Orbit Development

[RAF]

Looking forward to it.

[hhh]

<rant>
Personas is coming to Firefox by default in Fx 3.6... and I'm not a fan. Personas is supposed to be a simple way of "theming"... but that's not what it is in my opinion. Personas (right now at least) is a way of adding background images to the head and foot of Firefox, without changing any buttons or icons. To me, that's skinning. So I don't understand it... the Firefox developers have been working at getting Firefox to look "native" depending on the operating system. So how does adding background images to the UI do that, when no other applications in your OS do that? It doesn't. But Firefox is thinking ahead to cloud computing, where people login to there browser from anywhere and their settings are remembered, plus maybe it's going to make Mozilla more revenue...
http://www.getpersonas.com/gallery/Desi ... jectrunway
http://www.getpersonas.com/gallery/Desi ... rry_potter
http://www.getpersonas.com/gallery/Designer/mgmstudios
http://www.getpersonas.com/gallery/Designer/ladygaga
http://www.getpersonas.com/gallery/Designer/nodoubt

Anyway, the plan for 3.6 is to make Personas available without requiring the Personas extension, but only for the default theme, so it doesn't concern themers just yet. Nevertheless, I've begun thinking what Persona would work with Orbit... and this is where the hate comes in. As soon as you add background images to Firefox (as you can with iGoogle and Gmail, *wink*), you start getting distracted from the actual content of the web page. Add to that customizations, with everyone potentially using different toolbar and button setups, and things start to get messy pretty quickly. For example, install these, if you dare (for the full effect, enable all toolbars including the Status bar and the Find bar)...
http://www.getpersonas.com/gallery/All/ ... search.y=0

AND WHO IN THE HELL DECIDED TO BRING ANIMATED GIFs TO FIREFOX???!!!???!?!?!?...
http://www.getpersonas.com/persona/27456
http://www.getpersonas.com/gallery/All/ ... search.y=0
KILL IT !!! KILL IT DEAD !!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
</rant>

Anyway, I've been fooling around trying to find something that works well with Orbit. I've made a start based on mozilla artwork by Shepard "OBEY" Fairey...
http://www.actsofvolition.com/archive/2 ... pardfairey
http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/ident ... ation.html

So, here's Rex...



You can try it yourself if you install Personas. Just open these 3 images full-size and download them...



..then store them somewhere on your computer. Next go to Persona's Preferences (Tools>Personas for Firefox>Preferences) and check the box under Advanced for "Show Custom Persona in menu". Now you have a Persona entry for Custom, click edit, rename it what you want (Rex?), use either T-Rex or T-Rex-haze for the first image and T-Rex-foot or nothing for the second, change colors if you wish, and apply it. I'm using the plain Rex with no footer image and default colors (and no Bookmark toolbar), and I actually like it.

Suggestions are welcome. I don't know if I'll try and submit something based on this to AMO, as I might get shot down via the rights to old Rexxy.

-edit- Almost forgot, the Personas extension puts this hideous blind-fox-with-a-gimp-strap-staring-up-at-you icon onto the statusbar...
http://creative.mozilla.org/designs/122
Kill it dead with the following userChrome.css...

Code: Select all

/* Hide Personas icon */

#personas-selector-button {
display: none !important;
}

[greenknight]

I swallowed my deep misgivings about Personas and gave it a try. Rex is pretty cool, can't say I like the footer much; I wound up using the same setup as you, plain T-Rex and no footer. Maybe an orange/yellow gradient in the footer, to match the rest of the theme? Maybe I'll try making one, now that I know how it works.

I tried installing Personas via the Add-ons Manager, had another hanging shutdown - so it appears that it wasn't Orbit's fault when it happened before. This time the install was corrupted, the menu wouldn't open; I had to reinstall. I'll have to do some more testing, If I can reproduce this problem I'll file a bug.

I sure hope Mozilla is getting some revenue from those movie/TV/pop star themed Personas, that's the only good reason I can think of for adding crap like Personas.

[hhh]

I don't like the footer either. It was supposed to be radioactive haze but it looks like dirt.

Thanks for taking it for a spin.

[greenknight]

I fired up the GIMP and played around with it a little, produced this:



What do you think?

[hhh]

^It's fine, it has to be 3000px wide though.

-edit- and darker orange, to match the haze header and the icons. Perfect height though.

[greenknight]

Really? 3000? Oh, well, easy to do - no prob.

I was thinking darker orange myself, but I wanted to see what you thought of the general effect. Adding more color to the lower part should also be easy to do. I'll have an improved version for you tomorrow.

Also tried adding the wispy edge effect to the haze header. Check it out:



It's a fairly subtle difference, but I think it makes it look a bit more like haze.

[greenknight]

Ok, here's the revised footer:



What I uploaded to Photobucket was 3000 px wide, but if I download it from them it's 1020 px. Tried Imageshack; you can get the whole thing from there, though it doesn't show well in the thumbnail:

[ChuckRoast]

....what should I do next? ....

Make a version for SeaMonkey 2. Please!

[hhh]

....what should I do next? ....

Make a version for SeaMonkey 2. Please!

viewtopic.php?p=7427465#p7427465

Sorry, Chuck.