Q1: What is the difference between a skin and a theme?
A: The Mozilla community historically called them skins. Then when Netscape 6.0 was ready for release, Netscape decided to call them themes. For our purposes the terms can be used interchangably. Likewise, the terms package and chrome are sometimes used interchangably, as well.
Q2: What is the difference between a skin/theme and a package/chrome.
A: Slightly oversimplified explanation: Skins alter the appearance of an existing browser layout. This means that by making a custom skin, a person can change the colors, alignment, and the images that are used to give existing buttons, menus, etc. the "look and feel" that they have. This involves changing (or writing your own) css files. A chrome package is used to define the buttons, menus, etc that make up the brower. This involved changing (or writing your own) xul files. For example, to add the "Find" button I had to add an extra line to navigator.xul (contained in comm.jar) which defined the button and pointed it to an existing function. To give this new button an icon, I had to add an extra line to navigator.css to point to the image. In addition, a number of changes had to be made to button.css in order to change the navigation buttons into 2-state buttons, with border colors similar to Netscape 3. The theme switching feature of Mozilla only switches skins, not packages. To put my custom package into place, I used to have to use the xpi installer as a "brute force" way of putting it into place. Current versions require the special patched version of comm.jar to be copied over manually.
Q3a: My other themes/skins no longer look right. What did Ultra Classic do to my copy of Mozilla?
A: (versions .899 and later): The files: comm.jar, messenger.jar, and/or chatzilla.jar are causing this to happen. The custom versions of these jar files, supplied by Ultra Classic, are the custom XUL package. As described above, the extra buttons, etc wouldn't be possible without it. To restore the normal appearance of your other themes, restore the original copies of comm.jar, messenger.jar, chatzilla.jar
Q3b: How do I reverse the XUL changes?
A: (versions .899 and later): Restore the original copy of comm.jar, messenger.jar, chatzilla.jar
Q4: Netscape 3/4 had the option of choosing "Pictures", "Text", or "Pictures and Text", to change the appearance of the Navigation Buttons. I prefer the "pictures only" navigation buttons. Any plans to include this fuctionality?
A: Bug #22056 was fixed in the Mozilla 1.2.1 Milestone release. Upgrade to a newer version of Mozilla, then go into the Edit->Preferences menu and click on "Appearance".
Q5: Netscape 3 had an "Images" button which came in handy when powersurfing with the images turned off. Why is it missing from Ultra Classic?
A: The functionality to make this work still hasn't been implemented in Mozilla. I could add the button, but it wouldn't do anything since there's no function to map it to. A bug report has already been filed http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57505. The bug is over two years old, has over 40 votes, yet is still marked as new. I wouldn't count on seeing it fixed anytime soon.
Q6: Do you plan to make a version of Ultra Classic that I can use with Mozilla Firebird?
A: Yes, but it's too early to say when I'll find time to do it. It'll probably start off as a theme-only stripped-down version of Ultra Classic, then become a little more complete as time goes on.
Last Update: 07-28-2003