Help wanted: Creating a browser theme installer / journal / hicksdesign

06/10/04

Help wanted: Creating a browser theme installer

I’m in the slow process of getting my Omniweb 5 theme ready for public consumption, and it strikes me that something like an applescript would probably enable the easy install of a bunch of image files into an applications hidden resource folder. Normally you would have to ctrl click an app, choose ‘show package contents’ from the context menu, and then navigate through the hidden folders to dump replacement images. Not the hardest job in the world, but I feel it could be so much simpler.

The trouble is, I start to look at such things and whooooosh (motions a plane swooping over the head).

If anyone has the skills to pay these particular bills, advice or pointers, please drop me a line, or leave a comment here. I’d be very grateful for any help!

Technorati Tags Tags: browsers, omniweb, questions

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

Matt Rehder said 1553 days ago:

I’m fairly certain that the OmniGroup plan to release their theme app for OmniWeb 5 when they release OmniWeb 5.1. So for OmniWeb, this should be taken care of.

-matt

Jon Hicks said 1553 days ago:

They are planning a theme plug-in and it will work better than an installer. However, they’ve told me that this isn’t scheduled for release anytime soon. Its all a bit vague.

Ben said 1553 days ago:

maybe I could help?

Buzz Andersen said 1553 days ago:

Why not make an actual Mac OS X installer package? It probably wouldn’t be too hard, and I’d be glad to help…

Michael Sheets said 1553 days ago:

Should just be a OSX package and install itself through OmniWeb on a double click. (After asking maybe)

Not saying it works that way… just that it should.

Neil said 1553 days ago:

Let me know if you need some help – I’m not an Applescript god (not by a long shot), but I’m sure we could suss out what you need to get working for all file browsers (winkwinknudgenudge-say-no-more :) ).

Jon Hicks said 1553 days ago:

Thanks for the offer Buzz – I’ll send you an email!

Neil – I had wondered whether to get something that would work with other browsers, but then again, Camino has Caminicon, and Shiira has its in-built theming system.

Vincent Grouls said 1553 days ago:

When using an OS X installer, be sure to back up the original icons and images ;-).

Just a little preflight shell script will do it for you. You may want to look at this perl script from Marc Liyanage.

If you dissect it, it will help you greatly creating an OS X installer without Packagemaker.

Looking forward to seeing the theme :-)

Vincent Grouls said 1553 days ago:

Hmm, the link shows up in the preview but not in the text message… :-(

http://www.entropy.ch/software/macosx/mysql/make_mysql_pkg.pl.txt

#10

Jon Hicks said 1553 days ago:

Vincent, I always advise people to back up their current icons first. so that they can revert if they get bored with the theme, or want to mix and match.

Thanks – I’ll check out the script. Marc’s stuff is renowned.

#11

Marco said 1552 days ago:

I guess by opening the contents of “Firefoxy” you will be able to see how it works. There will be a shell script in it which takes care of the replacement. The new icons will be in the Drag ‘n’ Drop app itself and will be moved by the script to the right place in the Omniweb package

#12

Scott Boms said 1552 days ago:

I just noticed that the Iconfactory has updated their Candybar application and it can now deal with application bundles with respect to customizing both icons and the toolbar icons.

It does backup the original icons and restoring them looks pretty easy as well.

Perhaps this could be an possible (alternative) solution to rolling your own. It does cost $13 though ($7 for upgrades).

#13

Mario Estrada said 1552 days ago:

I was going to say what scott boms just did, so i think it would be a good option to distribute an .icontainer

#14

Jon Hicks said 1552 days ago:

Thanks for the idea. I’ve given it a whirl, and there are 2 problems. Firstly, it doesn’t let you change the application icon or splash screen, the other is that not all of OW’s icons are stored in the resources folder. There are a few bookmark icons that get stored in a Frameworks folder. If it wasn’t for these 2 things, it would be a solution. I could’ve provided an iContainer, and the original files for those who don’t have Candy Bar.

#15

Scott Boms said 1552 days ago:

So close…

At least it’s something of a “plan B”. Some kind of AppleScript or shell script thing solution is probably the best bet then.

Another option might be to create a GUI wrapper with Interface Builder or using something like Platypus or one of those other tools that can create “real” apps out of PHP/Perl/Shell scripts.

#16

Vincent Grouls said 1551 days ago:

Found this very nice and easy tutorial on macosxhints.com, just in case you didn’t have it yet.

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030619213002144

Thanks btw for “pushing” Omniweb 5 on me – it is now my default browser. I can’t believe how speedy it is, even with the thumbnails 8-)

#17

David said 1541 days ago:

Hi. Yes, those of us who do have Candybar 2.0 could easily just use an icontainer to switch out the toolbar icons in omniweb. I’ve already done with some icons I found, but your design is far better! Would it be easy for you to provide that?