My favourite new Firefox theme: iAqua

(click on it for a better view)

Check out those beautiful toolbars! You can get iAqua here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5327. iAqua is another mac theme (obviously), but instead of using the rather ugly Safari/Finder buttons, it uses the lozenges from Mail.app. Sometimes people complain about Mail.app not having a common interface with the rest of the Mac, but I think it is rather beautiful. Anyway, I love this theme. The one thing I would change about it is the ugly bold text in the Bookmarks toolbar. Also, I would eradicate the favicons; they kind of get in the way in this type of setup.

Now, in order to get rid of the menu, you will want my other favourite Firefox extension, Hide Menubar: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4762. Unlike other similar addons, it actually hides the menu toolbar, so that you don't have to move all your navigation buttons into the menu toolbar. This is important especially for iAqua, because the neat gradient in the toolbar is only present for real, live Navigation Toolbars. When you press the ALT key, the menu temporarily appears.

Do not install Metatheme! It will break your GTK

Do not install Metatheme, I repeat! For those of you who wonder what Metatheme is, it is a program that unifies the user interfaces of GTK, QT, and Java. It even has a feature to use Microsoft Windows .msstyles files. It, however, is AWFUL!

I installed it, and the themes it came with were awful, and ugly. I tried to use the msstyles loader, but what I got was a bunch of ugliness. Nothing like the actual msstyles theme under Windows. After having been dissatisfied, I tried to uninstall it. First, you are supposed to run metatheme-install -u. That is supposed to return your toolkits to the original and disable Metatheme. Then, you run something like sudo make uninstall or something. That is supposed to uninstall it.

Unfortunately, neither of them had any effect (even after restarting my session). Even after uninstalling Metatheme, my GTK looked like CRAP! I tried restarting the gnome-settings-daemon, or restarting the gnome-theme-manager and stuff, but to no avail.

In the end, I found how to fix it: I went into Synaptic, and reinstalled anything that had to do with GTK and libraries and stuff. When I restarted my session, all was back to normal, with my beautiful GTK themes. Phew.

So just a word of advice (again): DON'T INSTALL METATHEME!!!!!!!!!

Get the KDE4 Oxygen Iconset on your K(ubuntu)/Linux today!

I just did it, and it looks great! Here is a screenshot:

They still need some work, but they look really smooth and nice.

To get them download the following: http://g.natacha.free.fr/oxygen.tar.gz (please be patient, it takes a while).

Then, untar it. After that, copy the folder 'oxygen' to /home/yourusername/.kde/share/icons. After that, go into KControl, and under icons you should see 'Oxygen'. Real simple.

Apparently, you can also use them with Gnome, too (see Ubuntuforums for that).

[Via Ubuntuforums]

A Nice Theme for Ubuntu, 2.0

A very long time ago, on my old blog, I wrote a post called 'A Nice Theme for Ubuntu'. It was one of my most popular posts for a while. The post featured a GTK and Metacity theme that was in Gilouche colours, but resembled Windows Vista.

I would like to introduce today, A Nice Theme for Ubuntu 2.0. That's right, folks. Here is a screenie before we start on how to reproduce the awesome-ness of my desktop:

We will start with the wallpaper. Therefore:

Wallpaper. Go to the following website to get the wallpaper: http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Greenome?content=55923

Icons. Tango, except for the Firefox icon, which is Human. http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Tango-Generator+2?content=55081

Emerald Theme (Window Decoration), requires Beryl and XGL/AIGLX. A modded version of http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/51131618/. The version used in this can be downloaded by clicking the following button: .

GTK Theme. The GTK theme is MurrinaAngelic Green. http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php?content=45482. Make sure that you have the Murrine Engine installed: http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show.php?content=42755

Firefox Theme. The Firefox theme is http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/45665026/?offset=1. You must download it, open up the Firefox Addons (or Themes) dialogue, and drag the file into it. It will be installed when Firefox is restarted. Needed for Firefox to look like mine is the extension Compact Menu Blue. After installation and restarting Firefox, edit your toolbars, drag the Compact Menu onto the menubar, and you can remove the main menu (File, Edit, etc...). Then, drag all the items previously contained in the Navigation Toolbar into the menubar. Then, (in order to have the glassy look on the Google Toolbar), drag all of the Google Toolbar items into the Navigation Toolbar. Then, disable all of the toolbars except for the Navigation Toolbar (unless you really need a bookmarks toolbar...).

Bottom Dock Bar. Avant Window Manager is a task-bar replacement that looks a little bit like the OS X dock, but note that it doesn't actually launch programs. http://code.google.com/p/avant-window-navigator/

I think that that is basically all that I needed to make my desktop look incredible. Best of luck!!!