Firefox themes for different T-ish variations

Recently I have published T-ish for compiz, theme that is slightly different in color then original T-ish. The reason for this color shift is in Firefox theme I choose to recommend for this variation.

You see, I believe that in coherent GUI, similar functions should have similar look. For example if back/forward in nautilus looks one way, then all similar functions through other applications should at least try to look and behave the same way. Unfortunately Firefox is not themeable through GTK yet,so that is the reason I'm in constant search for Firefox themes than can fit into T-ish.

So, far I have found some and I recommend them to use along T-ish.
Here is the list of default ones I recommend:

• T-ish - iFox possibly the most complete Firefox theme besides default one
• T-ish Brushed, T-ish Brushed Overlaid - Brushed - the best brushed theme for Firefox I have encountered so far
  
• T-ish Black - FoxiMetal - a theme that goes well with tiger like themes
  
• T-ish for Compiz - FoxiTiger - by the same author as above but with lighter shade of gray

As for the window borders, one of the main requirements for Firefox themes is to blend completely with GTK theme in order to appear as integral part of GUI. The other requirements are: it has to be quick and responsive on low end computers and it has to have finished and balanced look.

If you know more Firefox themes that meet this requirements please state them in comment section bellow so we could try them.

First try - T-ish for Compiz

So, here it is.

My first try to make Compiz look T-ishable :)) As far from ideal as this is, it's a first step of my intention to make Compiz window borders as little noticeable as is possible. Since Compiz does not yet allow themeing my goal is to use GTK2 themeing engine to tweak colors to make Compiz blend seamlessly into T-ish.

For now I have achieved to remove border color by removing Clearlooks decorations, so window border can be the same as the rest of the window. The problem now is that window title text is to bright to read easily so I'm trying to find a way to influence it's text color. Any help is more then welcome :))

Also I have decided to go with separate themes for Compiz instead of tweaking and changing existing ones. However, in future that may change.

Feel free to give any suggestions for improvements if you have them. Just post them in the comments section below.

Invisible window decorations

As you can conclude from my work on T-ish series I'm a great fan of unobtrusive and invisible window decorations. Aesthetic reasons aside, the main purpose of window borders that are different (in colors for example) from main GTK theme is to help us easier differentiate between different windows (active/inactive, different applications, etc.).. and to help us in working with windows of course (moving, closing, minimizing...).

But once we have became able to achieve this differentiation and usability by just themeing application areas, the functional need for distinct window border themes (aesthetic reasons aside) is gone. We can have very nice looking themes (and completely functional too) like Ish, that have window borders completely blended into GTK theme. That way it looks as there is no difference between application area and window border area and I think this is exactly as usable theme should be. OSX tiger does this fairly well.

Why do I think this is good?

Well, as first it removes unnecessary clutter from the display allowing us to concentrate more efficiently to the application we are using (because all unnecessary lines and colors are removed).

Even more, as titlebar is no more the basic handle for moving windows around the screen it frees titlebar area for adding more functional elements besides the window name. I have seen somewhere a great mockup where the menubar is completely integrated into former titlebar are. I consider this brilliant idea and would like to see this feature built into some future version of Gnome.

Further on, window moving should by default be achievable by clicking anywhere in and on the window (not just titlebar) because this approach significantly speeds-up user-computer interaction. By removing distinct window border theme we can encourage users to use this approach and lessen the potential confusion caused by the urge to still click on titlebar if titlebar is highly noticeable (as in many classic themes).

Next, this approach can offer better control to the application designers since they can rely on to fact that their application windows will look fairly uniform regardless of theme the user is currently using. Thus we can shift UI-design focus from desktop environment to the application environment.

All in all, we have inherited window border decorations from the past where highly noticeable window borders was necessity because of low graphic capabilities of that era computers. Today that isn't the case anymore, so we should throw away this outdated window frame metaphor that does not serve any significant function anymore and develop some other approaches. Apple has done well with Tiger themes so should try the other desktop developers.

Compiz dilemmas

I have decided to start this blog after having some serious dilemmas where to go with T-ish theme series. So I feel now is the time to share them with you. Also, I will publish here my ongoing thinking about further enhancement and development of T-ish series.

So, to the first post:

T-ish themes have arrived where I wanted them when I started modding gnome user interface. They are fast and pretty slick. They all have finished and complete feeling regardless you like them or not. Overall I'm pretty satisfied with the outcomes. Metacity/Gnome now looks and behaves (some minor quirks aside) as I thought it should.

Alas, I am not using Metacity anymore :(( I've started to experiment with compiz/aiglx and didn't go back again. Compiz/Aiglx (and Glx for that matter) shows so many GUI improvements that ordinary Metacity seems heavily outdated now. Except one little thing: compiz does not support themeing yet. Colors can be changed by tweaking GTK2 theme and that is as far as it goes yet.

I've tried T-ish themes with Compiz and they look decent. But unfortunately IMHO not decent enough. I see there is some room to make improvements, but that will involve changing GTK2 theme in order to do so. So my dilemmas are:

1. Should I fork another serie of theme sets just for Compiz?
2. Should I rework existing themes in order to look better with Compiz and leave the packed as they are?
3. Or do you think they look good enough and I should leave them as they are?

Please comment.

Also, I'm a big fan of unobtrusive window borders that fit seamlessly with GTK theme (with no border line) as in T-ish because I don't see the need for distinctive window border anymore I'd like to see that achievable in Compiz so if anyone from Compiz team read this, please make it possible :)))