Firefox’s New Winstripe Theme
Kevin Gerich and Stephen Horlander’s Winstripe is the new default theme for the Windows version of Mozilla Firefox, replacing Arvid’s Qute.
Personally, I think there’s two issues at hand over this current controversy:
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Open-Sourcing Artwork
I can understand the difficulty Ben Goodger (and the rest of the Firefox team) faced working without a proper Mozilla-compatible license for Arvid’s Qute theme. But as a fellow artist, the idea of “open-sourcing” artwork (with derivatives!) is a very tricky and controversial issue. While Arvid’s being extremely difficult, I can still see why it’s hard for him to give up his “creation” initially.While this may ultimately be the best possible compromise for the Mozilla Firefox team, can’t possibily be good for the future of visual artists interested in open source projects. If Qute designer Arvid could be so quickly dropped on such a high profile project, who’s next?
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Sacrifices Towards a Unified Theme
Keeping in mind that Winstripe is still a work in progress, the branding team still needs to decide how far they are willing to develop a unified theme. Will changes be made to both Pinstripe and Winstripe to make them respectful of both operating systems’ user interface guidelines? Right now, it feels like the Windows theme is the only one being sacrificed in the name of a “unified theme”.
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About the Pinstripe Theme - Previous reasons for not extending the Pinstripe theme to be compatible with Windows and Linux. Winstripe lovers, take note.
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Stephen Horlander: Winstripe is “a 0.1 release at best” - An interesting look back by djst at how awful Qute looked during its early 0.1 release. Qute lovers, take note.
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Winstripe in action - A good overview of the changes in Firefox 0.9 by Lim Chee Aun and a closer look at its various new icons
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Open Source Software Needs Visual Designers - So what does this all mean in the big picture? Acts of Volition’s Steven Garrity talks about good visual design and its impact on open source software.