I love to create Firefox themes, make addons and lots of freebees that others often enjoy.  I do this on my free time and love to see people enjoy them.  But some days, I’m ready to throw in the towel.

I’ve recently got a few comments from a visitor saying “hurry up and release the f**king theme” and “do your f**king job.”

Now I know that there is bound to be one jerk out of hundreds of users, but it’s comments like these that make me wonder why I continue to spend my time on themes.  It’s not my job and, the more negative comments I get, the slower my progress will be.  These things take hours to build and there is a lot to take into consideration.

Now that Firefox 3 is out, I have a lot of themeing to do!

The first theme to be released for Firefox 3 will be iPox and I’m happy to announce the beta is out today.

The beta was born from the Mac default theme and has been built from the ground up.  This is all new code people.

The beta has been working great on my iMac, but it’s not as pretty on Windows.  And Linux I have no idea.

With the Firefox 3 release upon us, a lot of people will be wondering about the status of my themes.

So what is the status?

Currently, I have started work on iPox.  It’s looking pretty nice and it has advanced a bit from the current Firefox 2 version.  However, it’s a complete re-write.  I started from scratch and have a lot of editing to do.

Well, I spent a few hours yesterday trying to figure out how I was going to go about upgrading all my themes to Firefox 3.  So far, I haven’t had any good ideas.

The new theme structure with Firefox 3 is different than Firefox 2.  I knew it would be.  And, at this time, there is nothing out there to help a theme developer know what to change or what to update.  There is a long list of ongoing theme changes, but what does that really mean?  What are the steps to upgrading a theme?

I updated iPox to install on Firefox 3  and took it for a run.  What happened?  Well, lets just say there were a few issues.

I was hoping for an easy transition from Firefox 2 to 3 but I’m not sure that’s going to happen.

Once the betas become release clients, then maybe I’ll start theming.  However, this looks like it could be a complete re-code.

Are you one of the many fans of the iPox Firefox theme? Well I’ve got a treat for you. I created a quick Halloween costume for iPox. It’s a few tweaks to create a black menu & address bar along with an orange bookmarks bar and a green tab bar. Kinda spooky right?

If you’d like to dress up iPox for Halloween here’s how.

If you’ve ever wanted a good Firefox theme to match the look of your Mac a bit more, there are lots of developers out there trying to make this happen.

The best one, if you are actually on a Mac, is probably GrApple by Aronnax. His attention to detail is amazing. Other good choices are Pinstripe (again Mac only), iSafari and iAqua, my own creation.

However, there are many many more choices out there. Mozilla Taiwan has a forum thread going with screen shots and download links for many other alternatives. Some look pretty good and some are, oddly enough, not very Mac friendly.

Announcing iPox Remix. No, it’s not a new theme, it’s the iPox source for you to customize.

iPox Remix is not only the files, it is going to also be a set of walkthroughs that help you better understand how to create a Firefox theme. They could be used to modify iPox as you wish, or it could be to use it as a base to create your own, all new, Firefox theme.

iPox has spun off a new version with brighter blues and all new buttons. It’s called iPox Aqua and it’s for those that like iPox, but want just a bit more kick out of the theme.

Thanks to BitBox for the base buttons that started this re-work and thanks to you all for making iPox such a huge success.

And this is just the beginning, in the upcoming weeks I plan on helping everyone create their own version of iPox. Or, if you really excel in my tutorials, you can create your own theme. So stay tuned for that.

iPox 1.3 has landed and this version includes a few extension fixes and it adds in the ability to bring the old throbber back.

Fission support was requested and I looked into it. It turns out that Fission doesn’t work well with a rounded toolbar. I played with it and added in support as much as I could. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than it was.

AddBlock Plus fixes should be in place. This was an issue where red or green text was always black.