Loading ...Firefox 3 theme icons on Windows XP
In preparation for Firefox 3 Beta 3 release, Mozilla has finally landed today the updated icons for Windows XP, Vista and Mac OS X. On Mac OS X, the landing is actually the addition of the Proto theme in development for a couple of months now as the default them for Firefox 3.
For Windows XP and Vista, we can finally see the result of the changes announced a while ago and the icons commissioned to Iconfactory.
As expected, the Back button has been made larger and together with the forward button looks like a keyhole which is expected to become an easily recognizable shape associated with Firefox across all platforms.
I would still prefer more saturated, plastic colors for all the buttons. Particularly the back and forward buttons still have the washed-out look of Firefox 2 icons. Also, as it has been reported, the reload icon looks too thin. Making the arrow head just like the Back icon’s could be enough to make it better.
The unified history menu for the Back and Forward buttons.
Here’s a view of all the other icons available in a separate toolbar. I would say that in general they look a little more playful which is what Luna (Windows XP’s default theme) is all about.
Icons in the Options window have been updated as well. If the privacy icon looks to you like it’s wearing a helmet, you are wrong but no one can blame you. In reality, it is a yellow handle with a white “do not disturb”sign hanging from it. Hope to see it updated soon.
So far, it looks like a welcomed refresh for me with just the few observations I made.
Remember this is just about the new icons landing and some other theme changes are still pending as well as additional Library icons and a few others.
Stay tuned for the Windows Vista icons refresh later today.
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January 28th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
I like the concept of the back and forward buttons, but it doesn’t have the same awesome look like in IE7 in Vista(maybe it’s because this is the XP theme).
Here is a website from someone who’s working on the UI of Firefox ;)
http://blog.mozilla.com/faaborg/
The Vista theme has also been published overthere and it looks waaay better!!
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January 28th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
I am not too excited about those icons. They are too Fisher Price like. Not everybody uses the green fisher price look of standard XP. I would be great if the user could select the base color of the icon set.
The unified forward/backward button looks kind of strange. Maybe one has just got to ge used to it.
I think I will stick with Kempelton whenever it is released for Fx3.
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January 28th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
I can understand wanting something to feel more cartoony and less realistic on XP then Vista, but why green plastic? It’s just ugly.
Why not a flat, two tone blue circle. Cut halfway, with darker blue on the bottom and a white arrow in it?
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January 28th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
I have to agree. I happily use Firefox 2 with the default theme, but I suspect I’ll be finding a custom theme for 3. The green forward/back thing just doesn’t work for me.
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January 28th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
I like it. Never was a fan of Firefox 2.0’s faded icons, and these new ones beat them hands down. The Home, Bookmark, Downloads, New Window and New Tab icons make me feel much better about Firefox 3. Thanks for doing this for us wimps afraid of nightly builds.
The plastic look is very much XP Luna (even if you’re running Royale or Energy Blue), and the green is to remind users of that big, friendly Start button.
I think the “pit” area of the keyhole around the forward button could be darker near the bottom and the whole thing should have a stronger outline, like the Vista version. That thin strip of white for the reflection just blends into the background of the toolbar.
Can you take a screenshot of your mouse “Hovering” over an icon? I’d like to know if we’re still stuck with Firefox 2’s barely there gray outlines (IE is not much better here, but Opera is).
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January 28th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Until now I always liked the firefox design, but this is very ugly, very. The first thing I’ll do when I’ll get this is find a good theme (which is veeeery hard)
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January 28th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
I know I’ll be switching back to the fx2 theme. These icons are horrible!
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January 28th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
This is a big mistake. Iconfactory did sh*t, not icons! I losing hope to Firefox 3 is revolutional release. Mozilla, please, do something with this green button!! And restore old “home” and “open new card” buttons! This “home” look like button straight from Internet Explorer 5.5! ;(
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January 29th, 2008 at 12:22 am
I’m sure I’ll get used to the new icons but I can’t help feeling… AAAAARRRRGH, this is UGLY!!
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January 29th, 2008 at 3:18 am
I really like ‘em. I like how they’re keeping the system feel. And I’m huge into graphic design. However, if the masses don’t like it, I say that the team consider backing off on this one.
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January 29th, 2008 at 3:51 am
i like it. where could i get this theme?
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January 29th, 2008 at 5:21 am
Sorry, but the XP icons look nothing like their os counterparts. The mockups looked much better. I wouldn’t use them.
Did Mozilla pay them for this ugly result?
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January 29th, 2008 at 7:17 am
UGLY!!!
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January 29th, 2008 at 7:30 am
OMG terrible, this is poor hybrid imitation of XP and little from Vista design…
The idea to have native theme for the OS is good, but the implementation is bad. IE7 have two BIG back and forward buttons, the refresh and stop buttons are almost the same height. Here we see one very huge back button with almost no space around it and the other buttons are too small with too much space around them.
IE7 was planned only for Vista not for XP thats why it looks that way on XP.
Hello custom themes… firefox 3 is here!
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January 29th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
butt ugly
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January 29th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Agntx: The icons made you lose hope that Firefox 3 is revolutionary? So you’re saying that a new rendering engine, a new bookmark system and enhancements being made to almost every facet of the Firefox UI are all canceled out just because you don’t like the icons? That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.
On the topic of the theme itself, I like the Vista icons for the most part, but I must bring this up again - the arrows on the XP and Vista themes are nothing like those used in those operating systems. If the theme is supposed to blend in to the OS (as it’s set out to do), Iconfactory should at least try and capture the small stylistic details like that.
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January 31st, 2008 at 6:16 pm
The “unified history menu” is an awesome concept and simplifies the usability of the history buttons in general, but the little down-pointing arrow (indicating the menu will open) is displayed to the right of the forward arrow - to me this indicates that the menu will only be relevant to the forward button. The joining of the back and forward buttons into the keyhole makes it feel like a unified widget but that down-arrow does not related attached to the back button at all, so a user simply wanting to go back 4 pages in history may not think to push it. Maybe it can go in-between the back and forward buttons? The curve on the right-most side of the forward arrow would look better bound tighter to the sunken edge as well. I know that convention shows the down-pointing arrow to the right, but the unified menu and unified magical double-button is not exactly conventional anyway?
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February 1st, 2008 at 10:27 am
The new XP icons look completely crap. Sorry to rain on your parade, but the Firefox 2 icons also looked crap.
Iconfactory, the ‘World leaders in icon design’ will be releasing something that, compared to your other work, looks like its made by someone partially sighted.
Take a leaf out of Nullsoft’s book and integrate some nice effects into FF3, instead re-hashing boring, plain and uninspiring UI designs.
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February 2nd, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Well, if it ends up not looking so good, just go back to something else… FF 2 look, or maybe FF 1. I think that will probably be possible.
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February 4th, 2008 at 9:22 am
I’m sorry but that’s just ugly. :(
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February 4th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Average. VERY VERY average.
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February 7th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
I’m loving Firefox because it is very nice and fast.
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February 13th, 2008 at 7:15 am
Will google toolbar be available for firefox 3 as I miss the autofill feature
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February 13th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Sorry to say these are really bad. When I saw Iconfactory was responsible i did a double take.
The icons don’t even have a real “family” feel to them. They look like amateur hour xp icons. Compared to the FF2 icons these are much worse.
Really… try again guys. I’m sure you can do much much better than this tired dated stuff.
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February 13th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
A constructive icon critique (as opposed to just yelling “fail!”)
There’s a noticeable inconsistency in perspective. Most of the icons are full front, but Print, Security and Download are inexplicably rotated in perspective.
The Security and Print icons lack the light outlining that all of the other icons have, making them further stand out as inconsistent.
The Refresh icon lacks the mass of the other icons, also making it feel inconsistent with the rest.
What is the Privacy icon supposed to represent? It looks like an iPod with a hat.
The Bookmarks star in the URL has a much thicker outline than any other icon in the set.
Not nuts about the implementation of the combo forward/back/history button. Seems unnecessarily complex for what was an easily understood UI.
I’m really surprised by this. Iconfactory is generally better at iconography than this would imply. You might just want to stick with the Linux versions which are far more coherent and consistent.
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February 13th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
I agree with McE re inconsistency, it’s almost impossible to describe how different each icon is from each other. I do still like the back+forward button combo (taking into account my comments above) but I think everything else must go back to the drawing board.
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February 15th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
While I like the Longhorn idea of the bigger back button, the arrow is ugly. Really, this looks like a fisher price browser. But don’t panic. XP looks like a fisher price OS.
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February 20th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
looks like some amateur graphic designer did this set of icons. cmon guys you can do better!!!
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February 21st, 2008 at 4:00 pm
why the not put the places of bookmark toolbar same like safari?
can you change the color icons?
can you change the color of background? more gray?
the search bar or the address bar must be different, more like safari?
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February 23rd, 2008 at 5:58 am
Still waiting for the Firefox O/S and a Instant Messenger to blow the doors of IE IM. I think after a few beers with the boys from Yahoooooooooo. there would be a good mix. The Google Pack is looking better every day. Now if you can just add and include the full meal deal for all of the best of the downloads.com into a a La carte ..And send some of that sunshine up here to us Canucks in the Great White North. BurtD
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February 24th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
I am not too excited about those icons. They are too Fisher Price like. Not everybody uses the green fisher price look of standard XP. I would be great if the user could select the base color of the icon set.
The unified forward/backward button looks kind of strange. Maybe one has just got to ge used to it.
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March 5th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
i think that what has been changed is amazing other than the download manager clear up button has been removed i liked the option to be able to clear it but clicking a button as oppose to having to right click to do it.
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March 6th, 2008 at 9:49 am
Yeah, extremely ugly stuff!
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March 7th, 2008 at 10:46 am
I think Firefox 3 for Windows XP should have its icons entirely changed from the XP look to something more glossy, not necessary following Vista.
The plastic look icons look terrible. Seriously. The icons on Aero Fox theme can be used a guide.
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March 9th, 2008 at 5:44 am
I must say that imho these new icons are plain ugly. Especially the forward/backward icons look cheap. All other icons fit in quite well into Luna, but the navigation icons with that glossy look just don’t fit in.
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March 12th, 2008 at 5:03 am
Great! They have managed to create a cheap and nasty interface that looks WORSE that IE7 to match the ass-backward bookmarking in the Betas. Plugged memory leaks are not enough reason to put up with this rubbish. Opera here I come!
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August 27th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Here is a perfect theme for KDE 4: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7574
But since it is only a beta download it from here: http://ramonantonio.net/kde-firefox/
I don’t know who the author is, but it is the best Oxygen theme available.
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September 5th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Does Mozilla have a “refresh” like Internet Explorer? If so, how do I get it on my toolbar?
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September 27th, 2008 at 1:14 am
I don’t usually post to these groups, but I was really curious what people were saying about the new theme and icons. I have to agree with those who are disappointed. These are really amateur, totally unoriginal, and worst of all, totally inconsistent. I don’t get the back/forward cluster or the unified history … though I’m sure I’ll get used to it. The real problem is just the look … so ugly. So much so, it’s distracting. Again, it is the inconsistency of the theme more than anything that throws me off. The back/forward cluster looks like buttons off a boom box. Fine. Commit! Go all the way! As for people who say it looks Fisher Price, I disagree. I think the old, simple theme looked Fisher Price … AND THAT’S WHY I LIKED IT! At least it was a theme that said, “You are not using your grandma’s browser.” It also said, “This is community supported free-ware, and it rocks so hard it doesn’t need to look like your OS.” What does the new theme say? To me, nothing.
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September 28th, 2008 at 2:39 am
I agree, they’re just plain ugly. Now I simply install the Qute theme everywhere I install Firefox. It has exactly the effect you describe, makes it not feel like your OS, makes it a little Fisher Price which I also like A LOT.
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