Theme Revamp: Further Exploration
It’s been a few weeks since the initial theme concepts for Firefox 3.7 and 4.0 hit the Wiki. This resulted in a lot of great feedback. Which has been explored and extended to things like customization ideas and how exactly to handle the menu bar transition visually.
I have spent some time refocusing on 3.7. Exploring toolbar handling on glass, experimenting with different toolbar button visual styling and ideas on button hovering.
Bookmarks Toolbar Variations
Experimented with a few different styles for handling toolbars on Glass:
- Flat Box: Simple translucent background
- Inset Box: Similar to the above, but with an inset appearance
- Expanded Background (Translucent White): Expand a background from the tab strip to below the navigation bar. Translucent white to remain a neutral background
- Expanded Background (Translucent Grey): Darker but still neutral background
- Expanded Background (Translucent Light Blue): Match Windows 7 toolbar blue
- No Background: Floating toolbar items. Probably the least attractive option due to legibility concerns
Navigation Button Style Variations
Tried some different styles for navigation toolbar buttons. Smooth style(original), more glassy/sharp style and a more plastic variation.
The glassy style strikes me as probably too much. The plastic style might be something more suited to XP.
Button Hover Exploration
Some initial ideas on how to handle hover states. This might be a good place to integrate some color into the more neutral style.
Tags: Experimental Theme Windows
This entry was posted on Monday, August 24th, 2009 at 6:00 pm and is filed under Firefox. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
5 Responses to “Theme Revamp: Further Exploration”
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I like all the backgrounds, especially the ones that cover the tabbar too… but the grouping doesn’t really make a lot of sense to me. It also wouldn’t work too well if the bookmark bar is hidden (unless the tab bar has no background then, like the last example). The “Flat Box” might work the best.
For the button styles, I don’t care for the glass either, especially for Page and Tools. The “original” smooth probably works best imo. What’s the (2) over Page for, BTW?
I like the hover effects.
I’m going to have to say I like the Expanded Background (Translucent Grey) and the glassy buttons best.
Here’s my vote:
Expanded background (white) or no background. Original buttons are best.
Expanded Translucent gray definitely looks the best, gives the application foundation. Translucent white looks too generic and translucent light blue would look out of place as other light blue backgrounds are opaque in Windows 7.
I must say I prefer the original icons.