Screwed By Design http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blog Fri, 04 May 2007 00:58:25 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 en Revival http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blog/2006/11/revival.php http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blog/2006/11/revival.php#comments Fri, 24 Nov 2006 09:21:05 +0000 Ryan http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blineapples/?p=52 Yes, it’s been quite a while since I’ve blogged (sorry) and yes, to many out there it seemed as if I’d dropped of the face of the planet (I’ll blog about that later). But in this moment of insomnia, I’ve decided to revive my blog and what better way to do so than by picking up right where I left off.

Yesterday morning Google pushed some new imagery live, including an update to a small patch inside Amity, OR (containing the famed Firefox crop circle. You can now view some nice hi-res photos of it via Google Earth (click here to zoom to its location) or see a small preview of it on Google Maps using a KML overlay I whipped up.

]]> http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blog/2006/11/revival.php/feed Field’s Ablaze http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blog/2006/08/fields_ablaze.php http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blog/2006/08/fields_ablaze.php#comments Tue, 15 Aug 2006 14:48:25 +0000 Ryan http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blineapples/?p=50
Read more

]]> http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blog/2006/08/fields_ablaze.php/feed So… http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blog/2006/08/so.php http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blog/2006/08/so.php#comments Sun, 06 Aug 2006 22:27:08 +0000 Ryan http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blineapples/?p=49 <gavin_> huh
<gavin_> mconnor: I don’t understand 347402 comment 29
<gavin_> the go button issue was my fault?
* rob_strong can’t imagine gavin ever doing that
<gavin_> hrm, actually, the problem is in http://screwedbydesign.com/mozilla/rc.diff but apparently not in any of the patches on the bug
* gavin_ blames Ryan ;)
<Mossop> haha
<poningru> hehe
* poningru shakes fist at ryan
* rob_strong wants some of what ryan was smoking when he wrote that
<Mossop> As I recall there was an xul error in the original patch which is probably where the mistake crept in
<Ryan> Wait… what!? I’m to blame for the go button?
<Ryan> I did no such thing :P
<Mossop> Ryan: Yeah its all your fault, we decided
<Ryan> :(
<Mossop> Ryan: Feel free to try to prove your innocence ;)
<Ryan> I didn’t even touch that part of the patch!
<Ryan> Though it’s worth noting that that patch was against the trunk :)
<Lucy_> mconnor blames gavin ;)
<Lucy_> but that might have changed since last night
<Ryan> Well gavin did check in my patch ;)
…
<Ryan> Woo. It was totally my fault :(
<Mossop> lol
<Ryan> I moved the wrong line in the original patch :/
<Ryan> But in my defense, it wouldn’t have happened if it was a unified diff with context!
<Mossop> Ah here come the excuses ;)
<Ryan> Dude, have you seen the other patch? ;)
<Ryan> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=231885
<Mossop> Ok maybe I’ll let you off
<Ryan> Yay!
* Ryan hides from mconnor
<mconnor> Ryan: smooth ;P
<Ryan> eep
<mconnor> Ryan: typical sysadmin “looks right, must be right” ;)
<Lucy_> lol
<Ryan> :P
<Ryan> Hey, it worked okay too!
<mconnor> pfft

Oops :(

]]> http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blog/2006/08/so.php/feed More Theme Bits http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blog/2006/08/more_theme_bits.php http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blog/2006/08/more_theme_bits.php#comments Sat, 05 Aug 2006 05:39:35 +0000 Ryan http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blineapples/?p=48 With the initial pieces of the new theme now in the hands (or at least seen by) of thousands of users, there’s no shortage of feedback. The task ahead is to separate the noise from the signal and begin assessing the many concerns, suggestions and bugs. Most of the issues users discovered today have already made their way to Bugzilla - these are just a handful of the total bugs already on file for the new theme, but they’re the issues that I’ve seen being most loudly complained about:

Note: Please refrain from adding unnecessary comments or ‘me too’s to any of these bugs. They’re all confirmed and nearly all are most likely going to be approved to block the release of 2.0. If you’ve found a bug and wish to report it, please search throughly (preferably with the advanced search page) before doing so - the majority of bugs filed usually end up as duplicates. Also note that Bugzilla is not the place to express your feelings about the new theme. If you want to discuss it, please use the newsgroup or the forums.

347398 - menu buttons for back and forward history misaligned on mac
347399 - browser toolbar icons should not have hover effect on Mac OS X
347400 - search button disconnected from search field
347401 - New refresh icon is poor at small size
347402 - Go button is attached to the search bar
347405 - go button disconnected from URL bar. URL bar too tall
347406 - “Advanced” and “Privacy” panels icons have wrong image region / “Privacy” and “Security” icons are swapped
347410 - 2.0 Theme Bug — report site toolbar icon needs more padding
347412 - “Back” and “forward” toolbarbutton layout gets broken when using Icon+Text for the navigation toolbar
347416 - Visual refresh doesn’t natively style toolbar buttons anymore
347428 - Search bar does not scale when using large fonts
347432 - Navigation dropdowns appear disconnected
347435 - Live Bookmark Icon misplaced
347447 - back and forward dropdowns look strange with new theme updates
347463 - Proxy icon (favicon) in location bar scaled badly when feed or lock icon displayed
347467 - [Mac] Abuse of gray in icons after Pinstripe visual refresh
347468 - Background tabs are too light after visual refresh
347470 - New theme icons have too much intervening horizontal space on Linux
347482 - [Mac] Pinstripe visual refresh leaves vertical lines in some tabs
347487 - [Mac] Tab title and close box shift to the right when backgrounded

Of course no discussion about the new theme would be complete without the obligatory screenshots of the latest changes, so for today I’ll leave you with a little preview of the new tab bar. It still needs a few CSS tweaks and polish, but it’s nearly ready and should show up in nightly builds in a few days.

First tab has focus, second is a hover effect over the close button and the rest are inactive


Tab overflow with new arrows and ‘all-tabs’ drop-down menu

Stay tuned for more updates as they become available! :)

]]> http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blog/2006/08/more_theme_bits.php/feed Firefox 2 Visual Refresh Progress http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blog/2006/08/firefox_2_visual_refresh_progress.php http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blog/2006/08/firefox_2_visual_refresh_progress.php#comments Thu, 03 Aug 2006 17:06:40 +0000 Ryan http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blineapples/?p=47 Last night I worked on getting the new theme changes hacked into my trunk build. After about an hour of failed attempts, I ended up having to pull a new tree to get the patch to grudgingly apply - only to run into bug 346214 and a missing close tag introduced by the patch in browser.xul.
Overall the theme itself is nearly complete and only has a few remaining CSS and polish issues to hammer out. Barring anything catastrophic, the new theme should be landing on the 1.8 branch really soon and should be available in nightlies sometime tomorrow or over the weekend. So without further ado, may I introduce to you the latest iteration of the new official theme for Firefox 2!

Update: The theme is now available in the latest nightly builds. See the link below to grab a copy.

Overall look

The first tab here is active and the second is being hovered over. The last two are inactive.

Toolbar buttons enabled and toolbar palette

New options window

Just a little -moz-image-region funkiness here, but overall not too shabby. The icons here really show quite a bit of Mac influence (see the current pinstripe theme). And if you were wondering - yes, the privacy and security icons are flipped ;)

Tab overflow

The only thing I’m really not a fan of is the reload button and the fact that the buttons no longer have raised backgrounds while hovering over them. The new reload button goes for a motion effect underneath the arrows and ends up with what looks like two blue blobs on either end of it.
I asked around about the button effects and found that they were indeed intentional. I guess it would be a bit odd to implement the new back/forward button drop-down menus while keeping the normal button-like appearance, but then again I’m not entirely enamored by the new drop down blobs sticking out of the sides of the arrows.

Find bar

I really like the new find bar icon set. The only thing that doesn’t look so great is the new wrap icon, which looks very much like a stream of blue goo flowing over the top of an index card. The current icon () does a pretty good job of making it clear what’s going on while without the text next to it, I’m not sure what the new icon would be trying to tell me.

Of course the beauty of using Firefox is that if I don’t like a particular icon or if I miss the 3D button backgrounds, I can change them without breaking a sweat. :)

Overall the new theme is looking great. Kudos to Michael Glenn, Michael Bodalski, Jay Goldman and anyone else on the Radiant Core team I may be forgetting. They really have done quite well in the very small window we gave them to get it done.

Update: Updated the screenshots to contain the polished off version of the search engine drop-down.

Update 2: Gavin and Mike recently checked in the changes to the win/pinstripe themes and the tinderboxen have been respun. Builds containing the changes are on their way out the door! :)

Update 3: Nightly builds from 2006-08-04-09-mozilla1.8 onward now contain the theme updates. You can download ‘em here: ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-mozilla1.8

]]> http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blog/2006/08/firefox_2_visual_refresh_progress.php/feed Pardon the Dust http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blog/2006/07/pardon_the_dust.php http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blog/2006/07/pardon_the_dust.php#comments Sat, 29 Jul 2006 03:24:23 +0000 Ryan http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blineapples/?p=46 I’m starting to switch over to a new theme I started working on in mid-June. I hadn’t done anything with it in weeks, and I figured if I didn’t make it live soon it’d end up with the rest of my unfinished projects…

So watch out for falling debris, broken links and general areas of ugliness. Hopefully I’ll finish it off one of these days :)

]]> http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blog/2006/07/pardon_the_dust.php/feed Bon Echo Alpha 3 - Shipped! http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blog/2006/05/bon_echo_alpha_3.php http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blog/2006/05/bon_echo_alpha_3.php#comments Sat, 27 May 2006 06:39:34 +0000 Ryan http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blineapples/?p=45 To quote Mike Beltzner after narrowly dodging a potential Tinderbox config issue:

god, though, if we hit this date … it’ll be like, the first alpha date we’ve *ever* hit :)

Well, the date was set, and met with 2 hours to spare. Major props to the Mikes, Rob Helmer and the QA team for doing some latenight smoketesting.

So what’re waiting for? Give a3 a try already!

]]> http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blog/2006/05/bon_echo_alpha_3.php/feed Washington D.C. Panorama http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blog/2006/05/washington_dc_panorama.php http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blog/2006/05/washington_dc_panorama.php#comments Thu, 18 May 2006 22:35:57 +0000 Ryan http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blineapples/?p=44 This was taken a few blocks north of Dupont Circle from the roof of my office building sans tripod using a crappy Fujifilm digital camera. Even so, it’s still kind of nifty if you disregard the funky color/perspective changes.


dc_pan.png (1.4MB)

]]> http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blog/2006/05/washington_dc_panorama.php/feed Microsummary Available http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blog/2006/05/microsummary_available.php http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blog/2006/05/microsummary_available.php#comments Tue, 16 May 2006 21:55:38 +0000 Ryan http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blineapples/?p=43 I just setup a microsummary for the main page of this blog. I’ve set it up so you’ll easily be able to see the date of the latest blog entry. If you’re using a recent trunk or branch build, you’ll be able to use the microsummary here by adding the main page of this blog as a bookmark and selecting the summary in the drop down menu.

Once added, the bookmark will end up looking like this:

You can find more information and some microsummary examples here.

]]> http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blog/2006/05/microsummary_available.php/feed 6 Things You’ll Love About Bon Echo a2 http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blog/2006/05/6_things.php http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blog/2006/05/6_things.php#comments Wed, 10 May 2006 19:20:09 +0000 Ryan http://www.screwedbydesign.com/blineapples/?p=42 With things being prepared for the release of Bon Echo a2 in a day or two, I figured I’d post a little preview of the new features added since a1 that’ll be sure to turn some heads.

1. In-line spell check

Just start typing in any <textarea> and Firefox will automatically underline any words you spell incorrectly. Right click on any mispelled word and you’ll be given a few options from the currently loaded dictionary. You can spellcheck <input> fields by right clicking on them as well.

2. Better search engine management

Tired of having to dig though your searchplugins to delete search plugins? With the new search engine manager, this is a thing of the past. With the ability to delete and reorder plugins and the new backend support for formats such as OpenSearch, that handy search bar just got handier!

3. Search suggestions

The search backend now provides search plugins the abilty to specifiy an autocomplete URL. This allows plugins to provide a feature similar to Google Suggest directly in the browser UI. A2 will ship with this feature enabled for the Google and Yahoo! plugins.

4. Improved feed discovery and presentation

Firefox has now gained the ability to sniff out and display feed previews within the browser. Features such as selecting a default external reader or web reader service (In the options menu under Feed Reader) aren’t fully implemented yet, but with a little work you may be able to get it up and running.

5. Session restore

Currently session restore is currently only enabled for crashes, but soon restarts for extension installs/app updates will be able to use the session restore service.

6. Improved extension/themes manager UI

The extension manager and themes manager have been merged into a new ‘Add-ons’ manager which features improved update notifications, server-side blacklisting of malicious extensions and a streamlined installation process.

Bringing it all together

So far there haven’t been many major UI changes since a1 (and 1.5 for that matter) but as we draw nearer to a finshed product, things should really start to fall into place. The next few weeks should prove to be pretty amazing in terms of finishing up the final feature set and refreshing the look of the browser.

edit: A2 has now been officially released, you can download it via the link on this announcement.

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