Firefox Hacks [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Hack 6. Make Firefox Look Different

Don't put up with blank walls.
You can wallpaper Firefox back into your life.

The menus, toolbars, and dialog boxes that Firefox provides can all
be changed. Collectively, they are called the
chrome.
You can change the content of the chrome, which
includes the set of widgets that are made visible in the window.
Alternatively, you can change just the
appearance of the chrome. In that case, the
buttons and other widgets stay the same, but the graphics, text, and
colors that decorate them are all different.

To change chrome content, install an
extension
from the ToolsExtensions menu. Extensions are small pieces
of programs, not too different from a Java Applet or a Microsoft
Excel macro. Some are very sophisticated and are effectively whole
applications. This book is full of discussions about which extension
does what. Chapter 4Chapter 4,
Web Surfing Enhancements, is a good
starting point. We won't go into detail about
extensions here. We'll just cover the install
process with the simpler example of adding
themes, which is done the same way.

To change the wallpaper style of Firefox's chrome,
install a new theme.
A theme is a bundle of plain content with no program logic. Both
extensions and themes are available by default through the trusted
http://update.mozilla.org content
portal, which provides security and safety. Even in the wild, themes
are overall much safer than extensions. At most, they make Firefox
illegible and unworkable, whereas a truly wild extension can make
Firefox curl up and die completely.

A theme is made out of a set of
skins.
A skin is a cluster of files associated with a single application or
application subsystem. There's a single skin called
the global skin that applies to all applications. A
sensible theme creator will always provide a global skin in his
theme. A creative theme maker will also supply skins for common
applications run by Firefox (such as the browser and the DOM
Inspector). If applications change, then skins must change to catch
up. So, an actively maintained theme is more desirable than one
that's been created and left to rot.

To pick up a new theme, connect to the Web and choose
ToolsThemes. Figure 1-9 shows the Theme
Manager with five themes already installed: that's
four, plus one that is the default.

Figure 1-9. Theme Manager displaying a sample of the Lure theme

This information is read from datafiles stored in the Firefox
user-profile area. Pressing the Update button grabs any updates to
your existing, installed themes that have been created since you last
checked. If you press the Get More Themes link, a shopping-mall web
page is displayed where you can pick the theme that suits you.

Themes are installed by a bit of Mozilla called
XPInstall
(Cross(X) Platform Install). A summary of the process goes like this.
A theme is delivered as a single archive of small files. The archive
is named with a
.xpi extension, but it's
actually in ZIP format. These files are copied into the Firefox
profile area. Some registration and housekeeping is done. The theme
is detected the next time Firefox starts up. If you know the URL of
such an archive, you can simply download it to disk separately from
XPInstall and have a look inside.

Figure 1-10 shows Firefox after FireCat PalePinkPaws
has been installed and chosen as the current theme.

Figure 1-10. Firefox browser window in FireCat PalePinkPaws theme

Just click on the theme name, then on Use Theme, and then restart the
browser to make the theme appear.