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Brushed Metal Look
Software themes (skins) are the equivalent of clothes for people. I think of clothes as an exchangeable skin for modern mankind. I also think we use computers everyday, so why not dress them up as well? Today I was looking through my feeds and found this post at Smashing Magazine featuring 23 themes that work with Firefox 2 browser. Unfortunately, none of the featured themes are to my taste. I like the brushed metal look more.Ever since I started using Firefox, my favorite has always been the Mac OS style Brushed theme created by Elvo. It is elegant, easy on the eyes and leaves maximum amount of space for the content on websites. Says its not compatible with the latest version of Firefox but I just disable the add-on compatibility check and it works perfectly fine with mine (version 2.0.0.2). What's more, you can easily customize it with different focus glows, rounded or rectangular input boxes, and regular or inversed tabs.
If the theme doesn't work no matter what you do then Huji made a version compatible with Firefox 2. It works, but as you can see from his screenshot the tabs still need a bit more improvement to match up the original design.
I have also customized the startup (boot) screen on my Windows XP laptop using the BootSkin software and the Brushed bootskin by Jyrik.
To match my Windows Explorer's look with the rest, I used the Toolbar Wallpaper software and made a Brushed tile image. It also changes the background of the Internet Explorer 6 that is installed, but then again I hardly use it to surf the net.
I didn't forget my favorite music player Winamp either! Here is the Brushed skin for it.
Now my computer looks fully dressed! Before you go off to download all these goodies, I have a couple of questions for you.
1. What is your favorite look and feel?
2. Which themes/skins are you using?
15 thoughts:
I hope your comments will bring a little color to my otherwise monotonously virtual world.
Have you noticed any similarities with my blog's sidebar? =)
So when does the brushed metal look make it here?
I like the dark brushed metal, and the glassy look.
I'm using the Curacao theme on FF. It's pale blue with kind of pink/brown buttons. It's nice and simple and I haven't felt an overwhelming need to change so it works for me.
ha ha I just use my plain old windows 98 themes in XP & fedora, never really likes any themes, i get bored easily. i love the classic style because i use old computer, just too keep things fast i use classic theme.
but for Firefox i like to use miniatures theme, small button, ruby.
btw i just found ur site in mybloglog, ur site is really good, i love the topic that u write. hope to see more of ur writing :)
I like it! Very stylish!
i clicked on your button because of your photo. that was the intention, right?
Interesting. But just how did you "disable the add-on compatibility check"?
TIA
Good question. Perhaps I should have mentioned this in the post but disabling the add-on compatibility check is easy.
1) Enter about:config in the address bar,
2) Search for Extensions.checkCompatibility,
3) Set boolean value to False.
Now all the add-ons will work even if they are not "compatible" as they put it.
I think what they really mean by not compatible is that the extension was not fully tested for bugs, errors..etc with the latest version but most turn out to be working just fine.
For FireFox I have been using Noia 2.0 Extreme. I hate the name, but love the look.
I love these styles!
I loved the brushed metal look until I switched to Windows Vista. Now I am making all my apps look a bit like Windows Media Player 11 including firefox.
Well, first I'd like to apologize for my english. I hope it doesn't stop me from sharing with you my very own point of view on some of the question
one can find on this page.
I read your article about Apple cult with great interest. Especially because I am a person you would call a mac geek.
Your argumentation was strong enough to make me feel a little bit ashamed of being one of "the believers". Actually, I've never thought about myself as one of them before. Why would I be one?
Because, no matter how much I do or not care about it, my personal computer came in WHITE color and everybody saw its embarassing commercial.
But then I found this "Brushed Metal Look" post in which you recommend particular type of FF skin to the others! And for me, this is not just another random skin. This is THE ONE that makes your Firefox look exactly the same as the OS X's default web browser (Safari) looks like. What I liked most about your preferences is theat it's not only elegant, but also "easy on the eyes and leaves maximum amount of space for the content on website"!
I may assure you - that's what I prefere too! When thinking about web browser this particular characteristics (elegant, easy on the eyes and especially: making a lot of space for the content) is really important for me. But if I recommend Safari to anybody that would make me "another victim of Steve Job's brainwashing". Why? Because I'm a 1099-bucks-whitey-gay-mac-owner not a 999-bucks-bargain-WinPc-owner. And that's why in your eyes I lost my identity and become a member of "the world's biggest fashion-minded Zombie club". And YOU may still share your opinion with other people without any accusation of evangelisation.
That's what makes us different. In any other case, as you can see, we think in very similar way.
@Aleksander: Your English is perfectly fine and you got your point across very well! I'm glad you're enjoying the posts and ended up on this article to comment on it.
You see, if people had to pay for Firefox and this Mac OS style theme - it would be evangelism. That is because the thing I'm recommending would cost them money. No wait, lots of money!
However, that is not the case here. Firefox is a free, open source program with lots of free themes available for it. Apple sure does great products. Both hardware and software. It's just the way they market them made me think! ;)
Glad to hear it :)
Apple marketing was always something I found offensive and I totally agree with you. ilker. Just as much as I was totally aware of all these Job's "megahertz myth" (and endless list of others) bullcraps when I bought my first G4. It simply had no importance for me as long I found Mac OS X the best OS alternative for myself.
I used Safari only as an example. You're right, it is not free and it's not for everybody (though many macusers start to think it is since once you have a mac you have Safari included).
At the same time there was another Apple's application that made most of the marketing job to many of my friends. It was called iTunes and was available for free. iTunes gained my friends' attention not because of the internet shop (it is still unavailable in my country), but because it practically showed the potential of "brand new and different" way of sorting music files to all Windows users. It was quite a time ago and Apple still hasn't found any better marketing trick since then.
And that was the right way of advertising their platform - show people product with different attitude towords something extremely popular/everyday use (in this case: music) and then make them think the whole hardware and software platform may offer them the same kind of new experience. Smart and fair.
No offense. No cheating. No treating you like an idiot and others like piece of garbage. Rather feeding your curiosity.
I've never bought any iPod. It's not worth its money comparing to other players equiped with much better features.
Still wouldn't trade OS X for any other OS in the world. It's just the same as democracy. I'm not gonna say it's perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it is a very bad piece of operating software.Unfortunatelly all the others are so much worse ;)
Excellent! Finally found someone of similar to my taste! I am using BWComp (with some edits), joerg's safrad for my Opera 9.21, Mac OSX Interface for my VLC Media Player and the list goes on and on! and now Brushed bootskin by Jyrik for my bootscreen
What do you think? Post your thoughts..