It was just yesterday that I pointed out some theme changes to Firefox 2. Well, it is a new day and so there are new changes.
The “Home” icon still has the same awkward brown coloring but the roof changed colors. I think they need to make the walls of the house a little lighter because it is just too much brown. It doesn’t appear that I’m the only one thinking that either.
The blue folder icon has been removed from the bookmarks. I’m not sure why because I actually thought it was kinda cool. Maybe the blue was a little too bright but it is a great idea for them to make their own unique looking folder icon.
Lastly, they finally made it more obvious when you hover over a background tab with your mouse. Before it was hardly noticeable but now it is very obvious. That is probably my favorite update for this round.
Alright, take a look at some screenshot comparisons from yesterday’s build to today’s build:
New Home and Refresh buttons (yesterday):
New Home and Refresh buttons (today):
New folder icon (yesterday):
Folder icon removed (today):
The following tab screenshots are in the format of background tab, background tab being hovered over, and current tab…
Tabs (yesterday):
New “Hovering” update (today):
This was another nice set of updates but I hope we still see a change in the folder icons. Everything is coming along pretty smoothly and I now hear more people complimenting the theme rather than complaining about it.
You can try out the latest nightly build yourself by going here.
I like how the bookmark folders open up when your looking in that particular folder. Also the RSS feed now lights up when you have your pointer over that feed. The blue color for the folders wasn’t bad, but I like the yellow better.
As for the house, I actually like it, better than the old style. 
Ahhh, I didn’t notice the RSS icon. I wonder if that just got changed or if it has been like that for a little while and I just haven’t noticed?
The house is definitely growing on me and the only reason that I like the color choice is that it really stands out. I don’t think I need to worry about clicking the wrong button.
The RSS icon did that with the previous build:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1b2) Gecko/20060911 BonEcho/2.0b2 ID:2006091104
Haven’t tried the newest of the nightlies yet.
Edit: I was just told to update to the newest nightly. Don’t see much difference in the house…but do like the yellow folders better. The blue was just too much and it looked like something I child colored in…
I think some of those changes (like the folder icon), are simply FF now using the OS properties. I say this, because I have the nightly running on WinXP, and I am getting the older looking icons and such. (Although the tabs look sweet now
)
I am not a design guru but I really don’t like the new refresh button. The whole new visual refresh is nice but appears a bit too dim on my laptop whiles others such as Opera, Flock and Firefox 1.5 appear nicely.
Overall, I do like the idea of a Fx visual refresh, but I don’t know if this cuts it. I don’t like the way now, all icons show the border box around them; it detracts from the slickness. I do like the new tabs, somewhat like (dare I say it) IE7. Also, the new drop-down arrow next to the “GO” button is ultra pro slick!
The new download button is cool, but the box that appears when hovering over it really does kill it. I like the new history and bookmarks icons, but the new window and new tab icons are terrible!
The one thing I really loved were the shiny blue bookmark folders, but for a reason beyond me those have been dumped.
Anh well, there’s a good chance I’ll search the web for a classic theme hack once Fx 2.0 is released.
BTW: Why are the screenshot’s tabs blue-ish, mine are a more brown-ish, yellow-ish???
I’m running this on Vista with the Basic theme enabled. It gives everything a slightly blue tint.
FYI: There already is a [tech.cybernetnews.com] for Firefox 2
Ryan,
hope it’s ok to ask u here (if not, just delete this), but could you maybe create a microsummery for ur site? so far, i only found one for digg, and no other (useful) site has them.
thanks.
p.s. how come besides all those theme updates, no1 is fixing that lack of buttons in the find as you type bar?
it seems to me like they are either braking what is ok, and fixing things that are a bit less important.
Nice to see the refresh continuing – but does anyone else have problems with the RSS preview? If I view a feed it just shows a blank page with the formatting and a single button to add to Google Reader, along with a random checkbox.
Welcome back Inferno_str1ke
My feed preview is working just fine. I wonder if an extension could be screwing that up somehow. You could try running Firefox in Safe Mode.
I never thought about doing a microsummary for this site but I think it is a really great idea. I might be able to whip something up this weekend.
I don’t think they are going to be putting the buttons back on the Find As You Type bar because I remember hearing that it was intentional for them to remove the buttons. Why? I have no idea.
well, Asa has [weblogs.mozillazine.org] in his blog, and a few people mentioned this problem there. and so did i. i do hope they will listen, or at least give some reasonable reason for why they did it. cause it’s a shame. a damn shame.
well, me and my big mouth
a minute after bitching about the find as you type issue at Asa’s blog and here, i installed the latest nightly on my portable FF2b2 (20060913).
and guess what is fixed there – the buttons r back!!!
just a few more bugs 2 go
Do you have IE Tab installed? I used to have it but when I installed Fx 2.0b2 I noticed that problem with RSS. I disabled all my extensions and tested the RSS preview and it worked perfectly. I enabled ext’s one by one and found that IE Tab was causing the bug. I immediately uninstalled it and replaced it with IE View Lite, which I will continue to use until the author of IE Tab fixes it.
Thanks for the info, I was afraid my profile folder may have been corrupted or something. I noticed that post about a Fx classic theme a while ago, but when I checked it out it simply had a link to a .jar file and no instructions. I’m assuming i use the winstripe_ff_classic_0.9.jar file to replace a different file in either Fx’s program files or the profile folder. Jeez, seems a lot like modding online games
Actually, all you have to do is download the JAR file (which is the theme file), open your Add-Ons manager, switch to the theme “tab”, and drag the JAR file into that window. It will then install itself.
Sounds good, I’ll check it out,
thanks!
Just checked out the IE Tab page on Mozilla Update, and the conflict has been fixed. If you did have IE Tab, update it and it your RSS problems should be over
I want it back with only one close tab button on the right hand side, closing tabs with a mouse is now a total pain in the ass.
Take a look at Ryan’s [tech.cybernetnews.com]