Hicksdesign theme for Omniweb 5 / journal / hicksdesign

21/12/04

Hicksdesign theme for Omniweb 5

For that <1% of the Hicksdesign readership that use it, here is the Hicksdesign theme for Omniweb 5.

Download the theme here

Screenshots

Please note, I am using Nathan Skinner’s Tiger Theme, in these screenshots:

Overview (click for full sized image)

Toolbar (click for full sized image)

Download Manager

Preferences

Status Bar

Source Editor

Background

This has been a personal project since February, and even though its not finished, I feel the need to get something out as a starting point. The thing is, there are so many flippin’ icons in Omniweb, and while I don’t want to change them all, I do want to change a lot of them. The goal here (as always) was not to create a highly original theme. I just wanted something that blended into OS X as much as possible.

Originally, the theme was a redraw of my Camino theme, but I tried a straight rip-off of the safari/finder style buttons, and found that I much preferred this look. This is now the main style, but the rounder ‘iTunes’ style is there as an additional installation option. The rest of the icons are partly inspired by Stephen Horlanders icons for Firefox (mainly the history and RSS feed icon), but I’ve redrawn these myself, rather just steal them!

I have also supplied a ‘restore’ installer if you want to revert back to the original icons.

Also in the download, is a folder called ‘Goodies’, which contains extra applescripts, web badges, workspaces and a very simple shapeshifter theme, to remove the shadow on the bookmarks toolbar. Most people will probably like to keep the shadow, and even those that aren’t, probably wouldn’t go to the extent of installing a theme just for that. In short, if you want to use it, its there.

Huge thanks to Buzz Anderson of SciFiHiFi who answered my plea and set me up with Iceberg project files for creating the installer. Thanks Buzz!

Icons still to do:

The small bookmark icons
The large bookmarks image in the tab drawer
Main toolbar icons – Mark Page/Next Mark/Previous Mark

Updates and feedback

I intend to add more replacement icons to this set in the future, as well a improve the existing ones. I’ll be posting details of updates to my ‘OS X Browser News’ section, so the RSS feed will let you know when new versions are uploaded.

I’d particularly like your feedback on the status bar icons. Should they be in colour, or stay grey, or a combination of the 2? I can’t decide, but I’ve gone with mainly grey icons in this release. If you do like the theme, but there is a particular button that you use that I’ve not covered yet, let me know.

Update – I’ve done a quick to revision to solve a couple of issues people were having. Please re-download.

Technorati Tags Tags: browsers, omniweb, osx, software, themes

Comments | RSS

Comments are now closed, but you can still have a jolly time reading what others have left:

Brandon Pierce said 1394 days ago:

The ironry of this article is that for some odd reason, this article wouldn’t load in OmniWeb! I just got a blank screen, so had to fire up Safari to read it. I’m not really sure why, and maybe it’s just me. (Especially since I thought OmniWeb used the same rendering engine as Safari).

At any rate, I wanted to say thanks for prodding me onto OmniWeb. I’ve been a Safari user since day 1 of its release, and I still think it’s a spectacular browser. I had been wanting to try some others for more extended periods of time, but had a hard time since I was comfortable in Safari (I tend to not change once I’ve gone with something), but OmniWeb made the trasition easy. I haven’t even gotten ino half of the available features yet, but now that I’m used to the tiny preview tabs, I love them!

Kevin said 1394 days ago:

Beautiful stuff Jon, Your icons look really nice in that Tiger theme.

I think the status bar icons could be in color as long as they don’t draw the eye too much. Or you could go for gray icons with a bit of color on the important ones.

I’m looking forward to what you come up with for the Form Fill, Summarize, View Links icons. They seem to be the weakest of the original Omniweb set and I’m sure they would be challenging to replace. :)

Jeff Croft said 1394 days ago:

Jon, this just might be what it takes to get me to switch over to OmniWeb full time. I love the rendering engine (I usually use Safari) and many of the features, but the icons and interface just wasn’t blending into OS X as well as I like for it to. I’m anxious to install this! Great work!

BYW, love the new comment style.

Remi P. said 1394 days ago:

Awesome icons you got here! I always thought that FireFox was the only good web browser for OS X. Maybe because I haven’t ever tried Omniweb yet :-)

Good job!

Wolfgang Bartelme said 1394 days ago:

I’m currently using Safari with the Saft plugin.. but now I’m really playing with the tought to switch to OmniWeb…

Jason said 1394 days ago:

Very nice. I’ll be installing it shortly.

One thought on the toolbar icons: Lotsa people’s eyes have been trained by the web to associate orange with newsfeeds. (Mine have, at least.) It may take a bit of time to become accustomed to the gray—or grey :)—feed alert. (For me, at least.)

Rob McMichael said 1394 days ago:

I decided to give omniweb a go and am quite impressed. Not sure if I am a switcher yet but it does look nice and the tab drawer is great.

Good work on the theme though, the original isn’t great :)

Paul Anderson said 1394 days ago:

I like this theme because (1) it’s different than the OmniWeb default and (2) I like to use different themes at different times.

Now could you do something about the unnecessarily-large icons next to bookmark and folder names in the bookmarks bar?

I also prefer colored icons over grey.

Paul

Jinketsu said 1394 days ago:

Awesome! I’ve been waiting for this theme to be released! Great work as always.

#10

Massimo said 1394 days ago:

Beautiful! Good work! No, let me rephrase that, brilliant work! :-D

#11

Brooks said 1394 days ago:

For some reason the Show Tabs button doesn’t display on the toolbar in my copy of OmniWeb 5.1b5.

It displays fine in the Customize Toolbar dialog, and I can drag it onto the bar, and click empty space on the bar where I put it, but it won’t display.

Otherwise, a very nice addition.

B.

#12

Simon said 1394 days ago:

Thanks Jon !

Omniweb is by far the best broswer in Mac (in any plateform for me) and now it’s also one of the prettiest !

Thanks !

S.

#13

The Wolf said 1394 days ago:

It looks good, but what does it normally look like? :)

#14

Kevin Evans said 1394 days ago:

Great work! I’ve been using Omniweb since it recently made you ‘list of 2004’, but I hated the icons! Till now!

#15

Jon Hicks said 1394 days ago:

Yeah, I think the status bar needs some coloured icons – even if its just the RSS Feed icon. I’ll look into the Show tabs icon problem too.

#16

Rajan said 1394 days ago:

was wondering if u could do something for firefox

#17

Pete said 1394 days ago:

It’s times like these I wish I had an Apple. :( .

#18

Andrew said 1394 days ago:

Wonderful work, once again! I too have been looking at switching back to OmniWeb for some time, having used it before Safari; this pushed me the rest of the way. Thanks!

My main observance is that there’s a mix of waves and globes; it would be nice if it were a little more uniform.

Regarding the status bar icons, grey is good; it’s less distracting. Colour could likely be used appropriately, though. (I must admit that the cookie looks more like a marble to me.)

#19

Kevin Francis said 1394 days ago:

Wow—Thats really good looking. You’ve inspired me to do some customisation to Galeon (for Linux, and uses many of the same ideas of OmbiWeb)

#20

Jeff Croft said 1393 days ago:

Remi said:

” I always thought that FireFox was the only good web browser for OS X.”

Are you kidding? With Firefox, Safari, OmniWeb, and Camino, Mac OS X has at least four browser better than IE on Windows. :)

#21

Jon Hicks said 1393 days ago:

Thanks Jeff, I hadn’t spotted that comment!

#22

Sumeet Singh said 1393 days ago:

Hey Jon

I have been going around your site for a long time now.

Can you please release some theme stuff for firefox? I will really appreciate it.

Thanks

#23

Jon Hicks said 1393 days ago:

Ah come on guys! This is an Omniweb thread here! I’ve done some Firefox theme stuff here,
and here, and here as well !

Come on, it’s Omniwebs turn!

#24

Jon Hicks said 1393 days ago:

BTW – I have no plans to release a Firefox theme. For me, Firefox comes with a decent theme already.

#25

Joshua Heyer said 1393 days ago:

Jon,

After I installed the sweet set of icons you made the start-up time seems to be much longer. Anyone else have this problem?

#26

Chris Fonnesbeck said 1393 days ago:

For some reason, though the icon in the launch bar changes to the new wave graphic, but in the finder the old earth icon remains. Whats the best way to change this?

#27

ender said 1393 days ago:

That looks really nice, especially with that tiger theme.. but the download link (for the tiger theme) seems to be down. I don’t suppose there’s a mirror somewhere?

#28

Jon Hicks said 1393 days ago:

Chris – I’ve seen this happen before, its sometimes seems to take the Finder a while to catch up. Let me know if it still does it after a restart.

Ender, Here’s a direct link to the guikit: guikit://www.kmurphy.ambitiouslemon.com/tigertrickery/tiger.guiKit

#29

RUtger said 1392 days ago:

Well, the thumbnails instead of tabs looks really great. I really must give omniweb a try. And your theme is of course gorgeous. Can’t wait to get back home today and work on my mac instead of this windows machine I’m now on…

Take care and happy holidays!

#30

bill said 1392 days ago:

John, wicked awesome as usual. Thanks.

#31

Sean Devine said 1392 days ago:

Great job with this, Jon. I can’t imagine how you found the time.

While I really like the theme, I’m most happy because it caused me to try out the latest version of OmniWeb. It’s incredibly fast – light years better then previous versions. It actually seems a little bit snappier then Safari to me.

#32

Kevin Finlayson said 1380 days ago:

Hi Jon

I absolutely love this theme. The stylized ukiyo-e wave graphic on the splash page and dock icon is some of your best work ever, and itunes buttons are another highlight.

the status bar buttons are great – i like the predominant grey with a splash of colour – the RSS indicator really pops.

I’m waiting on the small/generic bookmarks icon, but until you finish it, I want to switch omniweb’s out for another, as you appear to have done in the screenshot. Problem is, I can’t find the pmg/tiif/icns/whatever for it. Can you help me find it?

Thanks (and Thank You!)

#33

kenji said 1380 days ago:

great work! i’ve been using omniweb 5 since john gruber pointed it out in beta, but i never realized the icons were not what they could be until i installed this theme. if it convinces more people to use omniweb, then you’ve done us all a service.