 websites and generates a sample size of about 160 million unique visitors each month — making the veracity of its claims pretty robust. One hidden sign of our collective laziness: 21 percent of all users last quarter were still fulfilling their browsing needs with IE 6. For shame.

Internet Explorer losing users as other browsers set share records originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 02 Jan 2010 17:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This year’s release of Firefox 3.5 gave us a lot of reasons to like it, but its extensibility remains everyone’s favorite feature. These add-ons and theme tools were the most popular in the year gone by.

This list is culled from a straight listing of the most popular posts that offered a Firefox extension for download in 2009. We’re not including posts about configuring Firefox, or even our own hand-rolled Firefox add-on packs—even if they were pretty popular, too. Let’s get to the good stuff.

Firefox 3.7 Theme Makes Your Browser Look Awesome

One of the greatest things about Firefox is that its development happens way out wide in the open. When the design workers start coming up with preliminary sketches of a new release, anyone can peek at them and even compile them into a theme, which does just what the headline suggests.

All-Glass Firefox Enables Slick Transparency Effects

Windows Vista and 7 feature some fairly nice looking transparency effects, but if your primary browser doesn’t use them, it can feel a bit disconnected. All-Glass Firefox v2 tweaks your browser to look just, well, proper in its fancy-pants surroundings.

“Vacuum Places Improved” Speeds Up Firefox with a Click of Your Mouse

You can speed up Firefox by cleaning up its fragmented database, and the Vacuum Places Improved 0.3 extension automates that admittedly pain-in-the-butt process.

Gmail Redesigned 3.0 Focuses on Speed and Message Space

Google Redesigned, a multi-site suite that trades Google’s blue/white/minimal look for a darker, sleeker feel, kept improving its transformative powers this year, adding a host of improvements in its 3.0 release, and later releasing a new version with GReader Redesigned for the RSS hounds.

Dislike 0.2 Adds a Disapproving Dislike Button to Facebook

“I’m having SUCH a bad day—the cleaning lady TOTALLY left her Pine Sol smell all over my bed linens!” That, my friends, is why clever JavaScript tweakers created the Dislike extension.

TinEye Adds Reverse Image Lookup to Firefox

Many of the pictures and illustrations you find across the web aren’t in their original form—and many can be had at better, perhaps more wallpaper-worthy sizes. The TinEye extension makes it a simple right-click maneuver to search out similar copies of any image you come across.

SkipScreen Lets You Pass Go and Collect Your Download

Sometimes, great stuff has to be hosted on public download services, because the file—or the attention it’s getting—is just too much for our meek little personal sites. And the download sites often make it as painful as possible to grab those files. SkipScreen acts as an automated intermediary, jumping through the necessary hoops and entering the key presses required.

FireFound Tracks Your Stolen Computer, Nukes Your Personal Data

This neat little extension, winner of the Extend Firefox 3.5 contest, utilizes lots of Firefox’s built-in features, like geo-location and the extension framework, to offer wary laptop users a way to nuke their personal data, passwords, and history if necessary, track where their machine is logging on after a theft, and cull all kinds of data from the thief. FireFound is, in other words, a smart thing to install if your laptop ever leaves the home.

Gui:config Gives Easy Access to Hidden Firefox Settings

A lot of helpful stuff is tucked away in Firefox’s about:config menus. Gui:config brings them into focus and offers a graphical way to manage them. As the How-To Geek puts it, it’s amazing that this isn’t something being considered for mainstream distribution in the browser.

Memory Fox Manages Firefox’s Memory Use, Aims to Keep It Low

(Windows only): Firefox is decently light with memory on startup, but extensions and plug-ins drag it down as you actually use it. Memory Fox monitors Firefox’s memory use and, once it reaches your pre-set limit, whips it back into shape.

Daum Blue Firefox Theme is Clean, Simple, and Elegant

(Windows only): Well, the headline and picture kind of say it all about Daum Blue, but it’s worth noting that beyond looks, it’s also fairly customizable, and looks even better on Vista and Windows 7 systems.

Decreased Productivity Helps You Browse at Work Without Getting Busted

Sure, kind of anathema for this site’s stated mission, but giving your mind a break at work has real mental benefits, even if your boss doesn’t think so.

UrlbarExt Adds Super Powers to the Awesome Bar

If you’re likely to do more at a web site than just simply bookmark it, UrlbarExt is like a Leatherman for your AwesomeBar. Head to a site’s root, search the site on Google, and do much more from a small array of address bar buttons.

Foxmarks Becomes Xmarks, Adds Search and Suggestion Features

Another headline that pretty much says it all. We weren’t a big fan of Xmarks‘ new “discovery” features, but its growing reach into Chrome and other browsers make the former Foxmarks’ expansion a good thing.

Magnetiser Downloads Torrents When No Torrent File Is Available

Given the recent legal crackdown on BitTorrent-centered sites, magnet links (explained here) are increasingly popular. Magnetiser makes it easy to track down a working torrent link to grab the file you’re looking for.

Integrated Gmail Updates with Improved Looks and Handy Features

It must be mentioned that, beyond smooshing together Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Reader into one neatly-arranged Gmail page, Integrated Gmail also customizes every niggling detail of those combined apps, making it worth the try-out, even if you think you like your Google spaces separated into different tabs.

Omnibar Extension Collapses Firefox’s Address and Search Boxes into One

Omnibar is one of the clever ways Firefox can make itself into a Google Chrome clone, and we love that kind of openness ’round here.

Invisible Hand Subtly Shows Best Web Prices

If you’re always looking at online purchases and wondering if you could save more before pulling the trigger, Invisible Hand affirms your hunches for you, dropping down and showing lower prices wherever it can find them.

Ubiquity Sees Major Update, New Look, Better Performance

Mozilla’s future-facing automation and shortcut engine, Ubiquity, continued to get awesome-r in 2009.

App Tabs Creates Permanent, Icon-Only Tabs, Firefox 4.0-Style

We dug the idea of permanent, favicon-only tabs when a helpful reader explained it to us, but the App Tabs extension took a multi-step process and made it far more simple.

Not seeing your favorite add-on released in 2009 here, or covered anywhere at Lifehacker? Can’t believe your favorite app doesn’t get more attention? Let’s hear all about it in the comments.

Want a hint as to where Firefox will go next? As a product visual designer at Mozilla, Stephen Horlander is the kind of guy who can make things happen — so when he shares updates and mockups on Firefox 4’s user interface, we tend to pay attention. He outlines five portions of a screenshot teaser that’ll get a much cleaner, more streamlined facelift. Our favorite takeaway is the singular app button for menu navigation. Several variations are shown, but if you ask us, we’re currently fond of the setup above. As Horlander notes, the design’s in constant flux, but what we’re seeing is certainly promising.

Firefox 4 Windows mockup provides 5 UI hints of things to come originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Dec 2009 01:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The debate over the longevity of native software continues. Mozilla, creator of Firefox, claims that its new browser for smartphones will contribute to the death of smartphone app stores.

Scheduled to begin appearing on devices at the end of this year, the Firefox mobile browser, code-named Fennec, will be packed with features to make it the closest thing yet to a real, desktop-class browser. (Wired.com’s Mike Calore has a detailed look at Fennec.) Mozilla claims it will have the fastest JavaScript engine of any mobile browser, allowing developers to produce HTML- and JavaScript-coded apps for Fennec rather than for multiple smartphone platforms, such as iPhone OS, Google Android or Windows Mobile.

“In the interim period, apps will be very successful,” said Jay Sullivan, vice president of Mozilla’s mobile division, in an interview with PC Pro. “Over time, the web will win because it always does.”

Web proponents such as Mozilla and Google dream that internet standards will enable any app to run on any device, just as Java proponents touted a “write once, run anywhere” vision in the 1990s. Similarly, Adobe’s Flash emerged as a cross-platform environment for creating animations, games and apps for the web. But many consumers and developers have complained that Java and Flash exhibit bugs, performance problems and security vulnerabilities, among other issues. And Java’s promises of universality didn’t quite work out, because different implementations of the Java virtual machine (not to mention wildly varying hardware capabilities) mean that, even today, Java coders need to rework their apps for each target device.

But web proponents maintain that the wide acceptance of next-generation internet standards, particularly HTML5, will win out where Java failed.

It’s a tempting vision. Currently, when deciding whether to buy a Mac or a PC, an Xbox 360 or a PlayStation 3, or an iPhone or a Droid, you need to consider which applications you’ll be able to run on each one. If programmers head in the direction of the web, then ideally you’ll be able to gain access to any application regardless of the computer or smartphone you own.

Google is attempting to lead the web movement. The search giant is pushing its web-only regime with Chrome OS, its browser-based operating system for netbooks that will run only web applications. Also, in July, Google’s engineering vice president and developer evangelist Vic Gundotra said in a conference that mobile app stores have no future.

“Many, many applications can be delivered through the browser and what that does for our costs is stunning,” Gundotra was quoted in a Financial Times report. “We believe the web has won and over the next several years, the browser, for economic reasons almost, will become the platform that matters and certainly that’s where Google is investing.”

But iPhone developers and analysts polled in July by Wired.com explained the problems with current web technologies, and some highlighted the merits of native-app architecture.

Interpet analyst Michael Gartenberg noted that many iPhone apps are a combination of native and web technologies, because many apps download or share data through the internet. He said it’s beneficial for the apps to be native, because they’re programmed to take full advantage of the iPhone’s hardware.

“It’s odd that Google feels the need to position as one versus the other,” Gartenberg said in July. “That’s last century thinking…. It’s not about web applications or desktop applications but integrating the cloud into these applications that are on both my phone and the PC. Ultimately, it’s about offering the best of both worlds to create the best experience for consumers — not forcing them to choose one or the other.”

With Firefox’s mobile browser rolling out soon, we have yet to see how consumers and developers react to Mozilla’s attempt to spark a web-only exodus. We’ll continue examining this topic in the months to come.

Meanwhile, what are your thoughts about the web-versus-native debate? Add your comments, or participate in the poll below.

See Also:

• Google Says Mobile App Stores Have No Future
• Google Chrome OS: Ditch Your Hard Drives, the Future Is the Web …
• New Firefox ‘Fennec’ Alpha Arrives as Mobile Browser Wars Heat Up …
• iPhone Opens to Some 3rd-Party Web Browsers, But Not Mobile …
• They Shrunk My Firefox! Mozilla Shows Off Touch-Sensitive Mobile …