I’m not just being mean, either. They admit it themselves. Firefox has gone far too long without an update to integrate itself into Windows in the same way that it’s integrated itself into our hearts. In fact, Windows 7 has just gone to RTM—equipment manufacturers are now able to get their hands on it—meaning that Mozilla has bypass an entire operating system.

What’s worse is that Firefox totally lacks any theming documentation. In all seriousness, it’s totally barren. And the type of person who can figure it out themselves is typically not the sort of person who can produce a tasteful theme (I do, though, realize there are a few notable exceptions.) So, I took the challenge.

With a proud heart and a wary mind, I can give you First Wave.

Screenshots

First Wave under Windows 7 open to a verified domain.

First Wave with 3 tabs open on a 4:3 monitor.

Installation Instructions & Requirements

1. You should be on a Windows PC, preferably running 7, Vista or XP. The theme will install itself under other OSes, but support isn’t provided and it’s likely to look quite odd.
2. You must have the Stylish extension installed.
3. Go to the theme page and hit “Install into Stylish”. Simple!

Oh well, at least I’ve come across a musician who can a) actually play and b) is quite nice to listen to as she does it, too. I used to post music up, but apparently I’m not allowed to do that anymore. YouTube to the rescue! It’s such a pity they removed music videos in the UK, though. What a way to lose market share. Bastards. Anyway, the lovely Lisa Mitchell is the one whom I speak about, and here is she with Neopolitan Dreams.

It’s still stuck in my head.

I have discovered RentACoder. I can well and truly say that I hate it. How could anyone undervalue their profession like that? $5 for a piece of coding? Come on, that’s awful! After their extortionate fee, that’s £3. THREE POUNDS. I could find that much money on the street! It makes you think, doesn’t it, about what the point is to learning this type of skill to a professional level if it’s going to be undervalued by a cheap, foreign “programmer” who outputs more invalid code than a monkey who’s handed a copy of Microsoft Word and a keyboard. Eugh. No wonder we’re in a crisis.

Mime Types and the Internet

Officially Internet media type nowadays, the Mime type originated as a way of signifying additional files on email served via SMTP. Mime types are made up of two pieces of information: a type and then a subtype. Additionally, a charset parameter may inform of the character set of the file.

You will have used these before: when writing a HTML document, you’ve always written something like this:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type"
  content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>

The Mime type is the text/html bit.

Usually, when a web author links to a favicon on his page, he might define it as image/x-icon.

<link rel="shortcut icon"
  href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"/>

While this is strictly correct HTML, it is telling the browser that it is linking to a nonstandard, ICO image.

The problem is that ICO images have been standardized and registered with the IANA for 6 years, and you really have to start paying them their dues.

The correct Mime type for ICO images is image/vnd.microsoft.icon. Thus, a fully correct rendition of a link to a favicon would be something like this:

<link rel="shortcut icon"
  href="/favicon.ico" type="image/vnd.microsoft.icon"/>

Respect to the Mimes, people!