07.09.04

First checkin

Tags: — Jeff @ 17:04

My cvs.mozilla.org account is finally working. After a little less than three weeks since the initial bug filing, I finally got all the files, variables, and SSH keys set up correctly. I just made my first checkin to the aviary branch — a simple fix to add Ctrl+0 to the Firefox Help viewer. I’m now checking out the trunk code (my only repository was for aviary because that’s Firefox right now), and after I do that I’ll check in the fix to trunk. (This is very likely possible without requiring two trees, but right now I don’t know the method.)

30.07.04

Winstripe – (A Belated) Part 2

Tags: — Jeff @ 04:17

I had a reasonable bit of constructive commentary on Winstripe to post. Then I had to go on vacation for a couple weeks. I got back to changes. Then I left for a month for Alaska. I got back to more changes. My original commentary was now effectively obsolete, so I removed it. In fact so much has changed that this commentary is written by one who feels thoroughly overwhelmed. That said, what you get from me here, you get. (This is by special request, by the way — you should feel privileged!)

What’s the overall Winstripe feel now, after a couple point releases and much visual tweaking? It feels like Windows XP. The icon style is slightly different, but it’s not a huge leap. The five defaults, in particular, are excellent. They all fit in well with XP; I particularly appreciate the efforts on the Home icon. The Reload icon change is simple yet effective. The Back and Forward arrows have a soft feel even though they have the sharp edges; I wish I understood how the designers managed it. Losing the shadows underneath the icons was a necessary step, and it happened. In all the ways I can find, it feels very much like Windows XP. It’s also had a little time to grow on me, and that’s probably helped some too. I also haven’t seen a single mention of an odd-looking theme in Google News, where I have a query set up for all news containing the word “firefox”, so it seems not to have been the oft-predicted fiasco I knew wouldn’t really happen.

What else needs to be done?

Let’s start with the main toolbar icons. The five default icons are polished; they stand alone and need no updating. Enough said, and well done!

The other toolbar icons are still of slightly lesser quality (tho all are passable for a 1.0 release). I don’t particularly like the Go button because it feels too small in comparison to the rest of the icons, but it’s certainly acceptable. Icon edges in the secondary icons feel a little too hard overall; however, this problem’s not really bad, and I unfortunately can’t offer any constructive criticism on this point. Many of the icons appear to have drop shadows underneath in the old style for the five defaults, which I think should go. (I might be imagining them, tho, because it’s extremely late at my end. If they’re not figments of my imagination, they’re so barely noticeable that they can probably be left alone. I’d still remove them for consistency.) The New Tab icon feels a little toaster-y, as pointed out by others, but it’s good enough for 1.0 (tho I might spend a little extra time on it before 1.0 if time permitted). I’m confused a little by the Space icons, which look the same. I didn’t like the “old” new Flexible, but back to nothing isn’t so great. As a random idea, perhaps an embedded spring would work? Also, shouldn’t Space be the size it is on the toolbar, perhaps (this might not be an icon, tho, so perhaps it’s another’s job)? The only icon that I feel needs some special effort is the Print icon, which is a natural candidate for three-dimensionalization that would make it fit the XP style much better. It’s also likely to be one of the most-used lesser icons, so it deserves attention the most.

As for non-toolbar icons, they’ve been updated (and in places newly created) as well. I like everything I’ve seen so far except for three small, insignificant icons that haven’t changed since their introduction: the micro-buttons for the extensions in the Extension Manager. The buttons are monotone and clash with the rest of Winstripe. It’s obviously difficult to produce good icons at such small size, but they should be updated when possible. They simply don’t fit the overall style.

All in all, tho, a great cleanup job by the Firefox designers, who have taken an ill-fitting (and in my opinion ill-released) theme and made it into a conformant, stylish thing of life. This theme has every right to be in Firefox version 1.0. (Firefox designers, if any of you happen to stop by, I’d love to know you read this, because this is written by a once-naysayer primarily to give you some well-earned kudos after much hard work. Particularly as I don’t know what reaction has been to the updates as I’ve been away for so much, I feel you need as many thanks from me as you can get.)

28.07.04

I’m Back!

Tags: — Jeff @ 08:59

I’ve been in Alaska all July. The trip was a pseudo-high-school-graduation present from my family in lieu of allowing me to go on a trip over spring break. (I wouldn’t have actually gone anywhere because I don’t care about that sort of thing whatsoever, but I’m not complaining over a free trip.)

While I was gone I managed to keep up a very, very, very slight amount with what I normally follow in life. Just as a random, spur-of-the-moment post, I’m going to list some of the stuff that’s happened and stuff I’ve missed. Some will be news from websites, and some will be real news. Some will be interesting, and some will be esoteric (probably more of the latter than the former, but I’m the one writing). This could be long, so in the immortal words of a character from Jurassic Park, “Hold onto your butts.” (That line’s so goofy I can’t resist using it.)

2100+ email messages
How so? Interestingly enough, virtually 0% is spam because my email address is new and I’m guarding it ferociously. My main contributors are messages on various bugs in some free software I enjoy using and messages from a competitive Scrabble mailing list. The number is so massive my email client’s freezing on me, and while I’ve successfully downloaded the message headers, I can’t seem to download the messages themselves, which is rather problematic. I’m still working on it…
Lance Armstrong wins a record 6th Tour de France
I did keep up on this throughout the trip via the Anchorage Daily News, tho I was disappointed the coverage was so minimal. He’d get a blip on the front page of Sports and nothing more, not even after the end of the race. That’s America, tho – the mixed-up sports priorities in the US can be extremely annoying.
Interesting discussions on controversial issues
A comment on prayer and a rant on abortion generate loads of dialogue (which I haven’t read so much as skimmed simply because of the sheer volume of it). I generally agree with Gerv and his viewpoints as I’m a Christian too, although I believe I disagree over abortions always being wrong. If in a hypothetical situation an abortion could save the life of the mother, then an abortion might be viable. In this hypothetical situation, either one or the other will die, so I’m uncertain how either choice can be absolutely wrong. In this situation I believe there is no murder, because both action and inaction will result in a death. It’s roughly analogous to the situation with cojoined twins: does one separate and risk a death or leave together and leave partially disabled? The problem is, however, that these hypothetical situations tend to be expanded way too far if abortions are legal (and indeed, I’m not sure if such a situation can even exist because it’s been expanded so much in America). If the choice of whether to have a baby or not must be made, it should have been made before conception (rape being the unfortunate exception as the child is the rapist’s choice). If the choice to save the mother or save the child must be made, I can’t rationalize one choice over the other. However, I’m open to arguments. However, if there is no choice over whether to save the mother or save the child, then abortion is always murder, even in cases of rape. (Now, if this was anywhere near as coherent as I’d like, consider yourself lucky. I’m still suffering jet lag.)
Cookies are no longer delicious delicacies
If you’ve used the web browser Firefox before, you’ll know what I mean. It’s sad, really. I really liked that text.
Favicons work right in Firefox
Per this post by Asa Dotzler. Awesome. I’ve missed way too much development in this month off.
Firefox 0.9.2
Completely unexpected.
Firefox Help changes
I don’t know what, but I’ve seen a few suspicious checkins. I’ve got a ton of work to do today and tomorrow on this, because I’ve got one last mini-vacation for the next week and I’d like to finish the biggies before PR1.0 (or whatever it’s called now that RC1 is out).

I have a couple other posts gestating right now, so maybe I’ll have something else reasonably soon. The current topics include my experiences with Linux distros (Fedora Core 2 in particular, my current poison of choice) and an informed review of Winstripe as a followup from my original less-informed post. (I will get to that one because of a comment reply I received to the original post. I’m still not sure whether I’ll keep the old commentary I’d written because it’s so out-of-date, but I’m looking forward to posting that one in particular.)

06.06.04

Winstripe – for Windows?

Tags: — Jeff @ 19:41

A very interesting development has happened recently in the Firefox world on Windows: Firefox is getting a new theme. Arvid Axelsson, the creator of the current default Firefox theme Qute, explains the reasons in a post to the Mozillazine forums: essentially, the problems are that Qute hasn’t been free (perhaps not quite in the GNU sense, but roughly so) and that the Firefox devs want a more cross-platform theme. (Arvid did indicate that he would be willing to make it free if the good of Firefox required it, but it apparently occurred after the revelation that they wouldn’t consider Qute any more.)

Winstripe Beta - softened colors added to the mostly monochrome Pinstripe base describe this theme well

Winstripe’s definitely a nice theme; had it been originally released as a separate theme for Windows I might even have tested it out for a nightly or two. In the past I very loosely followed the attempts to bring Pinstripe to Windows in the Mozillazine Themes forum (I found that the theme didn’t install well on whichever nightly I was using, so I only used it for about 5 minutes). Were it released as a separate theme I’d be unlikely to care, because I tend to stick close enough to the bleeding edge that I rarely install a different theme. Regardless of my feelings for Winstripe, however, I’m not a fanboy who would switch to Opera simply because of a theme change, and I’ll likely stick with the default theme no matter what it is.

I feel one important clarification must be made, however, before this should be used as the default Windows theme: this is not a Windows theme, and it should be modified until it is before its release. The Windows XP icon design guidelines explain the methods used to give icons a look that fits in with the most-used (Windows) OS on the planet that’s set the new style for Windows icons. This new theme follows these guidelines only very loosely; the instances where the new icons do fit the style are mostly byproducts of Winstripe’s original Pinstripe ancestry.

Let’s examine this new “Winstripe” theme as objectively as possible with respect to the Windows XP icon design guidelines on a point-by-point basis. First, a few disclaimers: I have no experience in (icon or other) design, relatively minimal artistic creativity, and little knowledge of the more detail-oriented changes that have already been made in Winstripe to adapt it from the Mac style to the Windows style. I also know I’ll be biased, but I’ll give being purely logical a good shot.

Color is rich and complementary to the Windows XP look.
No. The colors used are mostly from a small, simple palette, with little color variance, shading, or gradients within a color area; richness is mostly restricted. The colors used are mostly softened; I would describe them as dull with a sort of inner light (that nonetheless is insufficient to improve the theme’s color choices).
Angle and perspective provide a dynamic energy to the images.
No. The Rename icon for the bookmarks manager is the only icon with any angle. The New Folder and Folder icons for bookmarks are the only icons of the set that have any perspective. The vast majority of the icons are straight-on images, which may have been the style during the era of Windows 3.11, 95, 98, and ME but is no longer proper for a modern Windows application.
Edges and corners of elements are soft and slightly rounded.
Somewhat. The icons are indeed soft (in color) as mentioned earlier; this is one of the strong points of Winstripe. In the Windows XP style, softness also extends to edge blending (alpha transparency). With the notable exception of the navigation icons, such blending is almost entirely absent from Winstripe. Rounding is minimal, and icon edges are mostly hard lines (tho always softly colored) with little blending to create a smooth edge. This is arguably okay, however, per the outlines guideline below, and either choice probably represents the creator’s personal choice.
Light source is coming from the upper left-hand corner with additional ambient light illuminating other parts of the icon.
No. Light in the icons is not consistent. A light source from above illuminates the navigation icons, which is inconsistent with the Windows XP guideline. Other icons apparently show no strong light source. Ambient light in Winstripe icons is strong, and all aspects of the icons are clear.
The use of gradients provides dimension and gives the icon a richer look.
Yes. Gradients used are very subtle, while Windows XP gradients tend to be more visible. The gradients, however, do almost nothing to give the icon a richer look because they are too subtle. (This is a minor nit overall, and this examination is supposed to be as objective as possible. Therefore, against my wishes, I’m giving it a Yes here.)
A drop shadow provides contrast and dimension.
No. Only the navigation icons have drop shadows, but the canonical settings for drop shadows in Windows XP are at an angle. Furthermore, the other icons have no drop shadows whatsoever; the pencil for Rename at the very least deserves a slight drop shadow.
Outlines provide definition.
Yes. Outlines are strong and clear in Winstripe.
Everyday objects, such as computers and devices, have a more modern consumer look.
Uncertain. I do not believe the icons displayed can sufficiently demonstrate compliance or a lack of compliance to this guideline. The bookmarks symbol might be considered somewhat antiquated (what mainstream computer user really uses actual, stylized bookmarks?), and the house is rather too traditional; however, two icons (only one whose base design is truly unusual for Windows) are not enough to respond to this guideline.

How many of these eight guidelines does Winstripe follow? Two (with one other as a “possibly” and one as only partially obedient). I recognize that these are only guidelines; a designer can feel free to ignore them and still create good icons. If the guidelines are ignored, however, the designer must certainly expect to have produced icons not well-suited for Windows XP. Those guidelines that Winstripe follows are only followed because the OS X style and the Windows XP style coincided. The vast majority of the guidelines are ignored to the detriment of a future Firefox’s native OS integration. I do not recommend the icons be completely refactored to fit every guideline (as one must remember they are), but a good deal of effort must be expended to align Winstripe with the Windows XP style.

Having a consistent theme for Firefox on all platforms is a laudable idea — I have no qualms about making one theme with minor changes to suit all platforms. Using a Mac OS X theme as the base for this new cross-platform theme, however, is a mistake. Jon Hicks and the team that created the new Firefox icon have shown that an excellent design can function extremely well in all platforms (despite my initial impression that it was oh-so-slightly too Mac-ish), and I’ve heard almost no complaints about the Firefox icon. I would love to see what that team could do to create a cross-platform default theme, because I’m sure they could create one that would not favor any platform over any other. Winstripe, however, simply does not integrate with a Windows environment.

Presumably there will also be a Winstripe for Thunderbird for the same reasons, but I haven’t seen any mention of it in Bonsai logs or in posts to other sites.

27.04.04

Building Firefox…ahem

Tags: — Jeff @ 20:56

Over the past few weeks I’ve been attempting to get Firefox to compile on my WinXP machine with no success. I’m a student, so my resources are limited; consequently, up until a few days ago I was using MinGW/cygwin for builds.

Now, MinGW and cygwin are a good start, but they have one obvious disadvantage — anything compiled with this system is binary-incompatible with pretty much all other binary plugins and extensions you might wish to run. Therefore, because Java is not binary-compatible with MinGW/cygwin builds, it won’t run on such builds. This is obviously rather annoying, and because most other builders use MS VC++, this restricts your build’s use. There are plenty of good builds produced with MS VC++, so what’s the point in testing your build (other than to test a patch) if an MSVC++ build is faster and will work with compiled plugins?

As of a few days ago, that’s all changed.

Microsoft, as a benevolent company bent on world domination, has released its VC++ compiler to the public. This isn’t a stripped-down compiler, either — it’s the exact same one as in MS VC .NET. It would appear they are trying to get more applications built for Windows by making app creation easier. Whatever the reason, tho, this now makes it possible to create binary-compatible Firefox builds with only a few small adjustments! After some initial frustration, TierMann on the Mozillazine forums got it working. With a little work I got everything set up and started working.

The build progressed merrily after a slight stop while I added a missing path to INCLUDE for --enable-accessibility. Then I hit this:

No rule to make target ecl-exp.h

Frustrating, isn’t it? I’d encountered this before with MinGW/cygwin, and I’d also filed a bug at the same time: cygwin environment build failure at ‘ecl-exp.h’. There’s been some work in the bug to discover the source of the problem and a fix, but it’ll probably be a while before it’s fixed. Anyone out there want to help for fun?

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